The chapel stood where it always had—quiet, forgotten, and carved from stone that remembered too much. I came before dawn, when the world was still half asleep, because I couldn’t bear the eyes of anyone else watching me dig into my family’s ghosts.Mist curled over the graveyard, winding through crooked crosses and cracked marble. The air tasted of rain and iron. I hadn’t slept since I found Valeria’s last letter. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw her face—the way she must have looked in her final moments, torn between truth and the man she couldn’t stop loving.Now I understood why she never told me. Why her silence had been her only shield.I pushed open the chapel doors, the sound groaning through the stillness. Dust spiraled in the faint morning light. The scent of incense clung to the walls like a secret that refused to fade. I used to come here with my father when I was younger. He’d kneel by the altar, his hands trembling slightly, though he tried to hide it. I always thought it

Morning came quietly, but the sun could not pierce the heavy clouds over Rome. The mansion felt colder than usual, its halls echoing with the same silence that haunted Luca’s dreams. He had not slept. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw that handprint burning on the glass, his father’s hand fading into smoke.Now he sat at the desk again, the air heavy with the scent of old paper and dust. The shattered whiskey glass still lay in pieces on the floor. He hadn’t bothered to clean it. He couldn’t bring himself to touch anything his father had left behind without feeling that strange pull in his chest.He rubbed his face with both hands, exhausted, then reached for the drawer once more. The photograph of his father and Emilio Marcelli stared back at him like a ghost frozen in time. Their smiles were wide, genuine even. That was the part that unnerved him most. Whatever had happened between them, it hadn’t always been betrayal.He traced the edge of the picture with his thumb. “What did you

The sound of breaking glass echoed like thunder. For a moment, everything went black. Luca’s breath caught in his throat as shards of the shattered mirror fell around him like black rain, each fragment glimmering with faint light before vanishing into the cold stone floor.He staggered backward, pressing one hand against the wall. The air felt heavy, almost solid, as if the room itself were alive and watching. The torchlight flickered once, twice, and went out. The silence that followed was not natural—it was the kind that made every heartbeat sound like a scream.He stood there, his mind fighting to steady itself. The last thing he remembered before the mirror shattered was his reflection moving on its own, whispering words that had not come from his mouth.“Do not let it own you.”The voice still rang inside his head, but now it sounded closer.Luca crouched, reaching for his lighter. The small spark barely caught. When it did, it revealed the mirror again—or what was left of it. The gla

The mansion had grown quieter than ever. Not the kind of quiet that brought peace, but the kind that hummed under the skin, filled with unseen movement. Luca sat in his father’s old study again, the letter still open before him. The words were burned into his memory, but he couldn’t stop reading them, over and over, as if another truth might appear between the lines.Do not let it own you.He had whispered those words to himself so many times that they no longer sounded real. The paper was beginning to tear where his fingers held it. He placed it down gently, afraid that even the sound of the page might stir the thing he was trying to understand.Since that night, the shadows in the house had begun to change. They followed his movement with a slow pulse, like a heartbeat. He noticed them bending unnaturally along the corners, stretching toward him when the candles flickered. The first few days he tried to ignore it, convincing himself it was exhaustion or the tricks of light against poli

The silence beneath the basilica pressed on Luca’s ears like a living thing. It was the kind of silence that had weight, that seemed to pulse through the stone walls and linger between breaths. Each step he took echoed softly against the damp floor, the sound swallowed almost immediately by the darkness ahead.Rian’s flashlight cut through the gloom in a trembling beam. Dust floated in the air, dancing like ash caught in the narrow light. The staircase behind them spiraled into nothingness, sealing off the world above. The deeper they went, the colder it became, and Luca could almost feel the centuries pressing down on his shoulders.He moved slowly, his boots crunching on uneven stones. “This place feels older than the city itself,” he murmured.Rian’s voice came from behind him, quiet but steady. “That’s because it is. The basilica was built on top of an older temple. My father once said this part of Rome was raised from ruins no one dared to claim.”Luca looked over his shoulder. “You