The sound of hooves on the wet gravel. Torchlight through the rain.

Korso (the elder) swallowed. “If you had not come, we would have remained ignorant.”

The grandsons stood frozen. The tutor placed a hand on each of their shoulders.

“You have learned the subjunctive mood,” he said quietly. “Now learn the conditional. If I had not come … finish the sentence.”

The first knock came not at dawn, but at the third hour of night, during a thunderstorm that turned the gravel of the villa’s driveway into a river of shattered moonlight.