# Story bible - "The Fourth Floor" (all invented)

## Premise
Porto, February 2026. Marta Sequeira, 38, a hospital pharmacist, has not spoken about her brother Tiago since he died in the spring of 2019. A hand-delivered letter from his old landlord is about to reopen the year she has spent seven years closing.

## Characters
- **Marta Sequeira**, 38. Hospital pharmacist at São João. Lives alone on the fourth floor of a building on Rua de Cedofeita; the building has no lift. Left-handed. Drinks black tea, never coffee, since 2019. Keeps her brother's photograph face-down in a drawer. Has not told anyone at work that she had a brother.
- **Tiago Sequeira**, Marta's younger brother, born 1991, died in April 2019 of an overdose in a rented room in Bonfim. Marta cut short their last phone call, in March 2019, because she was on shift. She has not forgiven herself for that. He is dead - not missing, not estranged, dead - and Marta knows it.
- **Dona Alice**, 74, the widow on the third floor. Keeps her radio on all day. Takes in post and parcels for the building. Calls Marta "menina".
- **Rui Barros**, Tiago's landlord in 2019. Appears only as the name on the back of the envelope. Marta met him once, at the room, after.

## Setting
Rua de Cedofeita, Porto. February, dark by six, rain. Marta's flat: two rooms, a kitchen with a window onto the light well, a gas hob, a kettle. The stairwell is tiled and echoes.

## What Marta does not know yet
That Tiago left a box with Rui Barros, and that it has her name on it. The letter says so; she does not open it in chapter one, so the reader must not learn it either.

## Chapter one - the beats, in this order
1. Marta comes home in the rain after a late shift and climbs the four floors. Dona Alice's radio is on behind her door.
2. Dona Alice opens her door as Marta passes and hands her an envelope that came by hand that afternoon: handwritten, no stamp, "R. Barros" on the back.
3. Marta knows the name at once and does not want to open it.
4. In her kitchen she makes tea and sits with the envelope on the table, and remembers the last phone call with Tiago in March 2019 - she cut it short because she was on shift.
5. She puts the envelope, still unopened, in her coat pocket, and goes to bed telling herself she will deal with it tomorrow. The chapter ends there.

## Voice sample - write it like this
> The stairwell smelled of bleach and someone's dinner. Marta counted the landings the way she always did, not because she could lose count but because it was something to do with her head. Third floor. The radio. She kept climbing.