CHUM: Voto di Sangue — A Lake Como Wedding Story

Two families are merging on Lake Como — American money and an old Italian name that hasn't had money in a while. There's a Contessa who guards the Bassano silver like it survived four wars — because it did — a matriarch who wrote the word inclusive into the florist's contract, and a best man who's been rehearsing his toast since March. Everyone is watching everyone.

Over the bar in Villa Serrasino's front hall hangs a needlepoint sampler stitched by a bride in 1921 — La Benedizione della Casa. Ten lines of faded Italian thread, read aloud at every wedding since and laughed at every time, by people who never noticed it was a list of who dies next.

Nobody is watching the water. That's the mistake — because something has been in the lake since May, and the sampler on the wall, it turns out, was never a joke. By Sunday, the guest list is a great deal shorter.

JAWS at a black-tie wedding — Succession by way of a haunted Italian lake. Book Two of the CHUM horror series.

Quel che l'acqua ricorda, lo raccoglie.What the water remembers, it collects.

One villa. One boat. One way off.

Villa Serrasino.

The ferry from Bellagio takes eleven minutes. After the storm takes the dock, there is no schedule — only the lake, deciding who leaves and when.

The DockWhere the ferry stops. Until it can't.

The AnnexAcross the water. Sleep light.

The Ridge PathOne guest a decade. Don't be the one.

Open WaterResident since May.

This part isn't fiction either

0Came for the wedding. Fewer are leaving.

0Lines stitched in 1921 — each one a name

OneFour-metre resident, tagged LC-1187

Bull sharks really can live in fresh water — that part isn't invented. A research station tagged this one in the lake nine times before a single wedding guest would say the word out loud.

The blessing nobody read twice

Ten lines. Ten names.

Stitched by a bride nobody at that first dinner had ever met, and read aloud at every wedding since — to polite laughter, by people who never once noticed it was a list of who dies next.

Line I
“What the water remembers, it collects.”
Line IV
“Who counts the lies loses count of the living.”
Line VII
“Keep to the house. The lake keeps the rest.”
The rule
“A rule laughed at every year is the only one that never lied to you.”

Get in before the lake does

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One universe. Blood ___.

The series.

Book One · Cape Cod

Blood Relatives

The sharks are real. Your family is worse. A flooding island, a trained great white, and a family that leaves one at a time.

Get Book One advance copy →

The card game

Blood in the Water

The cursed deck the families can't stop dealing — hidden traitors, too few life preservers, one question: who's getting fed?

Enter the water →