EPISODE 7: THE UNSCRIPTED LIFE ## CHAPTER 1: A PRIVATE TASTE The late afternoon sun, which has been warming the dust motes dancing over the main courtyard, suddenly seems too bright, too loud for this particular corner of the palazzo. Dante does not announce his intention; he simply turns from the long mahogany table where we were dissecting the soil acidity levels, and walks toward a massive, unmarked oak door situated in the shadow of a seldom-used tapestry depicting a boar hunt from the 1700s. The wood grain on that door is darker than anything else in the house—a deep, wet blackness that absorbs light. He pauses just before it, his hand resting on the cold brass handle. It feels cool and strangely resistant under my fingertips, as if the metal itself has been waiting here for centuries to be touched by someone other than staff. He does not look at me when he speaks; his gaze is fixed on the tarnished crest above the door—a stylized vine encircling a single olive leaf. “This,” he murmurs, the sound barely cutting through the ambient quiet of the great room, “is where we keep things that do not wish to be seen.” He opens it slowly. The hinges groan—a deep, resonant complaint that sounds less like machinery and more like the...