Lina didn't sleep.
She sat on the bed in her small apartment, her laptop balanced on her knees and the light from the screen her only illumination. Outside, the city slept. Inside, she was digging.
The restorer's name was Pietro Conti. Sixty-two years old, a specialist in medieval documents, a retired professor at the University of Bolonha. He had died four months earlier—officially, of a heart attack. Alone, at home, with no witnesses.
Lina read the obituary three times. Then she searched for more. She found an academic paper he had published two years earlier on parchment conservation techniques. She found a photograph of him at a conference in Florença, smiling beside his colleagues. A thin man with round glasses and a neatly trimmed white beard.
Nothing there suggested a man who simply *gave up* on a job.
She closed the laptop and stared at the ceiling.
*Ferraris said he gave up. But Pietro Conti is dead.*
It could have been a coincidence. People died. Heart attacks happened. But Lina's instincts—the same ones that let her spot a fraudulent restoration from ten feet away—screamed that it wasn't.
She picked up her phone. It was four in the morning. Even so, she typed a message to Sofia, her friend and the only person she trusted enough to ask for this kind of favor.
*"I need you to find out everything you can about a restorer named Pietro Conti. Died four months ago. Heart attack. Call me when you can."*
She sent it. Set the phone down. And stayed there in the dark, wondering whether it was still smart to go back to that villa.
She went back.
At eight in the morning, Lina carried three boxes of equipment into the black sedan that had appeared without warning once again. The driver—the same one as before, with the same expression of someone chewing rocks—helped her load everything into the trunk without saying a word.
This time, Lina paid attention to the route. She memorized the turns, the names of the streets that still had signs, the landmarks. If she needed to get out on her own, she wanted to know how.
The villa looked different in the morning light. Less cinematic, more real. The gardens had actual gardeners—two men trimming hedges with mechanical precision. A third was washing the stone path with a hose. Everything immaculate, everything controlled.
Ferraris wasn't there to receive her.
Instead, a younger man was waiting for her at the entrance. Tall, broad-shouldered, with dark hair cut short. He wore a suit without a tie, the collar open, and had the kind of face that seemed designed to reveal nothing.
"Ms. Marchetti. I'm Tomás. I'll escort you to the workspace."
"Where's Mr. Ferraris?"
"Unavailable."
*Another one-word answer. This place is a monastery.*
Tomás led her down the same hallway as the day before, but this time he turned left before the basement stairs. He opened a double door and revealed a room that hadn't existed on her previous visit—or that they simply hadn't shown her.
Lina stopped in the doorway.
It was perfect. A spacious worktable, adjustable lighting, a ventilation system with a HEPA filter, a side counter with a stainless-steel sink and a distilled-water faucet. There was even an adjustable document stand, the kind she'd only seen in national museum laboratories.
"Was this set up last night?" she asked, unable to hide her surprise.
"Mr. Monteverdi wants you to have everything you need."
Lina froze.
*Monteverdi.*
It wasn't a name she recognized. But the way Tomás pronounced it—with that involuntary weight, that reverence disguised as neutrality—said everything.
"Is Monteverdi the client?"
Tomás didn't answer. He merely gestured toward the table.
"The diary will be brought in a moment. If you need anything, I'll be in the hallway."
He left. The door closed with a soft click.
Lina stood in the middle of the room, surrounded by equipment that cost more than her entire apartment, and felt for the first time the true weight of the place she'd gotten herself into.
She worked for three hours without interruption.
The diary was in worse condition than the initial assessment had suggested. At least twelve pages were fused together by moisture, and the leather cover had begun to decompose along the inner edges. Lina separated the first four pages with controlled steam, stabilized the paper with applications of methylcellulose, and documented every stage with photographs.
It was the kind of work that made her forget the world. Her hands moved with automatic precision, her eyes recording every fiber, every stain, every variation in tone. When she was restoring, Lina didn't think about bills, loneliness, or dead restorers. She thought only about the object in front of her and what it needed to survive.
But page seventeen was still there. Waiting.
She hadn't reached it yet. She was following protocol—working from the cover inward, page by page, without skipping steps. But she knew that when she reached that page, she'd have to make a decision: document the code and inform the client, or keep silent and try to decipher it herself.
The door opened without warning.
Lina raised her eyes, expecting to see Tomás or Ferraris.
It was neither of them.
The man who entered was tall—taller than Tomás, though not as broad. His hair was dark, almost black, with strands falling across his forehead in a way that seemed careless but probably wasn't. A defined jaw, eyes such a deep brown they looked black beneath the cold laboratory light. He wore a gray linen shirt with the sleeves rolled to his elbows, no watch, no rings, no adornments of any kind.
He didn't look like a mafioso. He looked like an architect, or a pianist, or someone who read philosophy in empty cafés.
But the way the air in the room changed when he entered—as if the walls had contracted by an inch—dispelled any such impression.
He looked at the diary open on the table. Then at Lina. And remained silent for a moment too long to be casual.
"You work without music," he said at last. His voice was deep and controlled, with a cadence suggesting that every word was chosen before it was spoken.
Lina slowly removed her gloves.
"Music interferes with concentration."
"Most of the restorers I know work with opera."
"Are most of the restorers you know dead?"
The silence that followed was like a taut wire. Lina felt her heart race, but kept her face neutral. She didn't know why she'd said it. Or maybe she did—and that was exactly why it was dangerous.
The man tilted his head. Not angrily. With something that seemed—impossibly—like interest.
"Dante Monteverdi," he said, extending his hand.
Lina looked at his hand. Long, clean fingers, without calluses. Hands that didn't do manual labor. But that somehow seemed capable of things she preferred not to imagine.
She shook his hand. Firmly, briefly, without hesitation.
"Lina Marchetti. But you already know that."
"I do," he confirmed, without breaking eye contact. "I also know you stayed up until four in the morning researching Pietro Conti."
Lina's stomach dropped. But she didn't back down.
"Do you monitor your employees' Wi-Fi?"
"You're not my employee, Ms. Marchetti. You're my guest. And I protect my guests—including from their own curiosity."
"Is that a threat?"
"It's advice."
He moved away from the table, walked to the wall where Lina had hung photographs of the first restored pages, and studied them in silence. There was something disturbing about the way he looked—with the same meticulous attention she devoted to the diary.
"Pietro Conti was a good man," Dante said without turning around. "And an excellent restorer."
"What happened to him?"
"He asked too many questions of the wrong people."
Lina swallowed hard.
"And I'm doing the same thing now?"
Dante turned around. And for the first time, something changed in that controlled face. Not a smile—it was too soon for smiles. But recognition. As if he'd expected her to back down and was pleased that she hadn't.
"The difference, Ms. Marchetti, is that you're asking the questions of me. And I'm not the wrong person."
He walked to the door. Stopped with his hand on the doorknob.
"Dinner is at eight. Tomás will come get you. It's not mandatory, but the food is good."
And he left.
Lina stood there, gloves in hand and her heart pounding in her ears. She looked at the diary open on the table, at the photographs on the wall, at the closed door.
*He knows I know about Conti. He knows I found something in the diary. And he still let me continue.*
She put her gloves back on and returned to work.
But for the first time in years, her hands were trembling.