Autumn nights came early to Milan. By just past seven, the Rossi family estate was submerged in a velvety indigo. The house was so large you could hear your own heartbeat—especially in the deserted corridors, where footsteps on the century-old floorboards creaked loudly, echoing like the sigh of the house itself.
Sophia Rossi stood in the shadows outside the third-floor study, her back pressed against the cool marble pillar, clutching a silver candlestick that didn't need polishing. Downstairs in the dining room moments ago, she had watched as Elisa and Lorenzo, one after the other, ascended the stairs toward the old man's study. Not two minutes later, the butler, Luigi, followed with the old man's special cigar box and the bottle of thirty-year-old cognac, his face wearing the solemn, "momentous occasion" expression that grated on her nerves.
"What is it this time that can't be said in front of everyone?" The thought had struck her with a cold, gripping dread.
Dinner had felt off. Elisa ate very little, her cutlery making almost no sound against the plate, her eyes downcast, but the flicker of light beneath her lashes was the telltale sign of her mind churning over something significant. Lorenzo, by contrast, was calm, passing water and salt to Elisa twice, movements as natural as if performed a thousand times. Old Vittorio spoke even less than usual, only asking about the day's closing stock price, but his gaze was that of a hawk spotting prey worth the dive from its cliffside perch.
She had excused herself, claiming she needed to check if the roses for tomorrow's arrangements had arrived. A servant informed her they'd been in the greenhouse for hours, but she went anyway, lingering for a full ten minutes, the cloud of suspicion in her mind swelling. When she returned, the three were indeed gone.
Now, she stood here like a thief. Her silk slippers made no sound on the floor, her breathing shallow, but her ears were pricked like a hound's, straining to catch every syllable escaping the crack under the study door.
The door was massive, solid mahogany, soundproofed. But the old man had an incurable habit—he disliked the stuffiness of sealed rooms and liked to leave the door ajar by the slightest crack during serious discussions, calling it "letting the ideas breathe." That crack was now Sophia's peephole and listening device.
She couldn't hear clearly, only a muffled, indistinct murmur filtered by the heavy wood. The old man's voice was the deepest, like thunder rolling underground; Elisa's was clearer, carrying her usual blade-like precision; Lorenzo's was heard least, but whenever it came, it was steady as ballast.
A few words, like bubbles in water, stubbornly pierced the barrier and floated to her ears:
"…**a clean break**… must sweep away all of Carlo's lingering traces…"
"…not a patch-up, but a **rebirth**… from the very foundations…"
Elisa's voice rose a notch, gaining more penetration: "Grandfather, what we need is a **'Phoenix Rising,'** not a superficial renovation."
**Phoenix Rising.**
Sophia's heart skipped a beat, her fingers unconsciously tightening around the candlestick. Such audacity!
Then came Lorenzo's voice, not loud, but each word falling like a weight: "…the risk lies in **timing** and **absolute secrecy**. Any leak, at any stage, would turn the 'Phoenix' into a target."
The old man seemed to grunt. "The funds? A project of this scale is no child's play."
Then came a string of numbers. Muffled by the door, she couldn't catch the exact figure, but the syllable **'eight'** at the beginning, followed by the casually uttered yet monumental **'hundred million'** and **'euros,'** burned into her eardrum like a red-hot needle.
Eight hundred… million… euros?!
Her legs weakened. She leaned heavily against the pillar, the coldness seeping up her spine doing nothing to quell the sudden, venomous fire igniting in her chest. Eight hundred million! The old man was willing to give her *eight hundred million* to play with! When Massimo had wanted two million to invest in some tech company, the old man had ripped him to shreds, called him a dilettante! Why? Because she was the 'Jewelry Queen'? Because she could draw pretty, shiny stones?!
The muffled conversation continued, fragmented phrases drifting out:
"…**Switzerland**…**the Principality Atelier**…**must acquire**…"
"…**movement**…**lost technique**…**the only key**…"
Elisa's voice came through clearly again for a moment, charged with a decisive fervor: "…**three months**, at most three months, we must sever all ties with 'Aurora.' I already have a target for the new partnership. Berlin's 'Kern'—they understand how to tell a story to the highest circles…"
Switzerland. Atelier. Movement. Key. Three months. Aurora. Berlin's Kern.
These words crashed, spun, and interlocked chaotically in Sophia's mind. She was no business novice. Years of immersion in this family allowed her to understand what these fragments implied: an astonishingly vast new plan involving massive capital, a secret overseas acquisition, a core supply chain, and a complete realignment of partners. If it succeeded… she could almost envision the height Elisa would then occupy—a throne for a new era, one even the old man might struggle to reach.
And her son, Massimo? Yesterday, a servant had whispered that the young master had maxed out another card, buying a champagne tower at a nightclub worth a typical family's annual income, all to impress some fledgling model.
The fangs of jealousy sank deep into her heart at that moment. The venom wasn't sudden; it had accumulated for too long—since that cold afternoon her firstborn drowned, since her husband Andrea retreated further into silence and his books, since her father-in-law Vittorio's gaze settled more and more on Elisa, since each of Massimo's failures deepened her despair… festering and fermenting over the years, finally breaching all dams of reason on this night she heard "eight hundred million euros."
The conversation inside seemed to be winding down. She heard chairs shifting, the old man's low voice giving a final instruction, the key words "…**must sleep in darkness**…**a leak is suicide**…"
Then, footsteps approached the door.
Sophia flinched like a startled cat, whirling around and slipping swiftly and silently into the shadow of the arched doorway leading to the small sitting room, holding her breath.
The study door opened, spilling a slab of light into the hall. Elisa and Lorenzo emerged, both bearing the tiredness that follows intense concentration, yet their eyes were bright. They didn't speak, simply walked side by side toward the stairs. Lorenzo's hand came up to hover lightly, almost imperceptibly, at the small of Elisa's back—a gesture so subtle it barely constituted a touch, yet it spoke volumes of a deep, unspoken understanding and默契.
Sophia watched their silhouettes disappear around the stairwell corner. The image was excruciating. Only when the sound of a car engine starting and fading away rose from below did she emerge from the shadows.
The study door, as she suspected, had not been fully closed. The old man was likely still inside, pondering over his cigar. Light glowed from within, but all was quiet.
A bolder, more reckless idea coiled around her like a vine.
She knew Elisa had a habit: after major verbal briefings to the old man, she sometimes left a concise written summary for his later reference, especially when complex data or timelines were involved. And in Elisa's own study, before the final digital version was locked, there were often more drafts, notes, pages scrawled with ideas.
Those pages, unlike the final encrypted, digitally tracked documents, were more 'raw.' More 'vulnerable.'
Sophia's heart hammered against her ribs. She listened intently. From the old man's study came the faintest rustle of turning pages. He wouldn't emerge anytime soon.
She moved like a true phantom, gliding down the corridor to the door of Elisa's personal study. It was locked, but she had a key—as the lady of the house, she had master keys to most rooms. She had never before contemplated using it, but now, as she drew out the small, cold key, her hand was unnervingly steady.
The key slid silently into the lock, turned with a soft click.
The door opened. Darkness inside, only the city's perpetual neon glow from the window outlining the furniture in vague shapes. The air held the faint, cool scent of Elisa's perfume, mingled with paper, ink, and polished wood.
She didn't turn on the main light, only twisted the switch on the small reading lamp on the desk. A dim, yellow circle of light fell precisely onto the surface of the wide walnut desk.
The desktop was uncharacteristically untidy. This deviation from Elisa's usual meticulous order showed just how much mental energy the 'Phoenix Rising' plan consumed, allowing the 'battlefield' to occasionally remain on her desk.
Several heavy jewelry annuals and business analysis reports lay open, alongside printed sheets filled with annotations. Sophia's gaze swept over them like a searchlight, quickly filtering out the irrelevant. Then she saw it—under a stack of files at the desk's corner, several loose A4 sheets, covered in handwriting and casual sketches.
She recognized Elisa's script—sharp, swift, occasionally breaking into the fluid sketches of a designer.
She pulled them out swiftly, greedily yet fearfully scanning them under the dim light.
Sophia's breathing grew ragged. In the lamplight, half her face was in shadow, half illuminated, but her eyes shone with a frightening intensity, like will-o'-the-wisps. These fragments were more concrete, more lethal than what she'd overheard!
She didn't dare linger, her ears straining for any sound from the corridor. With trembling fingers, she pulled from her pocket the mobile phone she'd brought for this purpose—a cheap, disposable one registered under false information. She switched on the camera, aiming it at the pages, her hand shaking so badly she could barely focus.
Quickly! Quickly!
She pressed the shutter button rapidly in succession. The faint *click-click* sounded deafening in the silence. She didn't dare photograph everything, only the most critical parts: the line with the atelier's full name and 'valuation,' the block with '820 million euros' and 'December 15th,' and the fragment mentioning 'Phoenix Core' and 'Guardian of the Legacy.'
Once done, she shoved the papers back under the stack as if disposing of hot coals, trying to arrange them as she remembered. Then she switched off the lamp, plunging the study back into gloom.
She slipped out, closing and locking the door softly behind her. As she returned the key to her pocket, she leaned back against the cool wood of the door, releasing a long, soundless breath. Only then did she feel the cold sweat soaking through the back of her dress, chilling her skin.
But her heart was burning, scorched by a flame mingling terror, guilt, and a twisted sense of triumph.
She had it. Incomplete, but enough. 'Principality Atelier,' '820 million,' 'December 15th,' 'Aurora severance,' 'Berlin's Kern'—these words were like poisoned daggers. She didn't need to know the complete shape of the 'Phoenix.' She just needed to know where to strike to make this magnificent bird, laden with infinite expectations before it could even take flight, bleed, cry out, and perhaps… fall.
Back in the gloom of her own sitting room, Sophia did not turn on the lights. She curled into the deepest corner of the sofa, clutching the disposable phone. Its screen illuminated her pale, distorted face. She scrolled through the blurry yet sufficiently clear photos, over and over.
Outside, the Milan night sky held no stars, only thick clouds foretelling a coming storm. The estate was peaceful; servants were finishing their final tidying, her husband Andrea was likely still in his library, and Massimo… who knew in what den of frivolity he now resided.
No one knew that beneath the calm of this ancient house, a seed of poison potent enough to unleash a tidal wave had just been sown. The sower hid in the darkness, savoring the bitter taste of betrayal and the thrilling ache of destruction, searching for a fissure through which to erupt—for the sake of her disappointing son, and for the volcano of 'resentment' that had smoldered within her for over twenty years.