The Ledger and the Ghost

The hotel was only a few blocks away.

Bellanti had stayed there before he died. He met someone there, someone who might have been his last lead.

Rome was never silent. Even at night, when the tourists had long drifted back to their hotels and the street vendors had packed up their stalls, the city breathed.

The low murmur of a distant conversation. The hum of a passing Vespa. The soft, uneven footsteps of someone walking over ancient cobblestones.

Jessica stepped out of the taxi and into Trastevere’s narrow streets, the scent of rain clinging to the air. The past lived here, not just in the ruins and the cracked facades of old buildings, but in the spaces between the present.

She adjusted the strap of her bag and started walking, her boots echoing softly against the stone. Tonight, she was chasing a ghost. And now, Jessica was going to follow his steps.

* * *

The hotel was small, the kind of place that didn’t ask questions, where people paid in cash and left before sunrise.

Jessica pushed through the heavy wooden door and stepped inside. The lobby smelled of old paper and cheap cologne. The clerk behind the desk barely glanced at her.

She walked up, resting her hands on the counter. “I need a room,” she said in Italian.

The clerk barely looked up. “How many nights?”

Jessica gave a faint smile. “That depends.”

Now he looked up. She slid a folded €50 bill across the counter.

“I’m looking for someone who stayed here a few years ago.”

The clerk stared at the bill. Then at her. He was about to refuse. She could see it in his face.

So she leaned in slightly, lowering her voice.

“Marco Bellanti,” she murmured. “Five years ago. He had a meeting here before he disappeared.”

The clerk’s jaw tightened. That was enough.

Jessica kept her expression even. “You remember him.”

The clerk didn’t answer. But he didn’t push the money away, either. Jessica pulled out a second bill and set it next to the first.

Now he sighed. He glanced toward the hallway, as if checking to see if they were alone before taking the money.

The clerk pulled out a dusty ledger, flipping through the pages until he landed on the right date.

Jessica leaned in, scanning the entries.

Bellanti’s name was there. Checked in. Checked out. And beneath it was another name.

Giovanni Ricci.

Jessica frowned. It wasn’t familiar. But there was something off about it. It was too clean. Too common. The kind of name someone chose when they didn’t want to be found.

Jessica glanced at the clerk. “Was he alone?”

The man hesitated.

Then, reluctantly, “No.”

Jessica’s pulse quickened. “Who was with him?”

The clerk shook his head. “I don’t know. I just remember…” He hesitated.

Jessica leaned in. “What?”

The clerk lowered his voice. “All I remember is the coat... and the crest. The gold seal, Vatican kind. Guy didn’t talk much, just looked like he knew everything.”

Jessica’s stomach twisted.

The Vatican had always been good at keeping secrets. It had survived centuries of war, political upheaval, and scandal because it understood the one rule that mattered: Control the past, and you control the future. Jessica had seen what institutional memory looked like. It wasn’t sacred. It was surgical. Rewrite the past just right, and no one remembers the blood on the floor.

Pasolini had understood that. That was why he had turned history into film, stripping away the myths, forcing people to see the ugly truths beneath the surface. And if Bellanti had met with someone from the Vatican just before he died, that meant they had been watching, too.

Jessica’s mind turned. Bellanti had gone looking for Orlando Sacchetti, the man who had disappeared the same night as Pasolini. If a Vatican official had been involved, it meant one of two things: either The Church had been covering something up, or someone inside had wanted the truth to come out. Either way, she was going to find out.

Jessica straightened, rolling her shoulders.

She needed to move carefully. She had followed enough trails to know when the ground beneath her was starting to crack.

She pulled out her phone and sent a single message to Olivia: Found something. Might need help soon.

Then, she slipped out of the hotel, disappearing into the streets.The rain had stopped, but Rome was still breathing. And somewhere beneath it, something was remembering her back.