Hualit rides at night in a coach Víctor de Paredes has hired, with her cat tucked safely inside and two outriders—Gonzalo and Celso—guarding the road. She tells herself she will see little of Venice, then slip away from Víctor’s arranged hosts using her Italian contacts and a booked passage to Salonika. She has sewn jewels and coins into her gown for bribes and independence, and she thrills at the gamble of escaping.

As the coach rattles on, Hualit thinks about the identities she has worn to survive, the life she built by reading men’s desires, and the life she imagines openly as a Jew in Salonika—called by her own name, praying in synagogue, perhaps even marrying by choice. She also circles back to Luzia, acknowledging that she pushed her niece away less from danger than from Luzia’s need for love, and regrets that fear outweighed whatever love she had.

The coach stops on a bridge over a river, and Celso opens the door and offers his hand in silence. Hualit understands that Ana is not coming, there is no Venice, and Víctor never intended to let her go. She realizes Víctor has decided to dispose of her neatly—blaming bandits on unsafe roads—so she cannot testify, interfere, or cost him anything more.

Hualit steps down calmly and tries bargaining with jewels and money, then asks only that it be quick. When Gonzalo suggests she has “other things” to trade, Hualit refuses the humiliation and asks Celso to pray with her, silently reciting the Shema. As Gonzalo grabs her, Hualit uses the weight of her hidden coins and jewels to pull him with her over the railing; they tumble from the bridge together.

Hualit dies instantly when her neck snaps on impact. Gonzalo survives longer, broken and weeping as he struggles against the current before sinking. Much later, an emerald from Hualit’s lost treasure is found inside a fish; the woman who finds it escapes an abusive husband, walks to Paris, opens a parfumerie, and lives well—never again eating fish.