Previously on Renzo: After Hours:
The confrontation on the Pont de la Tournelle ended with Marcel dead, the red ledger sinking into the Seine, and Stephan vanishing into the fog. Renzo, Xander, and Sebastian escaped Paris—scarred, unshackled, and uncertain what came next. But stories don’t end with freedom. They begin again where memory refuses to fade.
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Florence met them with sunlight that looked older than time.
The city had the color of old frescoes—ochre, gold, and rust bleeding together like something divinely unfinished.
They took a small apartment near Piazza Santo Spirito, above a florist whose roses opened only after midnight. For the first time in months, they woke to the sound of bells instead of sirens.
Renzo stood at the window that morning, camera in hand. He wasn’t taking pictures—just watching how light moved across the tiled roofs. The way it caught on the ridges reminded him of film reels: thin, fragile, yet immortal.
Sebastian came up behind him, draping an arm around his shoulders. “You look like a man waiting for someone to tell him it’s over.”
Renzo smiled faintly. “Maybe I’m waiting to believe it.”
Xander, from the doorway, said, “Then don’t wait. Believe it now.”
He set a package on the table—thick envelope, foreign postmark.
Renzo frowned. “We haven’t told anyone we’re here.”
“That’s why I opened it carefully,” Xander said.
Inside, a single photograph. Printed on archival paper.
Three figures on a bridge, dawn breaking behind them.
Their silhouettes unmistakable—Renzo, Xander, Sebastian. The scene from Paris.
On the back, an inscription written in the same elegant hand that once signed every invoice at the atelier:
For the new exhibit—Reflections of the Living. Congratulations. — S.
Sebastian cursed softly. “He’s still alive.”
Renzo ran his fingers along the edge of the print. The surface was warm, as though freshly developed. “And watching.”
Xander unfolded a second paper hidden behind it—a gallery invitation printed on thick cream stock. La Galleria di Vetro, Florence. Opening Night: Tomorrow.
No sender listed. Just an embossed symbol at the top—RVB.
Renzo exhaled. “He never meant for it to end in Paris.”
“Then this is the encore,” Xander said.
Sebastian grinned, half admiration, half dread. “At least he knows how to stage an obsession.”
The next evening, the gallery was all glass and silence. The crowd was smaller than Paris, but richer in curiosity. Renzo wore black linen, Sebastian a dark suit with no tie, Xander in simple white that somehow made everyone else look overcomplicated.
The first photographs were landscapes—soft, reflective surfaces, river scenes, bridges, old alleys with puddles that mirrored clouds. But the deeper they walked into the exhibit, the more the imagery changed.
Portraits. Men and women half-turned from the camera. Each face caught between recognition and denial.
And at the center, a single installation: a wall-sized mirror framed in gold.
A plaque below it read: THE COLLECTOR’S GAZE.
Renzo stepped forward. For a second, his reflection was just his own. Then the light flickered—and Stephan’s face appeared beside him in the glass.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Stephan’s voice came from the reflection, not the room. “I couldn’t let the story fade. You made art from escape. It deserved an audience.”
Renzo didn’t turn. “Where are you?”
“Close enough to know you still chase ghosts,” Stephan said. “But this time, I’m only curating.”
The mirror shimmered. The image changed—showing the three of them on the bridge again, but this time in color, alive, the ledger no longer red but white, open and blank in Renzo’s hands.
“What are you trying to say?” Xander demanded.
Stephan’s voice softened. “That the ledger was never destruction. It was renewal. You didn’t end the story. You reset it.”
The reflection brightened, light cascading across their faces like dawn over the Seine. When the glare faded, Stephan was gone. The mirror showed only the three of them, and in the corner, faintly etched letters: RVB.
Renzo’s voice was barely above a whisper. “Red, green, blue. The colors of light. Of creation.”
Sebastian nodded slowly. “Maybe Jules and Marcel both forgot—light doesn’t erase shadows. It needs them.”
Xander reached for Renzo’s hand. “Then we keep walking toward it.”
They left the gallery together, the mirror behind them reflecting an empty room—until the light shifted one last time, and in their absence, three new silhouettes appeared on the glass, turned toward sunrise.
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Next On Renzo: After Hours:
Months later, whispers of a “White Ledger” surface among collectors. Renzo and his lovers become myths in the art world—until an anonymous buyer commissions a final piece called Vale Nocturne. Its subject: a man who doesn’t exist.
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