Nikki was sitting with Elizabeth, Adami, and Mike in the emergency room of the Ospedale San Giovanni di Dio hospital. The intruder had hit Mike on the temple. Luckily, he had only suffered a slight concussion and a laceration. The doctor, Dr. Pedro Bianchi, recommended that Mike spend the night in the hospital, but Mike was adamantly against it.
Meanwhile, Adami had taken care of everything and only told them what his colleagues had already found out. The dead man's name was apparently Pacco Ricardo, but in mafia circles, he was known as Il Mostro. Loco Lillo knew him from before and had been able to identify him in the autopsy room while the DNA comparison was still pending. Nikki had looked at the forensic images that Adami's colleagues had emailed to the hospital on his smartphone with trembling hands. Il Mostro's skull had been fractured so that the man now looked equally disfigured from the front and the back.
Nikki had told Adami in a few words what had happened. The entire event sounded like a horror movie where the scriptwriter didn't follow the logic. The attacker in the apartment, his fall into the backyard, the dislocated figure, and the blood that slowly spread were still stored on her retina. But especially the face of the man who had looked up from the window. The face of the man with the tattoos and the fangs. Demon and savior at the same time.
"That man pulled him down there?" Adami asked cautiously with a furrowed brow.
"He pulled him down and threw him off," said Nikki as Elizabeth rubbed her back reassuringly. He certainly didn't fall by himself, despite gravity."
"Still," Mike said, feeling his temple carefully. "We're close. My gut tells me it's true that there's a particularly perfidious revenge to be taken on Donatella at the wake. And that Donatella knows we're on to her."
Adami looked at him in confusion. "Why?"
"Why?" Mike asked a little louder for the first time, and Nikki looked at him in surprise. "Because she put a goddamn contract killer on us. We knew too much, and she wanted to stop it."
Adami's eyes flew from Mike to Nikki and then to Elizabeth. "I thought the guy was looking for Ottavio?"
"He could have been combining the two: Looking for Ottavio and killing us at the same time if we can't say anything helpful about Ottavio's whereabouts."
Adami frowned deeply. "You asked too many questions in Donatella's direction? That made her suspicious?"
Mike made a face as he felt his temple one more time. "Yeah, and she wanted to shut us up for good."
Nikki closed her eyes and ran her hand over her forehead. "Even though she actually hired us once. She must have changed her mind when she realized our investigation could be dangerous to her, too." Or was she behind it all along? What else had old Visconti said? It could also be a she. But maybe that was just an old man talking.
"And that wolf man," Elizabeth said with a deep frown as she looked at her daughter. "He was on the video when we saw Vincente at the Perseus statue, wasn't he?"
"That's right!" Nikki said emphatically. "That was the same face!" She looked at Mike.
He pursed his lips and shook his head. "I didn't see him. I was unconscious earlier."
The officer bit her lower lip and rolled her eyes. "Still! Surely this could be the one behind all the murders?"
Adami nodded and shrugged his shoulders at the same time. His cell phone rang. "Donatella has gone out with her bodyguards; this is our chance to speak to her," he reported after a brief conversation.
"Where is she?" Nikki growled.
"Veronica," Elizabeth said calmly but admonishingly.
Adami looked at the two women and hesitated for a moment. "In a posh restaurant near the Visconti villa. Very close to San Miniato al Monte."
Nikki nodded slowly and licked her lips. "Are we going to get in?"
Adami took a deep breath. "Maybe not through the front entrance, but we'll definitely get in," he smiled briefly.
Mike stood up resolutely. "Let's go then!"
Elizabeth looked at him with a deep frown. Dr. Bianchi also frowned, "You really don't want to stay here?"
"Definitely not!" he said firmly. "After all, I have to protect my girlfriend in case someone from the mafia ambushes her again."
Nikki had great difficulty suppressing a smile. She loved her boyfriend and was pleased he tried to be sporty and fit. But it was just as clear that, if in doubt, she would be the one to protect him and not the other way around. After all, she had years of martial arts behind her and wasn't afraid to hurt anyone. You could see that in her well-trained body.
The look on Elizabeth's and Adamis' faces showed that they both had similar thoughts but were too polite to point them out to Mike.
But then Elizabeth chuckled and patted his shoulder.
Mike looked at the lieutenant and furrowed his eyebrows questioningly.
Nikki gave a short laugh and put a hand over her mouth as he looked at her in wonder.
xxx
"The restaurant is up here," Adami said with a frown.
The chapel of San Miniato rose above them, its walls symbolic of the walls around the holy Jerusalem.
Mike looked at him and raised a brow. "Is this the entrance?"
"Yes, but we don't even need to try to get past the security at the front. It'll only cause trouble."
Nikki sighed loudly and closed her eyes.
Mike nodded and gritted his teeth. "Okay, which way do we go then?"
Adami smiled briefly. "The Italian way." He looked around. They had deliberately not taken any emergency services with them to avoid causing too much of a stir. "We'll take the delivery entrance."
They walked with firm steps, their faces straight and determined, through the supplier's entrance, past the kitchen and the servant's hall towards the dining room. The chef looked towards them but said nothing. The chefs probably thought that some of the restaurant's shareholders were coming through the back entrance to avoid disturbing the front guests.
"That's how it's done in Italy," said Adami. "You just walk in without giving the impression that you don't belong there." He paused. "There she is."
And indeed, there she was.
They saw Donatella sitting alone at a large table. The table was set in white with expensive crystal glasses and silver cutlery. White candles burned in giant candelabras. The second course had just been served. It was a kind of pâté.
Donatella sat at the huge, sumptuous table, surrounded by waiters, bodyguards, and two or three other men in black suits.
She was the only one seated.
"She's alone?" Mike whispered.
Adami took a deep breath and nodded. "Apparently, no one was invited. Since her son Ottavio is still missing, she probably prefers to dine all by herself."
Donatella was shielded by security but noticed Adami, Nikki, and Mike and nodded to them. She offered the investigators a seat at a nearby table with one hand as if to say, I don't care what you do and looked at the pie she had just been served. Nikki and Adami had briefly discussed that they would wait until the lady had finished eating.
But that didn't happen.
Footsteps sounded in the corridor. Then voices.
At that moment, a courier entered the room, first intercepted and patted down by one of her bodyguards. Then the bodyguard nodded, and the messenger approached Donatella's table. She took a bite of the pastry with relish, looked up, and regarded the man as if he were an insect she had crushed and was now stuck under the sole of her shoe.
"What's that?" Donatella asked.
"A parcel for you. It's probably in a hurry."
Donatella tasted her red wine, shook her head, and gave the waiter a withering look. "Is this your best Amarone?"
The waiter frantically cleared the bottle and her glass.
A new wine arrived; Donatella tasted the wine and nodded. "Bring it here!"
The courier placed the package on the table.
Donatella looked venomously at one of her bodyguards. "Do you think I'm going to open this myself?"
Nikki had to restrain herself from getting up to see what was inside the package.
A switchblade snapped, and the bodyguard cut through the adhesive foil. He opened the box's flaps.
"Now show me," Donatella hissed.
There was a letter at the top of the package.
"Open it," Donatella ordered. The bodyguard did as he was told. "So?" she asked, "What does it say?"
"The letter is written in red-brown ink again," said the bodyguard. He had obviously seen the others, too.
Donatella stumbled briefly. "And what do you see there? Let me see?"
The man read aloud. "San Miniato went upstairs without his head. He was missing this?"
"What do you mean?" Nikki whispered with furrowed brows and looked at Adami.
"The story is only known in Florence," Adami whispered back. "St. Miniato was one of the early Christians in the Roman Empire who wanted to build a church in Florence in the year of our Lord 250."
"That's the church near here we saw earlier, isn't it?"
"That's right. He was allowed to build the church, but only after Miniato had been sentenced to death because he was a pagan Christian. They had already tried to put him to death in various ways. None of them had worked. The condition was this. If he went to the place where he wanted to build his church without his head, he could build it there."
"I know the head thing from Stoertebeker," said Elizabeth.
Katherine nodded slowly. "Yes, only the story is older. Stoertebeker was in the 14th century, and this was 250 AD, right?" She looked at the Italian.
"I don't know Stoertebeker," said Adami, "but this is definitely from 250 AD."
"Still," said Nikki, "running up there without a head ... Pretty tough condition."
Adami nodded slowly. "It certainly is. The Romans didn't expect Minitao to run up the mountain without his head either."
"But he made it?"
"Yes, according to tradition, he made it. And the beautiful church of San Miniato al Monte, which means St. Minias on the mountain, was built right where he collapsed, very close by."
They looked at the table. The man reached into the parcel again to pull out a second letter, which lay directly under the first. He opened the letter and looked at the paper. Again, reddish-brown writing. The bodyguard looked at Donatella, who gave him an annoyed nod. The man read this letter out loud while Donatella shoved another piece of her pastry into her mouth and chewed.
"Here it is already, baked as a pie,
of which the mother has lusted,
Eating the meat that sprang from her own flesh."
Donatella started and stopped chewing as if she were dreading something horrible. The bodyguard put the letter down on the table and turned back to the parcel. Then he opened his eyes in horror and opened his mouth. He closed it again and opened it again. Then he stammered soundlessly as he looked into the parcel again: "There's something else."
"Let's see it!" Donatella replied, seemingly annoyed.
But Nikki couldn't miss the fear in her eyes.
The bodyguard reached into the package with both hands and pulled out the actual contents of the package.
First, you see the hair.
Then the rest.
It was a severed human head.
The head of Ottavio. Donatella's son.
Donatella faltered, and then the fork fell from her hand as she realized what she had just heard and seen.
Her son was dead.
And she had eaten parts of her own son with the pie.
Donatella let out a shrill scream, jumped up, tried to spit out the food, and finally vomited on the white tablecloth.
Then she screamed and choked again and choked until she collapsed in tears.
She convulsed and writhed on the floor.
Mike rushed forward. "An ambulance," he shouted, "and first aid!"
Donatella continued to scream and cry until the ambulance arrived. The emergency doctor gave her a sedative and took her away.
Then there was silence.