Chapter 27

On a warm Sunday afternoon, Lionel, dressed up in a charcoal grey business suit, arrived to pick me up.

Does he ever ease himself? I wondered.

I wore a pair of denim jeans over knee-length fur boots and a peach satin silk top beneath the layer of woolen stole wrapped around my neck and a knee-length heavy wool pinafore.

Today made me very nervous.

I am finally going to enter the premises of the Mancini Mansion, where Alessandro's footprints have been.

I am going to meet Alessandro's first love, Lionel Mancini's mother, Elena Di Pierro Mancini. She must be someone very special.

And I am going to see and touch some of Alessandro's works too. Probably the works which the artist must have done with discretion and never felt the urge to show it to the world.

Within half an hour, we were at the front gate of the Mancini house.

Lionel punched in code along with his fingerprint and we both drove in.