The Dark Monk

Croatia, Yugoslavia. November 1991: Anka Banović, age twenty-five, is giving an exam to her middle-school students. While she daydreams about her secret engagement and upcoming wedding, the Yugoslav National Army and its renegade militias attack the village without warning. From that moment forward, Anka will rarely have control over her own life. After suffering absolute horror and degradation, she is sold to an Italian brothel network. Anka laments time and again that she must be nothing less than the perfect victim—until an unusual patron appears in her bedroom. Not only is he a celibate in a whorehouse, he is an elite forger, and his current project concerns Boston’s stolen Vermeer. At first, Anka thinks of him as an odd dark monk, but he is actually the man who will gamble everything to save her.