FÁVOLA

For four hundred years every gram of cinnamon and nutmeg that reached Europe came through Venice, and the merchants who sold it never once said where it came from. The price was in the secret. This is built the same way — you get four notes and the list stops. The fifth arrives on its own, hours later, and only on you.

Torino closes early. The pastry counters go dark before midnight and the shutters come down, but the vanille stays in the street until morning — it soaks into the stone and it does not leave with the pastry chefs. Walk Via Po at one in the morning and you are walking through the inside of a confectioner’s window with nobody in it. Warm, sweet, and entirely yours.