This novel is about Vincenzo and the memories that fuel his mind. Vincenzo is a retired Italian secret service agent who has been living for a few years in Calabria, his homeland. Together with Gioia, his wife, and Peter, his caregiver, he lives peacefully, surrounded by the affection of his family and the memories of a life lived intensely. As soon as he retired, he left the city, which had become chaotic, choosing Serra San Bruno—a quiet, serene town—as the place to spend his daily life. However, Vincenzo lives with a neurodegenerative disease that is gradually eroding his memories; names and events float in his mind as if waiting to disappear at any moment. One of the keys to reading the novel is therefore Vincenzo's hope, the hope of holding onto them to guard them jealously. Remembering is not returning to the past defeated by melancholy, but an intimate struggle to give meaning to the present and to build new memories in the future. Memory is the rock on which he builds his life; there is no room, in Vincenzo's character, for the torment of waiting for something that will happen in the future. The presence of the people around him, like Silvano, a brotherly friend (and it is precisely in the fantastic relationship born between the two and consolidated only over time that another key to reading is to be found: friendship) and colleague with whom he shared much of his professional life, or Fra Tarcisio, an intelligent and pragmatic man who listens to him in silence without ever intervening with superfluous words, strengthen him. And for Vincenzo, the strength he receives is always strength to give. Everything is a support; objects, photographs, and classical music trigger stimuli that continually fuel his hope of postponing, every day, the emptiness into which he does not want to abandon himself. Vincenzo does not give up and seizes every opportunity to populate his thoughts. He remembers and dreams, interacts with the people he loves; loved. In his study, on a Sunday, a day of celebration shared with his extended family, his children and grandchildren, he rests, closes his eyes and remembers, remembers or perhaps dreams of what he did for the Republic, his beloved Homeland (unconditional love for the Homeland, for its tricolor flag, for its symbols). There is Silvano, the Chief, that devil Giancarlo, and himself, as he was and as he would always like to be lucidly. Hope, he thinks upon waking, is trust and is always vigilant. And Vincenzo, by remembering, defeats the void.
And it is precisely thanks to this innate desire to live and remain mentally active that the pages of this novel are born. A novel that tells the story of the birth of the relationship between Vincenzo, a seasoned secret service agent used to working alone for years, and Silvano, also a secret service agent but younger than Vincenzo. The relationship between the two, originating from an order from the Chief that Vincenzo reluctantly accepted, proves successful and is consolidated over time, also thanks to the delicate task that immediately engages the two, who are called to reconstruct the complicated puzzle of an international arms trafficking ring. The individuals managing the illicit trade, cunning and ready to do anything to achieve their goals, move in the shadows, hiding their shady activities behind a facade of irreproachable morality, but Vincenzo and Silvano are not discouraged by the first, seemingly insurmountable, difficulties; instead, they use them to their advantage. With great professionalism and a spirit of sacrifice, the two move throughout the territory and even beyond national borders, gathering information and weaving the dense web that will allow a brilliant conclusion to the operation. Once again, as so many times before, while others celebrate the brilliant result achieved, the two colleagues slip away, disappear: they, as good secret agents, live far from the limelight. When the newspapers report the news of the large arms seizure, they will not be mentioned. They will already be far from that place and surely already engaged in a new mission.