The storm came with no warning.By morning, Rome was shrouded under gray skies, the air heavy with the smell of rain and exhaust. From my study window, the city looked still—but I knew better. The streets only slept when something darker was moving.Dante barged in without knocking, his boots dragging rain across the marble. He tossed a file onto my desk. “You were right,” he said flatly.I looked up. “How bad?”“Bad enough to make your father crawl out of his grave.”I opened the file. Photographs—grainy, black-and-white—slid across the desk. Docks, warehouses, faces half-hidden under umbrellas. In one photo, a man’s profile caught my attention: sharp jaw, white streak in his hair. Familiar. Too familiar.“Emilio Marcelli,” Dante said. “Spotted near the southern docks three nights ago. He’s back, Luca. And he’s not hiding.”My jaw tightened. “He should’ve stayed buried.”Dante leaned against the desk, arms folded. “There’s more. The shipments at Pier Nine? They aren’t weapons. They’re people

The warehouse felt colder than it should have been. The walls breathed with echoes from another life, one that belonged to my father before everything burned. I stood there, staring at the silver pendant in my hand as if it could rewrite time, as if it could bring him back.Grace’s name had been ringing in my head since Elena said it. Every heartbeat pressed it deeper, like a whisper I couldn’t silence. Grace. The woman who had stood beside me through fire and betrayal. The one who reached for me when I thought there was nothing left worth saving. The thought that she carried my father’s mark… it didn’t make sense. It couldn’t.Dante broke the silence first. “You should talk to her, Luca. If Elena’s right, she might know more than she realizes.”“She’s innocent,” I said without looking at him.He exhaled slowly. “Innocence doesn’t erase bloodlines. Sometimes it just hides them.”His words hit harder than they should have. I slid the pendant into my pocket and walked toward the exit. “Stay

The night came quietly, but there was something in the air that refused to rest. The city lights flickered across the window, spilling over Grace as she sat by the edge of the bed, her hair loose, her reflection ghosted in the glass. She hadn’t said much since the docks. The mark on her wrist glowed faintly beneath the lamplight, fading and reappearing like a pulse that wasn’t her own.I stood near the balcony, watching the streets below. Every shadow looked alive, and every hum of a passing car felt like a warning. The mirror sat wrapped in cloth on the table beside me, the one we’d taken from my father’s old vault. Elen had told me to destroy it, to never look into its surface again. But I hadn’t. I couldn’t.Something about it called to me, quiet but persistent, the way an open wound whispers when you pretend it doesn’t hurt.Grace shifted slightly. “You’ve been staring at that thing for hours,” she said softly.I looked at her, the reflection of the mirror dancing faintly in her eyes.

The fire burned brighter than it should have. The wind carried it down the narrow streets, licking at doors and broken walls like it was hungry for more. People shouted, and water buckets clattered against stone, but the flames didn’t listen. It was alive. It was remembering.I stood there, caught between then and now. Between the night my father’s house burned and this moment. The crackle, the heat, the smell of it—everything was the same. My lungs filled with smoke and memory.“Luca,” Mira said behind me, coughing through the haze. “We need to move before it spreads.”I couldn’t answer. My eyes were fixed on the figure standing inside the fire. It was her shape again—Grace—or someone wearing her shadow. For one impossible heartbeat, our eyes met through the wall of flame. There was no pain in her face, no fear. Only stillness.Then she was gone.The fire swallowed her image whole.Someone screamed for help, and the spell broke. I turned, forcing myself to move. Mira and I ran toward the n

The fire burned low in the hearth, a dull orange glow that flickered across the marble floor like it was breathing. I sat there for what felt like hours, staring into it, hearing the faint crackle that echoed like whispers from another world. Grace was asleep in the next room. Or at least, she tried to be. I could hear her tossing and turning, soft sounds escaping her lips as if she were fighting something in her dreams.I didn’t need to ask what it was. I could feel it too. My father’s voice had returned to me again, faint and disjointed, calling my name from somewhere between memory and nightmare. Every night, it grew clearer.“Luca,” he would whisper, the sound soaked in ash and sorrow. “Remember what you swore.”I never answered him. I couldn’t. Because the truth was, I had forgotten what I swore. Or maybe I didn’t want to remember.Outside, the city breathed. The sound of distant sirens, the wind sweeping through the streets, the hum of lights that never slept. We had returned here a