Watching the life slowly leave Lucrezia’s body he thought: I’ll marry Laura.

He went back to the bed. Lucrezia’s eyes were glazed and, although she appeared to look at him, she did not see him.

She was thinking of all those she had loved and who had gone before her; her mother, Vannozza who had died last year, her brother Giovanni, her father, Cesare, Pedro, Alfonso of Bisceglie—those people whom she had loved as perhaps she had never loved any others. Three of those six people had been murdered, and by one hand. Yet she had forgotten that as she slowly slipped away from this life.

I am going to them, she told herself, I am going to my loved ones.

Her lips moved, and it seemed to some of those watching at her bedside that she murmured: “Cesare.”

A hushed silence had fallen on the apartment.

Lucrezia Borgia was dead.