Chapter 112

Vera

The first thing that hits me about Monaco is the sunlight.

Not the yachts. Not the luxury cars. Not the jaw-dropping stores that look like they belong in a movie. It’s the sunlight.

It’s gold, intense, almost blinding after weeks of New York’s winter gray. I step out onto the hotel balcony that first morning, and it’s so bright, my eyelids shut instinctively. Out there, the Mediterranean just