17

The chapter opens in Vittoria Vetra’s childhood at the Orfanotrofio di Siena, where eight-year-old Vittoria lies in the rain, resisting the nuns and thinking about nature. A young priest, Leonardo Vetra, joins her instead of scolding her, recognizes her curiosity, and begins teaching her that natural phenomena can be understood through both science and faith.

Leonardo and Vittoria become deeply attached in the orphanage. Leonardo encourages Vittoria’s questions, shares books and scientific explanations, and becomes a father figure to a child who has never known parents. When Leonardo announces that he is leaving for Switzerland to study physics, Vittoria is devastated until he reveals that he has arranged to adopt her.

Vittoria moves to Geneva before her ninth birthday, studies at school by day and with Leonardo at night, and later follows him to CERN after he is hired there. The memory establishes how central Leonardo was to Vittoria’s life and why his murder has shattered both her family and her sense of home.

In the present, Vittoria walks through the LHC tunnel toward Leonardo’s lab with Maximilian Kohler and Robert Langdon. She is numb from grief and confusion after Kohler’s call from the Balearic Islands, and she wonders who killed Leonardo, why the murder might be connected to their secret project, and why Kohler insists on seeing the lab immediately.

As the group approaches the lab, Langdon notices framed particle-collision images, and Vittoria identifies one as her father’s discovery of the Z-particle, explaining that matter is trapped energy. Kohler then reveals that Leonardo replaced CERN’s standard security keypad with a private device, and Vittoria explains it is a retinal scanner authorized only for her eye and Leonardo’s.

Vittoria scans her eye and opens the lab door, but Langdon realizes the terrible implication before she does. Leonardo’s missing eye, the bloody empty socket Langdon saw earlier, and dried blood beneath the scanner indicate that the killer stole Leonardo’s eye to bypass the lab’s security; Kohler’s look confirms that this is the evidence tying the murder to the secret project.