Dayneka opened a box found in a hidden stash in the attic of her grandmother’s house. She saw a stack of papers—everywhere the letter “yat” appeared. It was correspondence between the artist Nikolay Berezhny and Baroness Einaudi, whose hopeless romance tragically ended more than a hundred years ago…
Barely managing her excitement, Dayneka carefully pulled out a letter from the envelope. “I’m sending you the deed…” the baroness wrote. Even before she unfolded the second page, Dayneka knew it was the original. A deed for a mansion in Venice, with no expiration date…
Carnival madness swept through the squares, narrow streets, and the waterfront of Venice. Two men in golden masks appeared near Dayneka. Black tricorn hats with fur trim made them look like guards of some ominous order. Dayneka still didn’t know what gift this foreign Italian city with the gentle name of Venice was preparing for her…