Flashback: The First Thorn
565 Words
Florence, 1461
Before the cathedrals bore saints in gold, before Medici coins ruled from shadows, the Bellandi family ruled not with power… but with pacts.
Their estate, hidden beyond the Arno, was never marked on maps. Their name was rarely spoken outside of whispers. Yet in every corner of Florence, from silk trader to soldier, from bishop to butcher — someone owed them a favor.
And those favors… were sealed in blood.
⸻
Giuliano Bellandi, the first patriarch, was not born into wealth — he carved it out with his hands. He was a scholar, yes, but also a man of war. He believed in legacy. And when his firstborn son was stillborn, Giuliano did what no nobleman should:
He summoned a god.
Not the God of the church.
A hungrier one.
Calvareth.
The summoning was done beneath the family chapel, in a crypt lined with stolen bones and holy lies. Giuliano made the offer: “Give me an heir. A son whose name will never die.”
Calvareth smiled.
And the price was agreed.
“You will have heirs, Giuliano Bellandi. Sons and daughters whose blood burns brighter than fire. But each shall be cursed to suffer the sin of your ambition.”
Giuliano asked what that meant.
Calvareth answered with silence.
⸻
Nine months later, Alessandro was born.
He grew quickly. Too quickly. By age seven, he could read Latin, wield a blade, and speak secrets in a tongue no priest recognized.
By age twelve, he killed his mother.
“By accident,” Giuliano insisted.
“A tragedy.”
“Grief overtook him.”
But the servants whispered. The walls remembered.
Her throat hadn’t been cut by steel — but by sigil. An ancient curse carved with bare hands.
⸻
The Bellandi line continued.
Each child born under that name bore a mark somewhere on their body — a faint glyph, invisible to the untrained eye, but glowing red when the blood was roused.
Some called it a blessing.
Others knew better.
The Bellandis could never bear more than one heir at a time. And with each generation, the heir grew darker. Hungrier.
The curse was survival. Only the ruthless lived long enough to inherit the name.
⸻
The Secret
In the 1700s, a Bellandi daughter, Rosetta, tried to end it.
She fled to Sicily. Burned the books. Buried the rootstone.
She married a fisherman, changed her name, gave birth to a child far from Florence’s shadow.
But on the day the girl turned thirteen, a rose bloomed from her wrist.
Black petals. Crimson veins.
The blood always finds its way home.
⸻
The family tree curved back toward Florence.
Generation after generation.
Until Laura.
Until her father — a man who hid the truth of his blood, tried to build a family of peace, and died for it.
“She wasn’t born cursed,” Isadora once said.
“She inherited it. Like a crown made of knives.”
⸻
Back in the present day, in an old hidden chamber beneath the Florentine archives, Laura found the original pact. Inked in gold. Signed by Giuliano Bellandi in his own blood.
The page bore only one line beneath his signature:
“Let those born of my name suffer, so that we may never be forgotten.”
She burned it.
Watched it curl and scream.
And whispered:
“Then let them forget us forever.”
- Writer
