Chapter 2: The Professor at the Door

Morning light sliced through the gaps in the shutters, casting sharp stripes of shadow and brightness across the cold glass of the mirror. Bianca Rinaldi stared down at her own pale reflection, her knuckles white and stiff from the tremors of the previous night. She gripped the Ancient Ring so hard it ached, its surface etched with the crest of The Rinaldi Family.

The chill of the metal crept from her palm straight to her heart. The incantation from last night still echoed in her ears, and now, this city of surveillance and suspicion was silently tightening the noose around her neck. She took a deep breath, inhaling the stale, moldy scent of the room mixed with the lingering aroma of coffee from the night before—a cloying, suffocating blend.

The figure in the mirror looked like a stranger, distant and alien. Those eyes, once clear, were now webbed with red veins, bearing a weight far beyond her years. She tried to loosen her grip, but her muscles refused, locked in a rigid tension. It was her subconscious, throwing up defenses against unknown dangers, keeping her on high alert.

Outside the window, Venice was still shrouded in fog. The mist blurred the outlines of the prow of a nearby Gondola, making the entire city look like a slumbering beast, breathing slow and heavy.

The doorbell shattered the morning’s silence, sharp and abrupt. Bianca’s body went rigid instantly, like a cat caught by its tail. She held her breath, her eyes darting quickly to the corners of the room to make sure no hidden pair of eyes was watching. Only after confirming they were alone did she slowly turn toward the entrance.

Every step she took was calculated, right on the edge of caution. The faint scrape of her soles against the floorboard rang out painfully in the empty living room. As she passed the dusty antique cabinets, she deliberately avoided the reflections on the glass doors, terrified that even a glint of light might reveal the silver sheen of the ring in her hand.

The doorknob was ice-cold under her fingers. She turned it twice, the metal creaking open with a sound that seemed magnified by the silence, like a secret about to be torn apart.

Standing on the other side was Anna Castellani. The history professor from the University of Venice wore a dark grey double-breasted coat, tailored with military precision, not a single unnecessary crease in the fabric. In her hand, she carried a worn leather dossier bag, its edges frayed as if it had been rummaged through a thousand times.

Anna’s gaze was sharp as a scalpel. It cut straight through Bianca’s defenses, landing squarely on her hand, where she clutched the ring. It was the look of a scholar, filled with scrutiny and expectation. The wind blew in, carrying the taste of sea salt, tossing a few strands of hair around Anna’s cheeks, but her bone-deep coolness didn’t waver.

The corner of Anna’s mouth tightened slightly, as if she were weighing some silent calculation. Bianca could feel the woman’s stare moving up her arm, through the lens of her glasses, probing into the very depths of her soul.

Bianca stepped aside to make room, retreating into the shadow of the doorframe, maintaining a distance that was safe yet threatening. She ran through the possible reasons for this visit in her head: Was it just a routine academic survey? Or some covert probe? Research funding for the University of Venice was always tight, but they had never thrown so much manpower at the family histories of local clans before.

In this European society of contracts and codes, every action had to have a motive. And Anna’s current silence was more pressuring than any words could be. Bianca could even hear the rhythm of her own heartbeat, mechanical and steady, starkly clear in the quiet.

Instinctively, she shifted her weight back, her toes pointed, ready to spring into action if anything went wrong.

Anna stepped inside. She didn’t offer the usual pleasantries that a normal visitor might. Instead, she walked straight to the long table covered with a white tablecloth. Her movements were slow and ritualistic, as if she were performing a silent sacrifice. She unfastened the leather cord on the dossier bag. The yellowed papers inside exhaled a smell of pine resin and the sour tang of aged time, looking fragile yet dignified in the morning light.

She pulled out an old photograph, folded neatly. Her fingers smoothed out the creases, the pads of her fingers brushing against the fine dust on the photo’s edge. At that exact moment, the sunlight slipped through the shutters, illuminating the motes of dust floating in the air. They danced in the beams of light, like thousands of tiny souls peeking in on the meeting.

The background of the photo was the abandoned shipyard of The Rinaldi Family. The wooden structures in the black-and-white image carried a decaying kind of beauty. Deep in the shadows, an old man stood in the center of a crowd, his head bowed, gripping something tightly in his hand.

The outline was blurry, but the size, the position, and even the way the ring was worn on the finger bore a striking resemblance to the object Bianca’s father had hidden. It was as if two figures, separated by decades, had overlapped in the photo.

Bianca felt a wave of dizziness. The light and shadows around her seemed to warp. The old man’s posture resonated with a eerie familiarity with the image of her grandfather on his deathbed. That sense of connection wrapped around her like vines, bringing with it a chill she couldn’t shake.

Bianca’s pupils contracted, her throat going dry, but she fought to maintain a facade of calm. She lowered her eyes, avoiding Anna’s probing gaze, and spoke, her voice cold and hard as iron. “I don’t know that man. Our family has never owned anything like that. The Rinaldi Family has been in the shipbuilding business for generations. Aside from wood and nails, we know nothing else.”

Every word was carefully chosen to cut off any possible connection. Her voice sounded steady, but her fingertips were trembling violently under her sleeves, shaking so hard they almost pierced her skin. She had to believe her own lie. She had to make this indifference into an impenetrable shield, or her inner defenses would crumble instantly.

Anna let out a light laugh, dry and restrained, with a cat-mousing mood in it. She lifted the photo, bringing it closer to Bianca. “Mrs. Rinaldi, you’re giving too much credit to the word ‘shipbuilding.’ The archives clearly state that your grandfather was one of the Grave Diggers. Under the waters of Venice, only they had the right to move relics that did not belong to them.”

The sentence was like a stone thrown into still water, the ripples instantly drowning out all of Bianca’s pretenses. The air around them seemed to freeze, even the distant cooing of doves outside felt far away and distorted.

Bianca felt a solid system of beliefs collapse in that moment. Her grandfather had strictly adhered to the Family Code in life, never revealing a single detail about the secrets beneath the water. Now, a stranger had exposed it all in a single line. She stared into Anna’s eyes, searching for even a trace of deception, but found only cold truth.

“You’re mistaken,” Bianca said in a low voice, her fingers digging into the ring behind her back. “The spirit of contract demands that we respect facts, not speculation.”

Her voice was as light as a falling leaf, but it carried the decisiveness of someone burning their boats.

Anna’s smile vanished. She leaned forward slightly, her tone turning urgent and warning. “With the European Union’s Cultural Heritage Protection Law about to tighten its grip, hiding history is the same as being an accomplice. I am merely a scholar fulfilling an academic contract. I have no intention of hurting anyone, but I cannot turn a blind eye to the truth. Silence is a far more dangerous trap than a lie.”

There was no longer any playfulness in her eyes. Instead, there was a tragic kind of seriousness. The sunlight cast mottled shadows on her face. She looked like a preacher one moment and a compassionate judge the next. Bianca felt her breathing quicken; the ring against her chest felt suddenly heavy, every gram of it a piece of evidence of historical sin.

Anna stood up, the hem of her coat cutting a clean arc through the air. She walked to the door without looking back and handed Bianca a sealed white envelope. There was no stamp on it, just a postmark in the corner. It was neat on the edges, but it radiated an air of finality.

Anna’s expression was complex, part apology, part unspeakable pity. It was a heavy trust, and a dangerous entrustment. Bianca reached out, her fingertips touching the rough surface of the envelope. For a second, a current of electricity shot from her fingers straight up to her forehead.

The door slowly closed. The click of the lock echoed in the room, sounding like the end of a fate. The interior returned to dead silence, with only the distant, faint pealing of the church bells outside, dull and long. Each toll seemed to strike directly on Bianca’s heart, reminding her of her isolated, helpless situation.

The fog began to lift. The city’s blurry outlines sharpened, and the sun became dazzling and cruel, illuminating every corner of the room without reservation. It also lit up the white envelope in Bianca’s hand. She stood frozen, staring at it, her heart pounding like a drum, hammering against her ribs.

She knew this was the only key to the abyss. Once she opened it, there was no going back.

Trembling, she tore open the envelope. The sound of the paper ripping was deafening in the silence. A folded slip of paper slid out. When she unfolded it, she saw her grandfather’s familiar, scrawled handwriting. It was a letter addressed to someone coded as The Brewer.

The ink was old, yet it looked as if it hadn’t fully dried, suggesting that this deal had not ended. The crisis was only now beginning to surface in the shadows. Bianca clutched the paper tight, her knuckles turning white. The church bells rang out again, long and mournful, as if playing a final requiem for a city that was about to sink.

She looked up at the mirror. The pale figure staring back at her no longer looked lost. Instead, her eyes reflected a clarity and fear that comes only from having been gazed upon by the abyss itself.