Blood and Betrayal
The Italian sun was a different kind of witness than the Alpine frost. In Zermatt, the light had been a blade—white, blinding, and surgical. Here, on the secluded western arm of Lake Como, the sun was a heavy, liquid gold that seemed to coat the terracotta tiles of the villa in a layer of ancient honey. It was a deceptive beauty. To the tourists in the ferries below, this hillside was just another forgotten relic of the mid-nineteenth century, a crumbling estate choked by ivy and wisteria. But to those of us inside, the villa was the first node in a global nervous system.