The rich and famous had always viewed Italy as their playground. Like most Americans in general. But, for celebrities, it was a wedding playground more than anything else. A place to flex their wallets as much as how “romantic” their relationships were (despite usually ending in divorce within five years or so). There had been George and Amal (the former claiming a “legitimate” reason to marry there because he owned a villa in Lake Como), Kim and Kanye (before he was Ye…and plain cray), John and Chrissy, Tom and Katie, Justin and Jessica, Salma and François-Henri… And, speaking of a billionaire who wasn’t really famous for anything other than being rich, the latest “celebrity” wedding to descend upon Italy was that of Mark Elzo, the former CEO of an e-commerce website called Sundaland.

Like many wealthy men, Elzo had secured his fortune by both getting in on the ground floor of a new industry and having financial backing from a parent (in this case, his mother, Janae, put up about $250,0000 to support her son’s “dream” of starting an online shop a.k.a. getting ahead of the curve on the money-making prospects of the internet). As a man who had double majored in electrical engineering and computer science, there wasn’t an artistic bone in his body. He had no “great love of literature” that prompted him to launch an online bookshop. No, what sparked the idea was catching sight of a statistic that claimed use of the “world wide web,” then still in its early 90s infancy, was growing at an extraordinary rate of 2,300% a year. That got his wheels turning. As they would only turn for the purposes of figuring out how to make more money. More, more, more—always more.

At the time of his rise to being the richest man (or at least one of a few) in the world, he started dating a woman named Mallory Elcourt. He encountered her often at the investment management firm (located on Wall Street, of course) that he worked at in those days (an investment management firm that, unsurprisingly, would come under fire with the SEC later on—though of course it wasn’t anything that paying a multimillion dollar fine couldn’t take care of). Mallory wasn’t an account manager or broker or anything like that, but an admin assistant. Which, to Elzo, was low enough on the proverbial totem pole to not be threatened by her, but high enough for him to deem her as “intellectually worthy.” Just another way in which he would underestimate her over the years. Starting with essentially seeing her as little more than a “secretary.” And a secretary was, as a matter of fact, exactly what he was looking for on his quest to become a “great man” (a.k.a. rich). Never mind that Mallory’s ultimate ambition was to be a novelist. Indeed, one might say that her love of literature is what spurred the success of that germinal online bookshop. Plus, she was the one who came up with a viable business plan, the name itself (vague but familiar, and also “pleasant” because of its rainforest connotations), the attention to detail required to manage all their new accounts and freight contracts in the early phase of the website, etc.

In return, all Mallory had really asked for was, at the bare minimum, fidelity. But, in the end, Elzo fell prey to the stereotype that all middle-aged men do (especially the wealthy ones): he had an affair. And Mallory honestly didn’t know if it was better or worse that he had waited until twenty-six years into their marriage to do it. On the one hand, at least they had a couple of good decades together and she could now collect on her billions for marrying him at a time in his life before he ever thought to get a prenup. Then again, maybe if he had cheated on her sooner, she could have funneled her youthful energy into writing her first book, rather than waiting twelve years after they were married to finally release her debut (one that seemed, in many ways, to be told from the perspective of a man not unlike Elzo, complete with a paragraph about how the narrator had met his eventual wife in someplace as boring as a bank). Many of those twelve years were spent helping Mark tend to the business. And now, he was tending to another woman. One who was, shockingly enough, actually age appropriate. A mere five years his junior. And perhaps slightly insulting was also the fact that Mallory was a year younger than her, which meant Mark must have really liked her for her “mind” more than anything else. Granted, there was no denying that Lola González had one of the best plastic surgeons at her beck and call.

But any psychologist would posit that Elzo was merely following in his mother’s footsteps by marrying someone of a Latino background, just as Janae had done. That is, for her second marriage. As for her first one, she and Mark rarely, if ever, spoke of his biological father, Bill, who was dead to both of them before he finally died his physical death in the 2010s. In fact, Bill didn’t even realize his son was the billionaire founder of Sundaland until shortly before his death, having forgotten the last name Mark had taken on when Bill willingly agreed to give up custody and let Janae’s new husband, Rodrigo Elzo, take on his father role. Proving the now “old” adage, “I’m not the stepfather, I’m the father that stepped up.” Stepped up enough to make Mark fetishize the idea of marrying a Latina mami. Never mind that her “Latin blood” had been well diluted by now. For it was her great-great-great-grandparents who had immigrated to Texas from Mexico. Of course, that didn’t mean she couldn’t use the González last name to her advantage, not least of which was landing a billionaire who fetishized “her kind” while not actually wanting a “pure” version of her ethnicity.

And now, she was parlaying what had started as a “torrid” affair (even though she was mostly repulsed by Mark) into “the wedding of the decade.” Because “the wedding of the century” had already been Harry and Meghan’s (much to William and Kate’s dismay). As such, it had largely been at her nudging that they ought to get married in Venice. It was so “cute,” she said. Elzo, never one for passing up an opportunity to impress other “elites,” saw it more as a chance to “go all out” with his money. That meant staying in the Aman hotel, which, at about 1,500 euros a night, was nothing more than “chump change” to Elzo. Still, it was about as “luxurious” as one could get—“at least in Italy,” Elzo would add with a yuk-yuk-yuk when he told people where they were staying. Immediately, however, the locals did not take kindly to his appearance in their city, one that had already been blighted by mere middle-class tourists over the decades. The last thing it needed (or wanted) was some asshole billionaire “renting out” the entire city as his wedding venue. Not to mention the fact that average mortals had planned on getting married that week too, yet were experiencing the fallout of various activist groups generally “fucking shit up” in protest. All in all, Elzo’s descent upon Venezia had resulted in a total circus, and the wedding had yet to even begin.

Indeed, in true billionaire fashion, Elzo and his not-so-blushing bride had planned to make it a week-long affair of festivities, culminating in their exchanging of vows (though what kind of vows can be made by a billionaire, hopelessly prone to breaking them?) on the small Venetian island that housed the San Giorgio Maggiore basilica. And though, they had planned to hold their grand reception at the Scuola Grande della Misericordia, they had ostensibly forgotten that they were hardly classifiable as “of the people.” Therefore, how could they possibly be expected to be “among them.” At least safely, anyway. Because, unfortunately for “poor” Elzo, the organization known as Studenti Contro L’Esistenza dei Miliardari kept fucking with his plans at every turn. Managing to stop the plumbing in his hotel room, setting up giant protest signs with unflattering messages all over the city and infiltrating the airport and setting little fires to the runway where the private planes of Elzo’s guests had already started to land. Or attempted to land. Their latest threat was to flood the canals near the Scuola Grande della Misericordia with inflatable pigs. A representation, obviously, of what a capitalist pig Elzo and his ilk were—including those who had made his “exclusive” guest list. Never mind that the inflatables they would have to purchase to make this statement were itself a problematic bane to the environment. But hey, no one ever said that revolutionary behavior didn’t have its occasional hypocrisies.

In the end, they decided their big statement, barring the inflatable pigs, would have to be more creative. Especially considering all the security that had been installed in and around the Arsenale, which was owned by “the state”—forever willing to be bought by the highest bidder. And Elzo was always the highest bidder. This time, however, the Studenti Contro L’Esistenza dei Miliardari aimed to prove that money couldn’t buy everything. Certainly not their city. A place they viewed not as a playground for the rich, but a place to live and thrive without the risk of foolhardy, malicious (even if “unintentionally” so) invasions. Shit, the fact that about a hundred private planes would be flying into the Marco Polo Airport should have been deemed a crime in and of itself. A crime against Mother Nature. But no, Elzo could do whatever the hell he wanted because he had the billions to pay (the right) people off when contempt for his existence was expressed. Not to mention providing the masses with a “service” (access to cheap wares) that he had conditioned them to believe they needed.

Alessandra Morale, the so-called unlikely leader (because of her gender) of what would later be branded a “terrorist” organization, could not abide this any longer. And she knew it was time to take drastic action in order to achieve what she and her cohorts had set out to do: make it known that this level of grotesque wealth would no longer be tolerated. Not in Venice, not anymore. Hopefully, the rest of the country (and the globe) would follow their lead. But then, Alessandra remembered how sycophantic the flashing of money made people. Even those with the most “ironclad” of principles. Not her though. Everything about money was repugnant to her and those she surrounded herself with. Or so she thought. Because when it came down to getting the job done on what they had planned, she was the one left to do the dirty work. To press the button on the detonator. Going down in history as the only person to obliterate so many millionaires and billionaires in one fell swoop (along with the Arsenale in the process).

In the mainstream media news, she would be decried as a monster, a psychopath. All the things, in short, that rich people are. And then, like the Luigi Mangione “incident,” they would quickly bury the story in other “more pressing” headlines. They didn’t want people to keep getting “funny” ideas. But Alessandra knew the new revolution had commenced more tangibly than ever that week in Venice. And perhaps only in this sense did she owe Elzo a debt for helping to (quite literally) ignite it.