Salt of the Earth

Rome is a city built on layers — of empire, faith, betrayal and art. When Minister Vittorio Alighieri is murdered, Captain Maria Vance discovers that the killing is only the surface of something far older. Beneath the museums and ministries lies a hidden economy of forged masterpieces and falsified identities — a network so entrenched it has reshaped Italian history for forty years. At its centre: a cardinal. A criminal dynasty. And a Russian financier willing to erase an entire city's digital past to protect his investment. To expose the truth, Maria must partner with Lorenzo Rossi, a brilliant forger whose hands once crafted the very lies she now seeks to dismantle. As they move from Rome's gilded salons to its buried catacombs, the line between hunter and accomplice begins to blur — and so does the line between justice and revenge. In the Eternal City, authenticity is the rarest commodity of all.