Luciano hadn't left the graveyard in two days.
Rain poured, soaking through his black shirt, but he didn't move. Didn't blink. Didn't breathe deeply.
Until Simon arrived—white-knuckled, jaw locked.
> "It wasn't her."
Luciano turned slowly. Eyes hollow. Voice broken.
> "What did you say?"
Simon handed him a report. DNA.
> "The girl in the casket wasn't Grace.
She was planted."
Luciano didn't react for a full minute.
Then he exploded.
The tombstone cracked under his boot.
The silence that followed wasn't peace.
It was a storm paused mid-scream.
> "Someone is playing God with me," he said darkly, voice like gravel and fire.
"And I'm going to burn heaven down to find them."
---
Meanwhile in Venice...
Grace stepped out of the apothecary disguised as a local art dealer named Emilia Vercetti.
A man followed her.
Subtle. Good at pretending to be bad at following her.
But she knew better.
She let him tail her into an alley.
And then—
> "You were better off faking my death than chasing me," she whispered, turning fast and holding a knife to his gut.
The man smirked.
"Luciano isn't the only one who wants you found, Grace."
Her grip tightened.
"Who sent you?"
He laughed.
> "Let's just say... someone else is tired of watching a saint play savior."
He lunged.
She stabbed.
He bled.
But before he died, he said one thing that made her knees buckle:
> "Your mother… didn't die in childbirth like you were told."
Then silence.
---
Elsewhere…
Luciano found something in the autopsy report.
The woman who died wasn't random.
She was an orphan from Naples.
With a missing brother.
A brother who used to work for the Morettis.
> "This is personal," Luciano growled.
> "Whoever staged her death wants Grace out of the light.
And me in the dark."
He looked at the cracked tombstone.
Then whispered,
> "Not today, bella.
Not when I still have blood left to spill for you."
---