The front door groaned as Alessia pushed it open.
The familiar sound echoed through the empty house, carrying memories she had spent six years trying to outrun.
Nothing had changed.
The polished wooden staircase still curved gracefully toward the second floor.
The old grandfather clock still stood in the corner of the hallway, frozen at 7:18, the exact time it had stopped the day her father disappeared.
Even the scent remained the same.
Old cedar.
Coffee.
And the faint trace of lavender her mother had loved.
Alessia stood motionless just inside the doorway.
For a moment, she was no longer twenty-eight years old.
She was twenty-two again.
Standing in this very hall, calling out for a father who never answered.
Lorenzo stood beside her but said nothing.
He understood that some
