October 20, 2020

Father Marco Venetti is not a defrocked FBI agent with a score to settle, nor an ex-Navy Seal battling an alcohol problem. He is a Jesuit priest from Monterosso al Mare, shepherding over a quiet parish overlooking the Ligurian Sea. His biggest concerns—until the evening Concetta shows up in his confessional—are the recent poor play of his beloved Red and Blacks and the way he 'stared at her creamy olive skin, done to perfection by the Mediterranean sun.' Concetta is a fisherman with empty nets and a conscience brimming over with guilt, who reveals she is involved in a plot to assassinate the pope and attack Vatican City. Marco urges her to go to the police, but her daughter is being held captive and she is unwilling; the seal of the confessional binds Marco and he is unable. Seeing no other way to stop the attack on Pope John Paul III, the first black pope in over two millennia, Marco steals aboard her fishing trawler toting his only weapon, a well-used spear gun. He kills the terrorists and rescues Concetta's daughter, but the violence—and Marco's sins—is only beginning.