The villa smelled like dust and old blood.
It wasn't the scent of decay alone it was the smell of history buried too deep, of sins sealed behind walls meant never to open again.
Isabella stood frozen in the doorway of the secret room, her hand still hovering near her stomach as if instinctively shielding the life inside her. The dress hung on the far wall ivory silk, yellowed with age but carefully preserved. Not abandoned. Kept.
"This room wasn't forgotten," she whispered.
Damian moved beside her, his presence solid, grounding. His eyes scanned everything the vial, the letter, the symbols etched faintly into the stone but it was the letter that drew him in.
Seraphina's mother's handwriting.
Elegant. Controlled. Nothing like the chaos Alessandro had built his empire on.
Damian picked it up slowly, as if the paper itself might cut him.
"Read it," Isabella said softly. "Please."
He broke the seal.
