The private water taxi—a handcrafted, mahogany Riva Super Aquarama—sliced through the dark, glass-smooth surface of the Grand Canal at 2:00 AM.
Venice in late autumn was a city of ghosts, draped in a thick, spectral sea fog that clung to the ancient marble palazzos and muffled the distant chime of Saint Mark’s bells. The damp night air smelled of salt, old cedar, and cold stone, freezing against the skin the moment we cleared the Lagoon.
I sat in the open rear cockpit, wrapped in a floor-length dark mink coat pulled over a tailored emerald-green silk gown. My dark hair was sculpted into an intricate, low chignon, held in place by an antique diamond hairpiece. In my lap rested a thin, titanium-framed diagnostic tablet displaying the shadowy equity structures of the Venetian Sovereign Trus
