The Line That Can’t Be Uncrossed

The train station smelled like damp concrete and old tobacco, the air thick with the sound of distant announcements crackling over the intercom. Jessica stood near the platform, her back against a graffiti-stained pillar, staring down at the notebook in her hands.

Orlando Sacchetti’s last words didn’t feel like evidence. It felt like the last gasp of someone who knew he wouldn’t live to finish the story.

She had read them twice already, flipping through the uneven, desperate scrawl. There were names. Places. Half-finished thoughts, as if he had been writing faster than he could think. But there were gaps. Holes in the story—things that didn’t quite fit.

Jessica exhaled slowly, tapping her fingers against the cover.

She could go to Rome alone. She had enough leads to start knocking on the right doors, pushing into the right corners. But this wasn’t her kind of mystery. This wasn’t about surveillance footage or tailing a suspect. This was about history. Erased history. And there was only one person who knew how to uncover something like that.

Jessica pulled out her phone. She hesitated for a moment, her thumb hovering over the screen. She wasn’t used to asking for help, especially not from someone who knew how to read her silences too well. She gave in and made the call. The line rang twice before Olivia answered.

“Jess?” Her voice was sharp, like she had been mid-thought when she picked up. “Where the hell are you?”

Jessica exhaled. “San Remo.”

Olivia paused before answering, “Okay. That’s unexpected.”

Jessica smirked faintly. “Not for me.”

She could hear the faint clatter of keys. Olivia was already looking something up.

“I take it this isn’t a vacation,” Olivia said.

Jessica glanced down at the notebook in her hands.

“No,” she said. “It’s about Pasolini.”

The line went silent for a moment. Olivia spoke in a low, flat and steady voice.“The filmmaker?”

Jessica nodded, even though Olivia couldn’t see her. “And a journalist named Marco Bellanti. He was killed five years ago, chasing a lead that got him erased.”

Jessica ran a thumb over the notebook’s spine. “I just found out what he was chasing.”

Another beat of silence. Then, Olivia’s voice sharpened. “I’m on my laptop. Tell me everything.”

* * *

Jessica found a quiet spot near the station entrance and started talking.

She told Olivia about the bookshop, about the old man, about the notebook that Bellanti had found before he died.She kept her voice low, steady. But she knew Olivia could hear the weight in her words. The shift from curiosity to something heavier.

By the time she was finished, Olivia was already typing.

“I don’t like this,” Olivia muttered. “Pasolini’s murder has been a conspiracy theory for decades. You’re telling me Bellanti found something solid?”

 Jessica stared at the notebook in her hands.

“I think he found a witness.”

Olivia’s fingers stopped moving.

Jessica exhaled. “An actor. Orlando Sacchetti. He was there the night Pasolini was murdered. Then he disappeared.”

“Vanished,” Olivia echoed.

Jessica nodded. “Bellanti went looking for him. And now he’s dead, too.”

Jessica could hear the faint click of Olivia biting her nail—her tell when she was processing something fast.

“This isn’t just about Pasolini, then,” Olivia murmured. “It’s about whatever he was trying to expose.”

Jessica smirked. “That’s what I was hoping you could tell me.”

Jessica could hear rapid typing, a few muttered curses.

Olivia was digging. Jessica waited, watching the rain slide down the glass windows of the station entrance. Finally, Olivia let out a slow breath.

“Okay,” she said. “You’re right. Sacchetti wasn’t just some random extra. I found a few old photos. He was in the background of Pasolini’s inner circle more than once. There’s a picture of them at a café in Rome, maybe a few weeks before Pasolini was killed.”

Jessica straightened. That was something.

“There’s more,” Olivia continued. “Sacchetti wasn’t just an actor. He was a film archivist. A researcher. He wasn’t just in Pasolini’s movies, he helped him find the historical records Pasolini used for his films.”

Jessica exhaled slowly.

Pasolini’s films had always been filled with historical references, political warnings, and hidden messages. He had been obsessed with exposing the way power functioned—how it corrupted, how it consumed.

If Sacchetti had helped him with that, maybe he knew more than anyone realized.

Jessica pressed the phone closer to her ear. “Where do I start?”

A pause. Then, Olivia’s voice was certain. “Rome.”

Jessica nodded. She had already expected that. But Olivia wasn’t finished.

“There’s one more thing,” Olivia said. “I was looking at Bellanti’s last movements. His bank records, his phone logs—anything that wasn’t erased.”

Jessica waited.

“I think he had a contact in Rome,” Olivia said. “Someone he met a few times before he died.”

Jessica frowned. “Who?”

“I don’t know,” Olivia admitted. “But I found one last transaction before he disappeared. A hotel in Trastevere.”

Jessica sat back. Trastevere was the old quarter, the kind of place where people could slip between the cracks.

Jessica tapped the notebook against her knee. “You should come,” she said.

She hadn’t planned on saying it. But now that the words were out, she realized that she didn’t want to do this alone.

There was silence on the other end. Then, Olivia sighed. “I was really hoping you wouldn’t say that.”

Jessica smirked. “And yet, you’re already booking a flight.”

More typing.Then a pause.

Jessica frowned. “What?”

“I don’t like this,” Olivia admitted. “People don’t disappear by accident. If someone has been burying this story for nearly fifty years, they won’t let you dig it back up.”

Jessica exhaled. She already knew that.

“I’ll meet you in Rome,” Olivia muttered. “Don’t get killed before I get there.”

Jessica smiled faintly.

“No promises.”