The drive was silent, thick with tension that neither dared to cut through. The city still looked half asleep—the streets damp from early rain, the morning light pale and uncertain. But inside Dante’s car, the air was electric, charged with questions that had no easy answers.

Isabella sat beside him, her hands clenched tightly in her lap, staring out the window. Her reflection looked ghostly in the glass—haunted.

A letter in her mother’s handwriting.

Her mother, who had been dead for nearly ten years.

“Dante,” she said quietly, finally breaking the silence, “where is the letter now?”

He didn’t look at her. His knuckles whitened on the steering wheel. “Marco...