The townhouse greeted her with silence, heavier than usual, when Elena slipped her key into the lock and pushed the door open. Verona's night air clung to her, damp with the smell of river mist, but the stillness inside was thicker—like a room that had been holding its breath in her absence.
She closed the door and turned the bolt. The faint echo of the lock sliding into place should have brought reassurance, but her skin prickled. Something was wrong.
Elena stood in the dim foyer, letting her eyes adjust to the shadows cast by the single lamp she had left burning before leaving for the Marcelli estate. It was still lit, but its glow felt… disturbed, as if someone had shifted the air in her home, rearranged the rhythm she was trying so hard to preserve.
She dropped her coat on the rack and stepped slowly into the hall, her heels clicking against the old parquet floor. The sound was too loud in the hush. She paused, listening. Nothing—no footsteps, no movement upstairs, no creak of settling wood. But her instincts refused to relax.
Her gaze snagged on the console table against the wall. A drawer stood open, not by much, just enough to whisper carelessness—or intrusion. She remembered closing it herself the day before, after stuffing inside a mess of unpaid bills and condolence letters.
A chill threaded down her spine.
She crossed to the study, her father's sanctum, where the walls still smelled faintly of tobacco and ink. The heavy curtains were drawn, but the window—she froze. The window latch was unhooked, the pane pushed open by a breath's width.
Her pulse kicked harder. Her father had been meticulous about that window; he always locked it at night, a habit born of paranoia or wisdom. And tonight, Elena herself had latched it before she left.
The desk was the next betrayal. A ledger lay on the floor, splayed open like a dead bird, its spine broken. It hadn't been there before.
Someone had been here.
Her hand trembled as she reached down and set the ledger on the desk again, but her eyes caught something new—a seam, thin and almost invisible, at the bottom of the central drawer.
Her father's desk. His fortress of secrets.
She lowered into the leather chair, her breath shallow, and ran her fingers along the drawer's edge. A catch clicked beneath her nail. The false bottom popped free.
Inside lay the ghost of a life she had never known.
A bundle of letters, bound with fraying black ribbon. Papers covered in strange codes—columns of numbers, ciphered words. And nestled between them, a silver locket, tarnished from years of being hidden, its surface engraved with a delicate vine.
She unclasped it.
A woman's face stared back at her. Striking, with high cheekbones and dark, intelligent eyes. Not her mother. Not anyone Elena recognized.
And on the back of the portrait: Valeria.
Elena's heart stuttered.
The name appeared again and again in the letters. Her father's handwriting, firm and slanted, spoke to this Valeria in tones she had never heard from him—not the cool authority she remembered, but urgency, affection, sometimes even desperation.
Fragments leapt at her as she read by the lamplight:
"The debts grow worse. They are circling closer, and I cannot keep you safe if I fall."
"Valeria, trust no one. Even those who wear the Marcelli name."
"If anything happens to me, keep the locket hidden. It will mean more than they know."
The words bled into one another. Betrayals. Warnings. Pleas. And always, always her name—Valeria—etched like a wound.
Elena's throat closed. She had buried her father with anger, with too many questions about the man he had been in those final years. But this—this was another life entirely. Another woman. Another secret tangled in debts and danger.
And if he had hidden it so carefully… someone else must be searching for it too.
She closed the drawer carefully, tucked the letters into her lap, and held the locket tight in her palm. The metal was cold, but her pulse burned against it.
The townhouse creaked then. A board groaned somewhere above.
Her head snapped up, every muscle locking into place.
Someone was here.
_____________________________
The floorboard groaned again.
Elena's breath caught in her throat. The letters slid from her lap as she stood, clutching the silver locket in her fist like a weapon, though its delicate weight offered no comfort.
The sound had come from the corridor upstairs. Slow. Deliberate. Not the restless sigh of old wood, but footsteps.
Her pulse pounded so violently it drowned out the silence around her. She forced herself to move—quiet, careful—toward the fireplace. A poker leaned against the stone hearth, its iron tip blackened by years of use. She gripped it tightly, the cold metal anchoring her.
Every instinct screamed at her to run, to bolt into the street and leave this cursed house behind. But something darker held her still: defiance, anger, the memory of Dante's voice echoing in her mind—"This city will devour you."
Not tonight.
She slipped into the hallway, her slippers soundless against the marble. The staircase loomed ahead, its shadows yawning like open jaws. She lifted the poker, each breath shallow, and climbed.
Halfway up, she paused.
A soft creak above. Then another. The rhythm of a person moving, waiting.
Her skin prickled as she reached the landing, the darkness thickening with each step. The corridor stretched long and narrow, lit only by a single guttering lamp. The doors to the bedrooms were closed—except one.
Her father's room.
The door stood ajar, the same way she had found it once before.
She swallowed hard, lifting the poker higher, and inched forward.
The door moaned on its hinges as she pushed it wider. The air inside was colder, carrying a faint draught from the balcony doors. The sheets on the bed remained tangled, untouched since the night Massimo had died.
Her gaze darted across the room. Shadows stretched along the walls, merging with the heavy drapes. And then—movement. A flicker at the edge of her vision.
"Who's there?" Her voice cracked against the silence.
No answer.
She stepped farther inside, her grip white-knuckled on the poker. The wardrobe stood in the corner, its door half open. Her breath caught. Slowly, she crossed the room and yanked it wide.
Nothing. Only her father's old suits and the faint scent of tobacco clinging to the fabric.
Her shoulders sagged with relief—until she heard it.
A faint scrape, downstairs. The slam of the garden door closing.
Elena's blood ran cold.
She rushed to the balcony and threw the doors open. The night air slapped her face, sharp with the smell of rain. From the corner of the garden, a dark figure slipped into the street, moving swiftly toward the shadows.
Her chest tightened as headlights flared. A black car idled at the curb, its engine a low growl in the quiet night. The figure opened the passenger door and slid inside.
Elena leaned over the railing, heart in her throat. "Hey!" she shouted, the word raw, desperate.
The car's taillights glowed red as it pulled away, tires hissing on wet cobblestone. Within moments, it vanished into the labyrinth of Verona's narrow streets.
She stood frozen, her hand gripping the balcony rail so tightly the metal bit into her skin.
They had been inside. Again. Watching. Searching. Hunting.
She staggered back into the room, her body trembling, and slammed the balcony doors shut. The poker clattered to the floor as her strength gave out, and she sank onto the edge of the bed, breath ragged.
The locket lay cold in her palm. The letters still waited downstairs, filled with secrets she barely understood. And now, someone else knew she had them.
She wasn't imagining it. She wasn't paranoid.
She was being watched.
______________________________
Elena's hands shook as she bolted the balcony doors, but it wasn't cold that made her tremble—it was rage.
The poker lay abandoned on the floorboards, a useless weapon against shadows that slipped through locks and walls as if they owned them. She sank to her knees, pressing her palms against the boards, trying to steady her breath.
Someone had been in her home. Again. Touching her father's things. Breathing her air. Watching her while she moved through the rooms like prey in a cage.
The old, reasonable part of her whispered that she should pack her bags, buy a train ticket, and leave Verona tonight. She could vanish into Milan, or Florence, or across the border into France. She could disappear the way she once dreamed of when she was younger—no ties, no shadows following her down every street.
Her gaze flicked to the silver locket lying on the bed. Valeria's face stared back at her, immortalized in miniature. A stranger. A secret. A ghost.
And then there were the letters—their veiled warnings, the debts, the betrayals. Her father hadn't died peacefully. He had died cornered, hunted. And now his predators had shifted their eyes to her.
She clenched her fists, her nails biting into her palms.
No.
She would not run. Not again.
Elena rose and crossed to the study, her bare feet silent against the marble. The air in the house was heavier now, the silence thicker, but she ignored it. The letters were scattered where she had left them, along with the ledger she had hidden beneath her coat days before.
She gathered them carefully, tucking the most damning into a leather satchel. She would not leave them for anyone else to find.
Her reflection caught in the darkened window as she snapped the satchel shut. Pale face, wide eyes, hair loose around her shoulders. She barely recognized the woman staring back at her—haunted, yes, but alive with something sharper than fear.
Dante's words whispered through her again: "This city will devour you, Elena. Unless you learn to let the wolves bite—and bleed with them."
For the first time, she wondered if he had meant it as a threat—or as advice.
The thought made her stomach twist, but it didn't matter. He was right about one thing: Verona was a den of wolves. And she would not survive by hiding.
She pressed the locket into her palm until it hurt. Valeria—whoever she was—was a piece of the puzzle, another secret her father had buried beneath debts and shadows. If the D'Angelos thought they could scare her into surrender, they were wrong.
Her lips curved into something like a bitter smile.
"Let them come," she whispered into the silence.
The words sounded reckless, even dangerous, but they filled her chest with a new strength. Fear was still there, yes—it coiled tight around her ribs, prickled along her skin—but beneath it burned fury, hot and sharp.
And fury could be wielded.
________________________________
The lamps burned low as Elena carried the letters and the locket back upstairs. Each creak of the floor seemed louder than before, each shift of shadow in the corners enough to make her pause and listen.
She reached her bedroom and set the satchel on the nightstand. Then, deliberately, she pulled out a small iron key from her father's desk drawer and opened the old chest at the foot of the bed. It was lined with velvet, once used to store family heirlooms. She placed the letters and the locket inside, locking them away as though shutting a door on the ghosts pressing at her shoulders.
The key felt small in her hand, fragile against the weight of everything it now protected. She looped it on a chain around her neck, letting it rest against her skin, close to her heart.
The house sighed around her—old wood settling, or perhaps something else. Elena stood still in the silence, her hand hovering over the lamp. For a moment, the urge to keep the light burning was overwhelming.
But she refused to let the fear dictate her.
She pinched the flame out.
Darkness swallowed the room, thick and heavy. She stood in it, listening to her own breath, the faint rustle of the garden beyond the windows, the distant hum of the city that would never truly sleep.
Her heart still pounded, but beneath it all something steadier had taken root. A promise.
If the D'Angelos wanted to play games, if Verona's wolves thought she would be an easy feast, they were wrong.
She whispered it into the dark, a vow only she could hear:
"I'll learn your rules. And I'll break them."
Her chest rose and fell, her eyes adjusting to the blackness. Somewhere beyond these walls, someone was circling closer. She could feel it in her bones. But so was she.
The city was a predator's den, yes. But predators bled, too.
And Elena was no longer running.