The villa was a low-slung fortress of honey-colored stone, tucked into a jagged crease of the Nebrodi Mountains where the air smelled of wild thyme, ancient oak, and the cold, sharp promise of altitude. Far below, the Mediterranean was a distant, hazy ribbon of hammered silver, completely disconnected from the brutal reality of the coast they had left behind. There were no cameras here, no fiber-optic cables buried in the soil, and most importantly, no ghosts. This was the one coordinate Alessandro’s father had kept off every ledger—a sanctuary built for a day that was never supposed to come.
Alessandro led Seraphina through the heavy timber doors, the iron hinges groaning with the weight of decades of isolation. The interior was a sanctuary of shadows and silence, the thick stone walls m
