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her like the rest, hair loose, hand reaching
out for him, but the work looked unfinished. Her dress and expression lacked detail and the colors were a little off—her hair too red,

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her lips not red enough. She reached out and touched the canvas.
With one fingertip, she traced the tiny X carved over her heart.
    She turned to the pedestals and went to the one in the center of the
room. Atop a swatch of velvet sat a flat stone box carved to look like
a miniature coffin. Cass lifted the lid. The box was full of keepsakes:
a golden charm bracelet, a small glass bottle of rosewater, a lace
handkerchief embroidered with the initials MC. It was a shrine to
Mariabella. A macabre collection of mementos for a girl whose life
Cristian had taken.
    She moved to the next pedestal. Inside this coffin lay a ruffled
chemise and a twist of golden brown hair. Was this from the murdered maid, Sophia?
    Cass moved to the third shrine. A chill raced up her spine when
she lifted the lid. This box contained what appeared to be a human
skull.
    Luca had seen the paintings at the exhibition and believed that R was Cristian’s mother, Rosa, a prostitute who had often come to call
on his father at Palazzo da Peraga. Cass’s insides churned as she
peeked into the box once more. This time, since she knew what to
expect, the skull was a bit less frightening and a bit more intriguing.
Could this really be the remains of Cristian’s own mother? Cass had
known he was crazy, but this surpassed her wildest imagination.
    Replacing the lid, she turned toward the fourth pedestal, a combination of fear and rage welling up inside her. What was going to be
inside her own shrine?
    With a quick tug, she used both hands to remove the lid. Inside
the box was a brown leather book. Her old journal. Cristian had stolen it after she collapsed at Madalena’s wedding. He had taunted her
    with it before he tried to kill her. Cass was desperate to steal it back,
but if she did, then Cristian would know she had been there. Her
fingers closed around the soft leather. She held the book against her
chest, but something felt off. It felt . . . light. Her face crumpled as she
flipped it open. The book was empty. All of the pages had been torn
out.
    The journal smelled faintly of ash. Had Cristian burned all of her
thoughts? How much had he read? Cass blushed as she set the hollow
book back into the stone box. There was no need for her to take an
empty journal with her.
    Her fingers grazed something else as she went to replace the lid, a
piece of paper folded into a rectangle tucked against the far side of
the box. Perhaps one of her journal pages had survived.
    Cass unfolded the faded parchment and wondered if Cristian had
put it in her box by mistake. It wasn’t part of her journal. It was filled
with strange chemical and mathematical symbols. And then she recognized the writing. She had seen the same tight slanted scrawl in
Piero’s journals while she was in Florence. She was holding a page
from the Book of the Eternal Rose. And that meant the book had to
be in Venice.
    A door slammed and a sharp breeze blew suddenly through the
room. Cass dropped the stone lid back onto the box and turned
quickly from the shrine.
    She paused at the doorway to the secret chamber, her ear pressed
to the wall, listening for footsteps. Nothing. She crept through the
opening, but couldn’t bring herself to pull the bookshelf back into
place. It would make too much noise. She peeked out into the dim
hallway, and her heart went still in her chest. A blond man was hanging his cloak on a hook just inside the front door.
    Cristian.
His hair was shorter than Cass remembered, but it was him.
She stood statue-still, her breath locked inside of her chest, waiting, praying he wouldn’t come toward her. He hummed softly. Cass
heard him striking tinder and lighting a lantern. Footsteps. The
creak of a board. She chanced one more glimpse around the corner.