Chapter 5: Bloodied Revelations
The heat in Palermo was a physical weight, a damp wool blanket thrown over the ancient city. Alex left the rented Fiat three streets away, the car’s nondescript silver body already blending into the bleached stone and peeling stucco. He moved on foot, the scent of jasmine from the safe house courtyard replaced by the smells of diesel, drying seaweed, and slow decay.
Professor Alfredo Manzi’s villa wasn’t a villa anymore. It was a crumbling sentinel on a forgotten lane, its ochre paint bleached to the color of bone, green shutters hanging like broken wings. The silence around it was different from the quiet of the Marseilles safe house. This was a held breath.
The front door was ajar.
Alex paused, a hand moving inside his unbuttoned linen jacket to rest on the cool polymer grip of his pistol. No forced entry. The splintered wood around the lock was old, weather-beaten. It had been opened with a key, or it had been left open.
He pushed it slowly with his foot, the hinge groaning a low protest. The hallway was a tunnel of shadows, smelling of dust, mildew, and something else underneath—a sweet, coppery tang that turned his stomach.
“Manzi?” His voice was a gravelly echo in the stillness.
No answer but the buzz of flies.
The main study was a catacomb of knowledge. Towers of books leaned perilously, creating canyon walls of leather and vellum. Maps were pinned to crumbling plaster. In the center, under the weak light filtering through a dirty skylight, was a massive oak desk. And at the desk, slumped forward in a leather chair that sighed with age, was Alfredo Manzi.
Alex approached, each step careful on the creaking floorboards. The flies were thicker here, a lazy, buzzing cloud. The old man’s head rested on an open folio, his reading glasses askew. From the doorway, it could have been sleep. Up close, it was a slaughterhouse still life.
The back of his thin white hair was a dark, matted crust. A single, tremendous blow. The murder weapon lay on the floor beside him: a heavy, leaded glass paperweight, now stained and sticky. It hadn’t been a professional hit. It was rage. Or panic. Or a message meant to look like a clumsy robbery.
But nothing was out of place. The expensive, fragile artifacts on the shelves—the Roman coins, the medieval seals—were undisturbed. This was a search. A frantic, violent one.
Alex’s phone vibrated in his pocket. He ignored it, his eyes scanning the desk. The folio under Manzi’s head was blank. The pages around him were a chaos of notes—spidery Latin, Greek annotations, rough sketches of heraldic symbols. In the margin of one page, circled fiercely in red ink, was a phrase: Ventus ab Oriente.
Wind from the East.
The same phrase Leclerc had muttered before his ‘accident.’
His phone buzzed again, insistently. He pulled it out. A text from Izzy.
Lobster bisque is a crime here. Too much cream. Deputy Mayor is laughing at my joke about his yacht. I think he’s in love. Status?
Alex took a photo of the desk, the body carefully out of frame, focusing on the notes and the Latin phrase. He sent it.
Status: Historian unavailable. Permanently. Cause of unavailability: paperweight to the occipital lobe. Found our phrase.
The reply was almost instantaneous.
Ventus ab Oriente. Confirmed. They’re cleaning house. Don’t touch anything else. Was he working on anything specific? Check his hands.
Alex looked. Manzi’s right hand was trapped under his torso. Gently, wincing at the flies, Alex used a pencil from the desk to lever the old man’s shoulder up. Clutched in his stiffened fingers was not a page, but a small, modern USB drive, its blue plastic a shocking anachronism against the yellowed parchment.
He was holding onto something. Digital.
Take it and go. Now. If they were watching for you in Marseilles, they could be watching for you there.
Alex pocketed the drive. His eyes caught on something else, nearly invisible against the dark wood of the desk leg. A smear of something pale and gritty. He wet his finger, dabbed it, brought it to his nose. Plaster dust. Fresh. He looked up. A section of the ornate cornice near the ceiling was cracked, a small chunk missing.
They hadn’t just searched the desk. They’d searched the walls.
His phone buzzed again, a different tone. Silvio.
“The rumour is… circulating,” Silvio said, strain evident. “Your mother has called seven times. Your uncle Vittorio used words I haven’t heard since the navy. The Rossis are being… quieter. Which is more concerning.”
“Let them simmer. Anything else?”
“A package arrived at the compound. Courier from Geneva. Labeled for you. Heavy for its size.”
The Rossi sapphire. She’d done it. The reality of their fiction, of the ring now physically present in his home, sent a jolt through him that was entirely separate from the carnage in front of him.
“Lock it in the safe. Don’t open it.” He ended the call.
Another text from Izzy. This one was a photo: a gleaming restaurant terrace overlooking the Mediterranean, a half-finished glass of white wine, her manicured fingers just in frame. The caption: Distraction operational. You’re a lucky man, fiancé. Leaving a trail of broken-hearted bureaucrats in my wake. The lightness of her tone was a stark, necessary counterpoint to the room’s grim truth.
He typed back, Lucky indeed. Found a drive. Moving. Keep your bureaucrat busy. Order the expensive wine.
He took one last look at Professor Manzi, a scholar murdered for the secrets in his head and in his files. Ventus ab Oriente. This wind was blowing out lives. First Leclerc, now Manzi. Who was next? The list of people who knew the contents of the ledger was shrinking fast.
He slipped out the way he came, the midday sun hitting him like a physical blow after the tomb-like chill of the study. He walked quickly, not running, blending into the flow of tourists and locals. He needed a crowded place, anonymity, and a computer.
He found a chaotic internet café in the warren of the Ballarò market, paid for an hour at a terminal sticky with espresso residue. He plugged in the drive. It was unencrypted. A single folder, labelled “Correspondence.”
Inside were scans. Aged, foxed letters, written in a tight, formal hand. In Italian. He scrolled. These weren’t pages from the ledger. They were letters about it. Letters between his own grandfather, Vittorio Moretti Sr., and Izzy’s grandfather, Antonio Rossi. Dates from the late 1940s.
His blood went cold.
He read, his eyes skimming the formal salutations, the courteous language that barely contained the steel beneath.
…your proposal for a consolidated handling of the port authorities is agreeable, under the condition that the arrangement detailed in the Pact of '47 remains the supreme and private law between our families…
…the proceeds from the Southern venture must be allocated as per the percentages established in the ledger, a copy of which we both retain. Any deviation would constitute a breach of the foundational understanding…
…the understanding regarding neutral territories, and the consequences for transgression, must be absolute. As we agreed in Sorrento…
The “Pact of ‘47.” The “foundational understanding.” The ledger wasn’t just a financial record. It was a constitution. A bloody, secret treaty that had carved up territories, established rules of engagement, and outlined punishments. It was the reason there hadn’t been an all-out war between the Morettis and the Rossis for over half a century.
And someone had it. Someone who wasn’t bound by its rules, but who understood its power. Someone who was using it as a map—not for peace, but for provocation. By killing under its ancient, invisible auspices, they were forcing a war its creators had desperately sought to avoid.
His phone lit up with another message from Izzy, pulling him from the historical abyss.
Lunch is wrapping up. The Deputy Mayor is suggestively offering a tour of his ‘port facilities’ tomorrow. Should I be concerned for my virtue or just his budget?
Alex stared at the screen, then back at the scans of his grandfather’s handwriting, a man he’d known only as a faded photo and a feared legend. The past was reaching out of its grave, its bony fingers curling around his present.
He typed his reply, his fingers feeling thick and clumsy.
Forget his virtue. We need to talk. The ledger isn’t an account book. It’s a peace treaty. And someone is using it to declare war in our names. He paused, the sounds of the market—the shouts of fishmongers, the buzz of Vespas—fading into a dull roar. He added one more line, the words feeling both like a lie and the only truth he had left.
And wear the ring when you get home. It’s time.