CHAPTER 4

The photograph hadn’t left her coat pocket.

Not even when she bathed. Not even when she slept.

Because whoever took it had gotten inside the Benediction chamber. Past blood-bound locks. Past tomb-thick silence. Past the threshold that not even memory dared to revisit.

That wasn’t just surveillance. That was heresy.

Sacred, forbidden, Rossetti knowledge had been breached and the breach was personal.

Whoever possessed the image… was close.

Too close.

The following morning, Maria sat stiffly at the Rossetti dining table, every muscle primed for war beneath her black silk sleeves. Her tea cooled untouched before her, wreathed in faint steam. She hadn’t drunk from the porcelain in years. She didn’t trust it.

Around her, the Rossettis circled like old dogs that sensed a storm coming.

“The prodigal ghost returns,” muttered Uncle Gaetano, swirling his espresso like it was someone’s blood.

“She always did have timing like a blade,” Aunt Leonora added, examining the tip of her fork.

The twins giggled. Cousins, but hardly children anymore. Reared like wolves in pearls.

Maria ignored them all.

Across the long marble table, Victoria stared at her with something unreadable. Not quite malice. Not yet forgiveness. Something sharpened by memory and softened by fear.

“What happened the night he died?” Maria said, breaking the hush like a dropped glass.

Chairs scraped slightly. Forks froze.

Uncle Gaetano arched a bushy brow. “You mean before or after he screamed?”

Aunt Leonora’s hand twitched. “Gaetano”

He smirked, leaning back. “my brother died screaming. Woke the dogs. Woke the house.”

“No one saw who was with him?” Maria asked evenly.

A pause.

The kind that tastes like lies and powdered shame.

“No one,” Victoria said, voice low. “But maybe you did.”

Maria’s eyes narrowed. “Excuse me?”

“You disappear for two years. Show up just in time for a death and a Benediction.” Victoria leaned forward slightly, not enough for the others to hear. “You’re not the only Rossetti who knows how to slip through walls.”

Maria clenched her jaw. “What are you implying?”

Vittoria’s smile didn’t reach her eyes. “I’m not implying. I’m warning you.”

That was it. The veil lifted. The message, clean and precise:

Stay out of this. Or I’ll burn you alive.

Maria stood. Calmly. Slowly. “I’ll be praying for you, cousin.”

Victoria raised her teacup. “Pray harder for yourself.”

That night, the halls of the west wing groaned beneath her steps.

No Rossetti slept here anymore.

No one even cleaned it.

The walls bore spot scars. The tapestries still smelled faintly of burned rosewater and myrrh. The aftermath of the fire that took her mother was frozen in these stones.

And behind those stones The Vault.

A hidden reliquary buried under generations of superstition and threat. The Rossettis stored their worst secrets there. Artefacts that whispered madness. Letters that bled when read aloud. Blades that knew the taste of Rossetti blood.

And one item more sacred than the rest: the bone ring.

Her father had worn it the night he died. The family claimed it burned with him.

But the photograph said otherwise.

She counted the cracks in the marble: fifth stone from the base, fourth torch, tap once, twist left.

Click.

The wall released with a sigh.

The Vault’s breath smelled like rusted secrets.

It was darker than memory, deeper than silence. She stepped inside with only a candle, the flame jittering against the gloom.

A pedestal waited at the center. Sculpted like a claw. Bone-white, veined with old sigils.

And stop it

The ring.

It wasn’t just bone. It was a Rossetti bone. You could see the glyphs inked into the marrow. No artisan could fake that. No thief would dare.

She reached.

Then stopped.

Dust had been disturbed.

Just slightly. Enough to reveal a recent touch.

Not hers.

Someone else had been here.

Her hand hovered. Inches from the artifact. Inches from fate.

Why had they returned it?

She looked around slowly. Every corner of the vault was empty. No footprints in the ash, no voice in the shadows.

Only that lingering sense of wrongness.

Then she saw it barely a sliver, half-hidden beneath the pedestal.

A torn corner of fabric.

Black silk. Rossetti-made.

Someone had brushed the altar too closely. Left part of their sleeve behind.

Maria took it carefully. Tucked it into her coat.

And when she turned, the vault door slammed shut.

She didn’t scream.

Screaming wouldn’t help.

Instead, she placed her candle on the floor and knelt, palms against the cold stone, listening.

Her mother once said the house had ears. That it whispered warnings to those willing to bleed for them.

And in the stillness, Maria felt the hum.

Not in her ears. In her bones.

The house was alive. And angry.

She pressed her hand to the floor. Whispered the Rossetti invocation:

“Bound in blood, silence unbroken. Grant me passage. Grant me reckoning.”

A beat.

Then the wall cracked open again.

It let her go.

Barely.

She emerged from the west wing with the bone ring in her hand and her mind heavy with names that hadn’t been spoken in years.

Names like Giancarlo. Elena. Antonio.

Because now, she was sure.

The ring was never lost.

It had been passed.

And whoever passed it on… still walked these halls.

She’s not the first one to search for the bone ring.

Someone already found it… and put it back.

But why?