Chapter 3 – Storm Eyes
Florence, Present Day
The morning sun broke through the clouds in fractured gold, casting long beams over the garden behind the villa. Dew clung to the hedges like glass beads. Sofia had barely slept. The letter had kept her up all night—Beatrice's words looping in her mind like the refrain of a song she had never learned, but somehow remembered.
After breakfast, needing air, she followed the stone path beyond the villa, past the fig trees and into the orchard. The scent of rosemary and crushed earth followed her. According to her research, the Caravello stables had once stood beyond the garden wall. She wasn't sure what she expected to find—certainly not a man.
He was standing beside a chestnut horse, coaxing it gently to stillness. Broad-shouldered, lean, his sleeves rolled up to the elbows, he looked like he had stepped straight out of another century. His hair curled slightly at the collar. His hands moved with a quiet confidence—taming without force, speaking through touch and instinct.
When he looked up, their eyes met.
Sofia stopped.
His eyes were gray. Not flat, dull gray, but storm-gray—alive with shifting tones. Familiar, impossibly familiar.
He tilted his head. "You're not from around here," he said, voice edged with curiosity and something gentler beneath.
Sofia blinked, caught. "No. I mean—sort of. I'm here on a grant. Restoring Villa Caravello."
"Ah. So you're the historian."
"And you're...?"
"Marco Bianchi," he said, offering a hand. His handshake was firm but not cold.
"Sofia Leone."
"Nice to meet you, Sofia Leone," he said, and for a heartbeat, it felt like the world paused. Not in the dramatic way stories describe—but like something old had stirred, gently, with recognition.
"Do you work here?" she asked.
"I help run the riding school on the estate behind this one. I come through to check on the old stables. My grandfather used to train the Caravello horses, back when the family still had them."
"Your grandfather?" she echoed, surprised.
He shrugged. "Long line of stablehands, I suppose. Funny how some things don't change."
Something about that sentence gave her chills.
She looked past him, toward the overgrown stables in the distance. The stone walls were mostly intact. The roof sagged with ivy.
"I think I've seen this place," she murmured, barely conscious she was speaking aloud. "In a dream. There was a horse. White. And someone—standing just there. Waiting."
Marco frowned slightly. "That's strange."
"I know," Sofia said. "Sorry. That must sound ridiculous."
"Not really," he replied, with a half-smile that didn't quite reach his eyes. "Sometimes, places remember us before we remember them."
Their silence stretched between them, heavy but not uncomfortable.
Sofia shifted her bag higher on her shoulder. "I should get back. There's... a lot to read."
Marco nodded. "Let me know if you ever want a tour of the stables. I'll be around."
"Thanks," she said, already turning—but not before glancing back one last time.
And there it was again. That pull. That impossible sense of familiarity.
She didn't know yet what Beatrice had lost, or what Matteo had risked.
But something inside her was waking.