CHAPTER FIVE

Alessia’s breath left her in a quiet exhale.

“Alba.”

She said the name out loud, but it felt foreign in her mouth. Like something forbidden. Something no one wanted spoken aloud. She stepped closer to the vanity, careful not to disturb the thin veil of dust that coated the lace. The photo had yellowed at the edges. The woman in it was beautiful, olive-skinned, dark-haired, with an almost defiant softness in her face. The baby she cradled couldn’t have been older than a few months. Wide eyes. A small bow of a mouth. No more than a few curls on the top of her head. The man’s face beside them was violently scratched out. Whoever had done it hadn’t stopped with one or two strikes. They’d gone at it like they wanted him erased entirely. She looked at the bottom right corner of the photograph.

Nothing written. No date. No signature.

She slipped it carefully into her coat pocket. There was something else on the vanity — a small porcelain elephant, hand-painted in blue and gold. It looked out of place among the dust, as if someone had returned it recently. Alessia reached for it, but something about the weight of the silence around her made her hesitate.

She stepped back. Just slightly.

Enough to feel the chill settle in again.

She left the room without touching anything else. She didn’t look back when she pulled the door shut.

Later that afternoon, Giuliana invited her to visit the gallery she ran in the city. It was tucked between two antique bookstores in the quieter district of Florence — clean glass windows, a deep red door, and a gold-lettered plaque that read Galleria De Luca.

“I curated the new exhibit myself,” Giuliana said smoothly as they stepped inside. “I thought you might appreciate something that’s not dust and inheritance.”

The gallery was small but elegant. Alessia trailed behind her, distracted by a canvas near the back wall. She paused in front of it. Slowly. Pulled in.

The painting was of a woman seated in a dark room, a shaft of light falling across one shoulder. She had sharp features, the kind that didn’t beg for softness. There was something about the eyes — the shape, the weight — that made Alessia’s stomach tighten.

She looked familiar.

Alessia didn’t realize she’d spoken aloud until Giuliana answered behind her.

“She was called Serafina,” Giuliana said. “She modeled for an old friend of mine. The painting wasn’t supposed to be part of the exhibit, but I couldn’t bring myself to leave it out.”

“Serafina,” Alessia repeated, her voice quiet.

There was something unspoken in that name too. Like a fragment waiting to attach itself to the memory still forming in the back of her mind. She stepped closer to the painting. At the bottom right corner, the signature was barely visible.

S. R.

She didn’t know why that made her pulse skip. But it did. The name clung to her long after Giuliana stepped away.

“Serafina.”

Alessia remained in front of the painting, her gaze tracing the brushwork — not in appreciation, but in search of something she couldn’t name. The woman’s posture was too still, the eyes too knowing. Light fell across one cheekbone, casting the rest of her face in shadow. There was no smile, only the suggestion of it — the kind that warned rather than welcomed. She didn’t know this woman and yet… it felt like the painting had been waiting for her.

From behind, a voice — low, smooth, male — cut gently through the quiet.

“Most people walk right past her.” Alessia turned.

He was leaning slightly against the column, hands in his coat pockets, posture casual. But his eyes were anything but. Focused. Intense. Watching her. She knew that face. The funeral. The blurred figure from the security tapes. The man who stood apart.

“I’ve seen you before,” she said, voice neutral.

His head tipped in acknowledgment. “I was paying my respects.”

“Did you know my father?”

A pause. “Once.”

He stepped closer, gaze flicking to the painting. “But she… she left the deeper impression.”

Alessia studied him. “Did you know her?”

“I knew what she stood for.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“No,” he agreed. “It isn’t.”

He turned his eyes on her fully now. “But maybe you already know more than you think.”

“I don’t even know your name.”

He hesitated for the briefest second. “Matteo.”

There was no handshake. No polite smile. Just that name — and the weight of whatever it meant to him.

Alessia held his gaze. “You speak like someone who expects me to recognize you.”

“I don’t expect anything,” Matteo said. “But sooner or later, you will.”

And before she could ask what he meant, he was already walking away — disappearing down the back corridor like he belonged there. Like he’d never been there at all. She didn't follow him right away. Not out of fear — Alessia didn't fear easily — but because something in his voice had latched itself to the back of her mind like a hook.

Matteo.

That name didn’t appear in any of her father's files. Yet it sat heavy on her tongue now, like she'd tasted it before. The corridor he'd disappeared through led to a rear hallway lined with unfinished canvases and broken frames. The gallery’s polished elegance ended here, swallowed by quiet disorder. She found him standing by a half-covered sculpture, hands behind his back, as though he’d expected her to follow.

"You said I’d recognize you,” Alessia said calmly.

He didn’t turn. “Eventually.”

She took a step forward. “Why were you at the funeral?” No reply.

“Why are you in the tapes from the house?” Still nothing.

She moved closer, tone sharpening. “Who is Serafina to me?” That made him glance back, just slightly.

“She meant something to you, didn’t she?”

“More than you’ll ever know,” he said quietly. Matteo’s eyes met hers — steady, unreadable. “But asking questions you’re not ready to hear the answers to… that’s dangerous.”

Alessia didn’t flinch. “Try me.”

He stepped toward her then — not threatening, just close enough to feel the shift in air between them. His voice softened, but the words cut through her.

“I knew you before they named you, Lessa.”

She froze. No one called her that. Not her father. Not the staff. No one. Her lips parted, but before she could speak, a door creaked somewhere behind them — heavy footsteps echoing from the main hall. Matteo stepped away without another word, disappearing back into the corridor like a shadow vanishing between frames. Alessia stood alone with that name still echoing in her head — one she hadn’t heard since—

But the memory never finished.

Not yet.