Chapter 53 Verona, The Sister Who Burns

• VERONA
• Since I was a child, I knew how to burn without leaving ashes.
• That night, while the East Coast of the United States slept beneath a moonless sky, I stayed awake in the basement of an abandoned church in Palermo, surrounded by screens, satellite plans, and the faint light of a cigarette dying in my fingers. I wasn’t praying. Never did. But I learned to move among fallen angels, among white-collar demons who designed labs smelling of disinfection and death, and among men like Ethan Castelli, who called love chemical submission.