Dante returned three hours later.
Lina knew because she had counted every minute. There was no clock—the secure room offered no such luxury—but she counted her breaths, and when she reached six hundred forty, she stopped counting and started pacing.
The sofa was comfortable. The water was cold. None of it mattered.
When the door opened, Lina was standing with the notebook clutched to her chest like a shield. Dante entered and closed the door behind him. He had changed his shirt—the one stained with blood was gone, replaced by a black one with the top two buttons undone. His hair was slightly disheveled. His eyes were exhausted.
“It’s over,” he said.
“What exactly is over?”
Dante leaned against the wall. For an instant—just one—he looked genuinely tired. Not the exhaustion of someone who had slept too little, but of someone who had carried too much for far too long.
“Two men came in through the east wing. Professionals. They knew the layout of the house, which means someone on the inside provided information.”
“Someone on the inside?”
“They’ve been identified.”
His tone was final. Lina didn’t ask what “identified” meant in that context. She didn’t want to know. Not yet.
“Did they come for the diary?”
“They came for you.”
The sentence fell between them like a stone into a still lake. Lina felt the impact spread through her body—not as fear, but as a cold, definitive understanding.
“The Cavalli wanted to take me.”
“The Cavalli wanted the person who knows how to read the diary. Without you, those pages are nothing but old paper.”
“What a charming way to say I’m useful.”
Dante looked at her. There was something different in his face—a crack in the mask Lina had never seen before. As if the three hours he had spent handling the crisis had consumed the energy he normally used to hide himself.
“You’re not useful, Lina. You’re necessary. There’s a difference.”
She swallowed hard. Not because of the word. Because of the way he said it.
They went upstairs together. The villa was different—quieter, more tense. There were men in every hallway, at every door. Faces Lina didn’t recognize. Reinforcements that had arrived during the three hours she’d been locked away.
In the main hall, Lina saw what remained of the east wing. A shattered window covered with plastic. Marks on the marble floor that someone had tried to clean, but that still revealed a dark trail. Blood.
She stopped.
“Don’t look,” Dante said without slowing down.
“I’m already looking.”
Then he stopped. He turned to her. They were in the middle of the hallway, with two security guards ten yards away, and yet the space between them seemed absolutely private.
“This is what I am, Lina. This is the world you’re in. I can protect you within it, but I can’t pretend it’s different from what it is.”
“I didn’t ask you to pretend.”
“No. You never ask.” He paused. “Sometimes I wish you would.”
Lina didn’t know what to do with that sentence. She tucked it away in a place she hadn’t known existed—a space between reason and something she still didn’t have the courage to name.
Dante walked her to her room. He stopped at the door.
“Tomorrow I’ll need to leave the villa. There are meetings that can’t be postponed. Tomás will stay with you.”
“Meetings about the attack?”
“Meetings about the response to the attack.”
Lina understood. It wasn’t a business meeting. It was a war council.
“Dante.”
He waited.
“Thank you. For coming to get me yourself.”
“I wouldn’t send anyone else.”
“I know. That’s what worries me.”
He looked at her for a long moment. Lina held his gaze. Neither of them moved. The entire hallway seemed to hold its breath.
Then Dante did something she hadn’t expected. He raised his hand and brushed aside a strand of hair that had fallen across her face. The touch lasted less than a second. His fingers were warm. Her skin prickled.
“Lock the door,” he said, and left.
Lina entered the room. She locked the door. She leaned against it and stood there, her hand on her face, exactly where his fingers had touched her.
*This is what I am*, he had said. As if it were a warning. As if he were saying: *there’s still time to be afraid of me.*
But Lina wasn’t afraid of him. She was afraid of what she felt when he was near. She was afraid of how easily she had grown accustomed to his presence. She was afraid that, when everything ended—the diary, the cipher, the threat—going back to her normal life would feel like returning to an empty house.
The next morning, Dante had already left when Lina came downstairs.
Tomás was waiting for her at the laboratory door with coffee and a piece of information.
“Mr. Monteverdi asked me to give you this.”
It was a folder. Inside were black-and-white photographs, old documents, newspaper clippings yellowed with age. Lina flipped through them without understanding until a name leaped off the page like a burn.
*Marchetti.*
It wasn’t her name. It was her father’s.
*Gianluca Marchetti — outside consultant, 1989–1994.*
Lina read the line three times. Outside consultant. For what? For whom?
She looked at the document’s header. The letterhead was elegant, discreet, with a crest she now knew well.
*Monteverdi family.*
The ground vanished beneath her feet.
“Tomás.”
“Miss.”
“What is this?”
“These are the files Mr. Monteverdi set aside for you. He said you deserved to know before you found out on your own.”
“Know what?”
Tomás looked at her with something that, for the first time, seemed genuinely sad.
“Your father worked for this family. For five years. And his disappearance... it wasn’t an accident.”
Lina sat down. Not because she wanted to—the strength had left her legs.
The diary. The cipher. The protection. Dante.
Everything was connected. It always had been.
And the question now burning in her mind wasn’t about the code hidden in the pages, or the crypt beneath the church of San Vittore.
It was a much simpler question. And a much more dangerous one.
*What does Dante Monteverdi know about my father’s disappearance?*