Two thousand eight hundred and twelve identical tiles, except for one. A single tile with the octagonal cross of St. John, symbol of the Knights of Malta, among the thousands that make up the majolica-tiled pavement of one of the cloisters in the Girolamini Church in Naples. Every day, with her hands crippled by arthritis, old Titina cleans the precious pavement, and only she knows the enigma of that unique tile: its message and its recipient. For two centuries her family has handed down this knowledge, and for childless Titina the time has come to pass the baton to someone else. An event that must remain secret intersected the life of Michelangelo Merisi, known as Caravaggio, in exile in Spanish Naples between October 1606 and June 1607 to escape a death sentence after the murder of Ranuccio Tomassoni. An incredibly adventurous year in the life of a tormented soul who, in a Naples suspended between myth and reality, created immortal works of art using the faces and bodies of that suffering humanity that shared the infamous alleys of the Spanish Quarters with him. His paintings of saints, the Madonna and angels had the faces of the poor. In a gripping narrative, novelist Dino Falconio reconstructs the events in the life and works of the famous Lombardy artist who was a living chiaroscuro: pious and heretical, violent and sensitive, pleasure-seeking and penitent, homosexual and womanizer, male and female, mad and wise, courageous and frightened. The lights slither among the shadows as in the masterpieces that consecrated Caravaggio for eternity.