Montenegro smelled like pine and salt, the kind of clean air that made Isobel Marchetti suspicious. She had spent her life in cities Geneva, Milan, Paris places where the air carried layers of exhaust and ambition and the particular musk of money changing hands. Clean air felt like a trick. Like the world was trying to convince her she was safe when she knew, with the certainty of a woman who had built empires and watched them burn, that safety was the most expensive illusion of all.
She sat on the terrace of her safe house, the hard drive in her lap, the Adriatic stretching below her like a dark mirror. Three passports sat on the table inside. Three names that weren't hers. Three possible futures that all looked like running.
