Two days later, the crisp parchment caught Niccolò’s eye, tucked amidst the dog-eared treatises on geometry in his private study. His fingers, usually so precise, fumbled slightly as he drew it out.
‘Meet me in the small annex library before the afternoon lecture.’ The elegant script was familiar, though the message itself held a jarring informality. He frowned, considering the summons. A confession? The thought was fleeting, immediately dismissed. This was Volterra, not some schoolyard folly. Such open overtures were rare, and certainly not from the quarter he suspected.
Still, the note lodged itself in his mind, a peculiar burr. He found himself dressing with a certain meticulous care, despite the gnawing irritation. He wasn't particularly eager for the day's lecture on architectural perspectives; his own understanding far surpassed the master's. Perhaps this diversion was welcome.
Niccolò made his way through the hushed corridors of the Moretti palazzo, the polished marble cool beneath his worn boots. The annex library, a small, rarely used chamber near the north tower, was precisely the kind of place one sought when discretion was paramount. He pushed open the heavy oak door.
Lorenzo sat hunched on a low stool amidst stacks of neglected folios, his slight frame almost swallowed by the shadows. His dark hair, usually a wild tangle, was smoothed down, almost damp. He nibbled at a nail, his eyes wide and unfocused until Niccolò’s entrance startled him.
“Lorenzo?” Niccolò’s voice was sharper than he intended, a ripple of unease stirring within him.
Lorenzo scrambled up, waving a hand with that familiar, almost childish, eagerness. His smile, though bright, felt forced, a fragile thing stretched over an unspoken tension. Niccolò’s brow tightened. That smile, so unsuited to the sanatorium’s pallor, always grated on him.
“What is it? Why here?” Niccolò’s gaze swept the room, an instinctual glance for prying eyes. He did not want to be seen with his brother, especially not in such a clandestine setting. Not now, not with the lingering memory of Vittoria’s words, her icy judgment.
Lorenzo fidgeted, twisting plump fingers, his eyes darting to the dusty shelves, the vaulted ceiling, anywhere but Niccolò’s face. “Ah, I… I have something I want to say…”
“Then say it.” Niccolò’s patience, always a finite resource, was already thinning. He wished to conclude this absurd meeting and rejoin the world of rational thought, of maps and measurements. He had always managed Lorenzo’s needs with a measured distance, enough to appear dutiful, never enough to become entangled. Yet here he was, drawn into the very web he sought to avoid.
Oblivious to Niccolò’s impatience, Lorenzo continued to bite his thumb, his small mouth opening and closing soundlessly, a fish out of water. Indecision warred with a strange, fierce resolve on his pale features. Each time he seemed ready to speak, his lips clamped shut.
This deliberate, maddening hesitation stirred Niccolò’s irritation into a simmering resentment. He had never truly liked Lorenzo, not in the easy way brothers were supposed to. Every gesture, every nervous tic, seemed amplified into an unbearable annoyance. Perhaps it was his own fractured temper, frayed by the recent weeks, that made him so sensitive.
“Look, I apologize, but I have obligations. Can you simply say what you mean?” Niccolò’s head throbbed, a dull, persistent ache behind his eyes. He wasn’t merely angry at Lorenzo; a wider, formless frustration simmered beneath his skin. He wanted to lash out, to strike at the invisible currents that dictated his life.
Just as Lorenzo seemed to gather his resolve, a tremor running through his small frame, the heavy oak door creaked open. Both brothers turned, their gazes locking with Vittoria Bellini. She stood framed in the doorway, panting slightly, her magnificent emerald gown rustling around her. She had been running.
Niccolò’s chest tightened, a suffocating clench. He pictured her, the powerful Vittoria Bellini, rushing through the palazzo, seeking out Lorenzo. A cold dread seeped into his bones.
Vittoria’s eyes, usually cool and calculating, burned with a terrifying intensity. They swept from Lorenzo to Niccolò, then back again, her expression fierce, possessive. Her fists, clenched at her sides, opened and closed, small white knots against the dark fabric of her gloves.
“What are you doing here with him?” Her voice, though low, vibrated with barely suppressed fury. It wasn’t clear to whom the question was addressed, yet Niccolò felt the full weight of her accusation.
Beneath his outward composure, Niccolò’s insides twisted. The silence stretched, taut and suffocating. Then, Vittoria’s gaze settled on him, unwavering. The way she looked at him – it was unbearable. A hot wave of shame washed over him.
“What is this, Contessa Bellini?” Niccolò forced the words out, his voice thin.
*Please, please. Do not look at me like that.* Blame Lorenzo for calling him here. Why were her eyes, those same eyes that had once held a glimmer of respect for his intellect, now fixed on him with such resentment? He was dragged into this, an unwitting pawn.
Her burning eyes remained on him. Niccolò knew those were not the eyes of passion. They were the eyes of someone consumed by rage, by a jealous, maddening possessiveness. It was the face of a woman deranged by the need for control – a face Niccolò found both terrifying and pitiable.
“Why are you here with him!” Her voice rose, raw with emotion.
*You look pathetic, Contessa.* So pathetic. Niccolò glared back, a defiant spark in his own eyes. Yet, somehow, he felt the pitiful one was not her, but himself. Before he could process the thought, Vittoria’s long strides carried her across the short distance. The world shook.
Niccolò couldn’t even grasp what had happened. His body toppled, a jarring thud against the hard floor. Only then did his mind replay the blur of movement.
“No…”
She hit him. Vittoria Bellini, the Contessa, had struck him. Lying on the ground, Niccolò touched his cheek, his fingers trembling. The sharp sting, the disbelief. How could she… How could she do this to him?
“N-Nico!” Lorenzo’s voice was a choked sob. He scurried towards Niccolò, but Vittoria screamed like a woman possessed.
“You worm! Stay away from him! You swore, you promised you would not seek him out!” Her face, a mask of furious rage, terrified Lorenzo. He recoiled, his face turning an ashen grey.
“I-I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”
“You promised! You swore on your mother’s grave, damn you!”
Lorenzo took a hesitant step back, tears welling in his eyes. But no, he wasn’t the one who should be crying. Niccolò was.
Tears pricked at Niccolò’s own eyes, hot and humiliating. Before they could spill, Vittoria cursed violently, a rough sound entirely out of place in her noble bearing. She seized Lorenzo by the arm, dragging him from the room. The annex door swung shut with a thud, leaving Niccolò sprawled alone.
He lay there, staring at the closed door. A sliver of late afternoon sun sliced through the crack beneath it, illuminating dust motes dancing in the air. Something inside him finally gave way. The dam holding back his emotions burst, and tears flowed freely, wetting the cold stone floor.
Niccolò hated everything. Lorenzo, who had drawn him into this squalid drama. Vittoria, who had humiliated him, struck him. He wished they would both vanish, dissolve into the dust. He felt miserable, reduced to a mere bystander in their twisted, grotesque dance.
He eventually rose, his cheek throbbing, already beginning to swell. The afternoon lecture was forgotten. Instead, he penned a terse note to his senior tutor, citing a sudden malaise and requesting leave from his duties. His swollen, crimson face, when he finally glimpsed it in a silvered mirror, would make his excuse believable. No one would pry.
—
Niccolò collapsed onto his bed, finding a brief, fitful sleep. When he woke, his face was puffy, a blossoming bruise staining his cheekbone. Out of habit, he reached for his correspondence box. Amidst the formal invitations and requests for consultations, he found a sealed note, distinct in its elegant simplicity. It was from Seraphina Rossi. They rarely exchanged such direct messages, usually communicating through formal channels due to her position in the Duke’s inner circle. The sight of her hand, however, reminded him of Vittoria’s presence in those circles. *Damn it all.*
If it were anyone else, he would have ignored it. But Seraphina was a rising star in Volterran society, a confidante to powerful figures. He could not afford to slight her.
‘Niccolò, where did you vanish to today? The lecture was… uninspiring without your usual contributions.’ The light mockery in her tone was typical. He clicked his tongue and replied belatedly, his hand stiff, his reply brief.
‘Alas, a sudden indisposition. Nothing of consequence.’ He deliberately kept it vague. The thought of anyone discovering that Vittoria had struck him was unbearably humiliating. And all because of Lorenzo.
‘Are you well?’ Seraphina’s second note, delivered by another quick-footed page, was unusually concise, carrying an unexpected note of concern. *What the hell?* The strange feeling made him shove the correspondence box away, the fine paper rustling.
Hours later, a fresh wave of sadness washed over him. Even Seraphina’s message, though kind, felt suffocating. Other, more formal inquiries from academic colleagues had arrived, but none of it was what he truly desired. No one searching for him included Vittoria. He must be mad to even conceive such a notion. Yet, he consoled himself, thinking this was the fate of anyone caught in the maddening currents of noble patronage and tangled affections.
Even knowing the bitter truth, he lay there, a fool, doing what he did best – closing his eyes and turning a blind eye to reality. *Perhaps Lorenzo and I are not so different,* he thought, a strange, twisted, grotesque thought. A selfish, wicked, childish hope intertwined with it. While lying on his bed, staring at the frescoed ceiling, another message arrived, slipped under his door by some discreet sanatorium attendant. It was from Lorenzo, a clumsy drawing on a scrap of paper, the words scrawled in an unsteady hand.
‘Nico, are you very sick?’ Niccolò frowned. Who among his peers would dare call him Nico? Not Seraphina. Before he could ponder further, a follow-up note arrived, relentlessly, infuriatingly.
‘I’m sorry. Truly sorry. It’s all because of me.’
‘I’m so sorry.’
‘Please, forgive me.’
Whether it was three words or four, each scrawled apology made him want to scream. He crumpled the notes in his fist, throwing them to the floor in frustration. How did this wretched boy get these messages to him? Lorenzo wasn't allowed a free hand with pages, let alone free movement from the sanatorium.
Then it hit him. *Oh.* He had called him before, hadn’t he? That day at the sanatorium, during his desperate search for Lorenzo. He had given his attendant his name and instruction. No doubt Lorenzo had remembered, perhaps even intercepted one of the discreet notes from the staff. Niccolò cursed his own idiocy and let out an angry sigh. To vent his frustration, he pounded his fists against the mattress for a while until he was too tired to continue and eventually drifted back to sleep. Just before his thoughts completely faded, one last message, unwritten but clear, lingered in his mind.
*Please, don’t hate me.*
*Funny,* Niccolò thought. *I’ve already hated you for months.*
The next morning, Niccolò woke to a face swollen like a baked quince.
—
Niccolò absented himself from his mapping duties. No matter how committed a scholar he was, he wasn’t so fanatical as to appear in the public chambers of the palazzo with a face like this.
The palazzo’s cook prepared a light broth and soft bread for his lunch, sent up by a quiet servant. As he ate, the servant, an old woman named Marietta, couldn’t resist a soft scolding, telling him to be more careful. Lunch itself was nothing special—the broth bland, the bread almost tasteless. He swallowed it all without much appetite.
As Niccolò set his spoon down and reached for a glass of wine, Marietta came to clear the dishes. Plate in one hand, she spoke softly.
“Signor Moretti, you have a visitor.”
“What?” Niccolò’s heart fluttered, a sudden, foolish leap. A friend. The word, so rarely applied to him, held an undeniable allure. Before he could even identify the emotion, his mind had already begun to conjure an image of who might be waiting at the door.
Could it be… Vittoria? It seemed a wild fantasy, utterly impossible given her anger. Yet, it wasn’t entirely so. Few people from the ducal court ever visited his more secluded chambers. Among the powerful, only a handful even knew the precise location of his study. If it was her, then she must have come to apologize, finally overcome by guilt for her outburst. Vittoria had never struck him before, not once. Yes, she must be worried, upset by her own actions. A small, desperate hope ignited within him.
“Yes, please, admit them,” he heard himself say. The fantasy solidified into a certainty. Even though he chastised himself for being so impossibly naïve, he couldn’t help but feel a small, perverse sense of satisfaction. Despite everything, he was still important to her in some way. That thought filled him with an inexplicable, fragile warmth.
He quickly turned toward the entrance to his study, his pace picking up with an uncharacteristic eagerness, the swelling in his cheek momentarily forgotten.
But the person waiting there wasn’t who he had expected.
“Niccolò, what in the name of the Saints?”
Seraphina Rossi’s sharp-featured face greeted him with a playfully critical smirk, her hands resting on her hips. She carried no bag of snacks, but the scent of her expensive perfume, jasmine and sandalwood, filled the air. As soon as she saw his face, though, her expression changed, her eyes widening in an unusually serious gaze.
“What the hell happened to your face?” Her voice was hushed, almost shocked.
Niccolò’s knees almost buckled from the sudden, crushing letdown. His heart, which had soared so high, plummeted to the floor of his chest. *How does Seraphina even know where my private study is?*
“I… I tripped,” Niccolò replied flatly, the lie tasting like ash in his mouth.
Seraphina frowned, twisting her lips in that way she always did before delivering a pointed remark. “You really are an oaf, aren’t you?”
Niccolò didn’t bother to argue. He simply rubbed his swollen cheek, feeling the dull ache blossom. Embarrassment surged, a hot flush spreading across his neck as he recalled his earlier anticipation. He was such an idiot. Vittoria Bellini didn’t think of him as someone important enough to apologize to. And here he was, wagging his tail like a hopeful, foolish hound—a complete moron.
“Here, you’ll need this.” Seraphina extended a small, silk-wrapped package. Niccolò accepted it and unwrapped the cloth, revealing a chilled compress of lavender and chamomile. The cool sensation was immediate, a sharp contrast to the burning shame within him.
“...Thank you,” he murmured.
“Figures. You look like you’ve been brawling with a donkey. What are you even doing cooped up here?”
“What do you think? I came to check on you. Mind if I come in?” Without waiting for a reply, her long, elegant legs carried her past him and into the study.
“Where’s your salon?” she asked, already peering at his maps, his drafting tools.
“Hey, where are you going?” Niccolò stammered, surprised by her brashness.
“Where else? There’s nowhere else to go in your little fortress here.”
Niccolò had no comeback for that. She was right. His quarters were spartan, designed for work, not social calls. Feeling awkward, he followed Seraphina, who seemed oddly intent on inspecting every corner of his meticulous, solitary space. Each curious glance felt like a further invasion, a spotlight on his humiliation.