Sophia
The fireplace promise..
The air was heavy when Ricci asked me to follow him.
He didn’t say where we were going. He just reached for the keys hanging by the kitchen hook, gave me a look that didn’t ask—it told me. That look he does when he’s pretending not to care if I come, but you can tell he does.
I followed.
He led me past corridors I hadn’t noticed before, down a hall that smelled faintly of cedarwood and something older, like memory. We stopped at a tall wooden door with a lion carved into it. He pushed it open.
It was his private library.
Dim light filtered in through a small window. The fireplace was already lit. The crackling sound made the room feel alive, like it breathed on its own.
He didn’t speak for a while.
He just walked over to a shelf, ran his fingers acro
