The Abduction on the Lagoon

The winter afternoon over the Venetian lagoon had taken on an eerie, breathless stillness that put every animal and sailor on edge. The humidity had risen to ninety-eight percent, dropping a wall of dense, freezing advection fog over the waterways that obscured the grand facades of the palazzos until they appeared as faint, ghostly silhouettes suspended between water and sky. In the private restoration laboratory of Palazzo delle Ombre, Gia…