The Bellini Card

17

He ordered the deaths without emotion. He had not known that they would die. Even when the killer arrived, unable to speak, handing him written instructions, he had pretended to himself that it would be something else.

But of course when Boschini was found in the canal, dead, he could no longer pretend.

He could adapt.

That’s how it had to be in this city. You adapt, or you die.

And the man was good at that. It’s what he did, the way he lived.

So he told himself that the people who died deserved to die.