Donatella entered the dimly lit chapel. She saw two shadows in front of her. She didn't recognize one of them; she had last seen the other a long time ago.

"I thought you were dead?" Donatella asked.

The young woman shrugged her shoulders. "Matter of opinion, who's dead here."

"You want to kill me?" asked Donatella. "Go ahead, it's no use anyway."

"I don't have to. That's what happens --" The young woman hesitated momentarily and looked at the sinister figure in the background. "... it happens by itself."

Donatella wondered if the man in the background was about to kill her. But neither of them moved. Neither the young woman nor the man. It will happen by itself, the woman had announced.

She wanted to say something, but no words came out of her mouth, as if her vocal cords had suddenly been tied in a knot. She felt a sharp pain in her head as if her skull was the iron ball at the end of a heavy chain that swung back and forth in the gloomy interior of the chapel and would eventually crash against the stone wall.

Then she tasted the blood on her tongue.

And collapsed. She saw the young woman above her. In her hands was a necklace with a cross.

"I have one more gift for you," the young woman said, "before you set off on your long journey."

xxx

The first thing that greeted the visitors to Santa Croce was Dante's large and famous statue. But Mike, Adami, Katherine, Elizabeth, and Nikki didn't have an eye for it this time.

They followed an officer, who ushered them to his colleagues, five officers from the Polizia di Stato. Together, they crossed the church's interior, past the tombs of Machiavelli, Galileo, and Michelangelo, then right through several porticoes and finally stood in front of the chapel. On the walls were terracotta medallions by Luca della Robbia, from whom Nikki had seen the angel column in the cathedral. And Donatella was there too. She was lying in front of the open fresco, still dressed in her white hospital nightgown with an expensive Gucci coat. There was a dark red pool of blood around her. Blood was also running down the corners of her mouth. She almost looked as if she had been placed in this position, like one of the fallen angels and sculptures in the church.

Forensics were just starting their work, so she wasn't allowed to touch the body.

"I think she bled out inside and out," Nikki said, taking a deep breath. "I can't wait to see what the forensic analysis reveals, but we already know what the killer gave her: the same anticoagulants Aurelia was given at the blood wedding."

Mike gritted his teeth. "The blood running down the corners of her mouth makes her look like a vampire."

Nikki took a step closer and furrowed her brows. "What's that on her neck?"

"It looks like someone put a chain with a cross around her neck."

At Adami's nod, a forensics officer carefully removed the necklace from Donatella's neck, placed it in a clear evidence bag, and handed it to Adami. He, Nikki, and Mike bent over the relic. Adami shone his flashlight on the cross. The following words were engraved on it in tiny letters:

Io fei gibetto a me de le mie case.

"That seems to be from Dante again," Adami said, looking up briefly with a furrowed brow.

Nikki pursed her lips and nodded slowly. "It would seem so. But I don't know for sure."

"We need to take the cross to Navarro," Elizabeth replied, "he'll be able to tell us what it's all about."

xxx

"This is a very famous cross that belonged to Dante and was thought to have been lost for centuries," said Navarro, looking at the cross with a magnifying glass. "Dante had the cross made so that he would always be aware of the horrors and existence of hell and be able to describe it better in the Divine Comedy."

Nikki took a deep breath and frowned a little. "And the inscription?"

"Io fei gibetto a me de le mie case," Navarro repeated the words. "It means: I'm building a gallows out of my own house." He looked up. "The whole thing also has a history because the cross is made of wood."

"And the wood must also have a meaning?" Elizabeth asked, crossing her arms in front of her chest.

Navarro looked at her carefully and nodded slowly. "It does. It's a rare relic containing wood from the tree on which Judas is said to have hanged himself. He was given thirty pieces of silver but couldn't cope with the guilt and hanged himself. Greed also led him to death, and he turned his own house into a gallows." He gently placed the cross on the table. "The cross is a central piece of the missing artifacts that were thought to belong to the Visconti family but were never found."

Mike stood directly behind Nikki and furrowed his eyebrows. "Does it belong to the Visconti's?"

Navarro paused for a moment. "This cross seems to come from the fortune of Vito Alberti, who inherited property from Dante via a few detours. Some of these funds were used to modernize the Capponi library."

Mike laughed humorlessly. "And some of it went to the Visconti."

Elizabeth pulled the corners of her mouth down. "We don't know that. But the Visconti had a lot of their own money from dubious sources. As you know, the Visconti were paid through the rat line by Nazi bigwigs who wanted to go abroad."

Adami's eyebrows shot up. "You know the rat line? We Italians aren't too keen for everyone to know that."

Mike cleared his throat, nodding. "Yes, a colleague from the BPD once told us about it," he said. He didn't want to go into too much detail about Nick and his role. "What else do you know about it?"

Adami paused for a moment. "The Visconti family has long been suspected of buying and selling stolen church and art treasures on the black market."

Mike furrowed his eyebrows. "And?"

"Despite several house visits, nothing was ever found, even though the police almost tore down the estate of Visconti's brother, Alessandro Visconti, a somewhat shady art dealer with excellent connections to dictators with a taste for art, after he died to find the treasure. Without success, though."

Mike's shoulders slumped, but he didn't stop asking. "And then?"

Adami paused and licked his lips. "We suspect that much of the family's new wealth is coming through the rat line. The Vatican got Jewish gold, and the Visconti family got art treasures in exchange. So nothing went through the regular money circuit, and everything stayed nicely in the dark."

Nikki frowned deeply, pursed her lips, and nodded slowly. "Do we have any proof of this?"

Unfortunately, no. Otherwise, there would have been an investigation by now. Unfortunately, we also don't know what influence the family has on the investigation."

Nikki laughed humorlessly. "Of course."

Elizabeth looked at her daughter for a long time but then turned her gaze to Adami. "But the money ended up with Visconti?"

Adami looked at the cross and raised his eyebrows. "Presumably. That's all we know. The only question is: where did this cross come from? And why now?"

"And why," Elizabeth added, "did Donatella wear it over her hospital nightgown?"

xxx

It was a starry night. They were all sitting in the Questura in Florence. Donatella was dead, Ottavio was dead, Visconti was dead. And they were still no closer to finding out who had targeted the Visconti family and had all but wiped them out.

A colleague, Matteo, entered the room. "I think we've got something," he said, placing a laptop on the table.

"Show me," growled Adami.

"There's a bank opposite the Pazzi Chapel. It has a new surveillance camera that also shows the entrance to the church. And we took a close look at it. Here's the first video!"

The surveillance video showed a slender female figure in a hospital nightgown with a Gucci coat thrown over and her black hair loose, hurriedly crossing the square with a slight limp and entering the chapel, like a ghost wandering aimlessly. Apparently, the doors hadn't been locked yet.

"That's Donatella," Elizabeth said with a deep frown.

Matteo looked at her and nodded. "And now it's getting exciting!" He fast-forwarded the video for a minute, stopped it, and started it again.

A young woman, accompanied by a masked man whose face was unrecognizable, also crossed the square, stopped on the chapel steps, looked around again, and entered the chapel.

Nikki narrowed her eyes. "Who is that, and when did they come out?"

Matteo also looked at the young woman and frowned. "They came out again after about ten minutes. There's no sign of Donatella."

Elizabeth frowned profoundly and nodded. "That would fit. You went in and watched Donatella, who had the anticoagulants in her blood, bleed."

"But who is the young woman and the man?" Nikki asked emphatically, looking at Matteo. "Can you zoom in closer?"

Matteo nodded, took a still image, and enlarged the picture. The young woman's features were clearly recognizable and reminded Nikki of someone. But she couldn't say who.

"That's the cross," Katherine said, pointing to the small object visible in the woman's hand.

Adami nodded in confirmation. "Yes, in any case, the woman must have put the necklace on Donatella."

"We don't know who she is, but she was there that day," said the police officer, rewinding the video to a timestamp he had noted on paper.

He started the video again; everything was easier to see here because it was broad daylight. A lot was going on in the square in front of the chapel, so the young woman and her companion were only noticed at first glance when they crossed the square and stopped in front of the chapel's steps. Her companion turned around and seemed to survey the square. He looked directly into the camera so that his face was visible despite the dark hoodie. Nikki exhaled sharply as she recognized the wolf's teeth. "That's the man who saved our lives when Il Mostro tried to kill us!" she said with wide eyes.

Adami looked up and frowned deeply. "That was the man who pulled Il Mostro out of the window?"

"That's right," Nikki replied, nodding. "He saved our lives. Who is he, and what does he have to do with the whole thing?"

Adami thought for a moment. "We've seen him before." Then, he began to rummage frantically through his files. "Here," he said triumphantly and pulled out a still from the surveillance camera that had recorded the scene of Vincente's murder. "The Perseus statue in the Loggia dei Lanzi had Vincente's head in its hand, representing the head of Medusa. And we've already seen this wolf-man there, so old Visconti thought his family was hunted by the devil."

Nikki grabbed the picture and nodded. "Yes, that's the man! Do we know who he might be and where he is now?"

"No, but we'll find out quickly," Adami replied, "I'll have the picture sent to all the task forces." He looked at the colleague who had obtained the video from the bank. "Good work!"

"What else can we do?" Mike wanted to know.

"Nothing. Just wait until our colleagues catch the woman and her evil companion."