Chapter 5 – The Hidden Door
Florence, Present Day
The villa creaked with age, but this time the sound came from above—not the shifting beams or sighing stone, but something deliberate. A scrape. A footstep?
Sofia paused in the archive room, her hand hovering over Beatrice's tenth letter. She'd been cataloging them obsessively for days, each one more intimate than the last. Beatrice's world felt closer now than her own. The past breathed with the scent of ink, wax, and wild longing.
The sound came again.
She followed it.
Up the north wing staircase—the one marked inaccessibile in Bellini's diagram. The dust was undisturbed, but the air had changed. Colder, thinner, like the atmosphere before a storm.
She reached the second floor. There was no hallway, just a wall paneled with oak and plaster. But one section bore a faint outline. A door, once sealed.
She traced the edge.
A hollow knock.
Her pulse quickened.
She fetched a lamp and pressed again. The wood shifted slightly—only a sliver, but enough. A hidden latch. She gripped it and pulled.
The panel groaned open, revealing a narrow stairwell that curled upward into darkness.
Each step was lined with dust thick enough to choke, but no cobwebs. It was too clean.
She climbed, hand on the wall for balance.
At the top, she found it.
A small, circular room—bare except for a cracked mirror, a wrought iron bed frame, and a dressing table with an empty inkwell and a candlestick turned to rust. The window had been boarded from the inside, the light struggling through warped slats.
And in the corner...
A trunk.
She knelt and opened it.
Inside: a velvet mask with crimson feathers. A fan painted with lilies. A sealed envelope labeled Per chi viene dopo – For the one who comes after.
Her breath hitched.
The writing matched Beatrice's.
She opened the envelope slowly, reverently.
Inside was a single page.
If you have found this, then I am no longer alive in the way you are. But know this—I wrote until the last night, until the last star vanished. Love is not bound by time, nor is the soul. My story is not finished. Perhaps it is yours now. If you feel the pull, follow it. He will find you again. We always do.
— B.
Sofia stared at the letter as the wind stirred, though no window was open.
The past was no longer something she studied.
It had begun to answer back.