22
LUCA BELLANDI
On the morning we were due to leave, I received confirmation that Gabriela had signed the agreement to sell the Lisbon office. She was still asleep on my arm.
I put my phone away before she woke. The deed was to be signed in two weeks.
A subsidiary would make the purchase; the previous bidder had accepted compensation to withdraw his offer.
Gabriela knew the company name on the document, but not my involvement in the transaction.
I’d asked the lawyer to negotiate through the usual representatives without mentioning me.
After the Palazzo opened, I’d find a way to offer the property back to her, perhaps through an arrangement involving Augusto’s archives.
She had agreed to sell. She hadn’t agreed to sell to me, or to be given back what she was trying to say goodbye to.
I clung to the first part so I wouldn’t have to face the second.
Preserving the office felt like a way not to lose Augusto again; the thought of him alone was enough to make me put off the conversation I’d promised Gabriela.
I asked the lawyer to prepare instructions to preserve the interior after the transfer. Until then, the property still belonged to Gabriela. She stirred and opened her eyes.
“Are you working?”
“No.”
“Liar.”
“I just read a message.”
She reached for my phone. I set it out of reach.
“A state secret?”
“Unfinished business.”
“You get that look when you’re planning something that’ll annoy me.”
“I only have one look.”
“So you think.”
She kissed me and got up. I watched her walk to the bathroom in my shirt. For a few minutes, everything felt so utterly normal that it frightened me.
On the flight back, she slept with her head on my shoulder. Cris had stayed in Lisbon to oversee the shipping company’s collection of the boxes. When we reached the Palazzo, photographers were waiting near the gate.
“Why are they here?” Gabriela asked.
Paola called before the car stopped.
“A magazine published photographs of the ball,” I told Gabriela after listening. “Including our dance.”
She opened an article on her phone. The headline asked who the mysterious Brazilian architect was who had won the billionaire’s trust. One photograph showed my hand on her back; another caught me leaning in to speak into her ear.
“Trust,” Gabriela murmured. “That’s a polite way of putting it.”
“The article doesn’t accuse us of anything.”
“The comments make up for it.”
She scrolled to another comment. I reached out but didn’t take her phone.
“Do you really want to keep reading right now?”
“I need to know what they’re saying.”
“I can ask the press office to collect the coverage. You don’t have to go through every comment alone.”
“Easy to say when your reputation has already survived a few scandals.”
The car drove through the side gate. I asked security to keep the photographers back.
“We can go in through the private entrance while security moves them away.”
“I’m not hiding.”
“The staff needs a way in without cameras in their faces too. I’ll speak to security.”
“I’ll use the same door as the team.”
I nodded, though I still wanted to insist.
“Don’t decide which door I can use,” she said.
She got out. I spent the day in meetings and on the phone. Communications recommended a statement denying any relationship. I refused and asked them to send Gabriela the proposed response: information about the work, with no comment on personal matters. This wasn’t my decision alone.
That evening, I found her in the garden, photographing the first yellow rosebushes. The workers had gone home. A soft light still glowed near the pavilion.
“I rejected the statement denying our relationship,” I said. “Did you get the other version?”
She put away her phone.
“Yes. It’s all about the restoration.”
“The press office wants to know whether we’re happy to respond that way.”
“And if they ask you directly whether we’re together?”
“I won’t deny it.”
“But you won’t confirm it either.”
“I’d rather not discuss it with the press right now. The people overseeing the contract already know.”
She nodded, looking tired.
“I understand. I just don’t like it.”
“Neither do I.”
I touched the nearest rose. It was still a tightly closed bud.
“Did Beatrice talk to the press?” she asked.
“I have no proof.”
“But you think she did.”
“People were filming at the ball. I’ve asked them to trace the published photographs. I don’t know if they’ll be able to.”
“Why does she act as though I’ve stolen something?”
I took my hand from the rosebush.
“Because for a long time, Beatrice believed she’d find her way back into my life.”
“Did you let her believe that?”
“I told her we wouldn’t get back together. Then I’d accept her company at dinners, let her speak for me. It was easier than confronting her every time she tried.”
“Why?”
I walked to the stone bench. Gabriela sat beside me. In Venice, I’d told her only about the relationship that had ended eighteen months earlier. The beginning went much further back.
“We were engaged,” I said.
She went still.
“You said you’d been involved. You didn’t say it went that far.”
After the engagement ended, we’d spent years apart. Much later, we’d become involved again without ever rebuilding the trust we’d once had.
“She was twenty-five. I was twenty-nine. Our families approved, the board considered it a suitable match, and I thought convenience could provide a stable foundation.”
“Did you love her?”
“I thought I did.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the only one I have.”
I looked out over the dark garden.
“A few months before the wedding, Beatrice told me she was pregnant.”
For years, I’d avoided even the word. Pregnant. It held the morning she’d come into my office carrying the test, the awkward embrace I’d given her, and the surprise of finding joy where I’d expected only responsibility.
That week, I’d bought four books on fatherhood and hidden them all in a drawer. I’d visited the house outside Milan without telling anyone. I’d stood in the empty room calculating the distance between the crib and the window, as though safety could be measured in centimeters.
The four books were still in the drawer when Paolo came to see me. After that day, I never opened any of them again.
“I’d already started cutting back on travel,” I went on.
“What happened?”
“The child wasn’t mine.”
Gabriela put a hand over her mouth.
“How did you find out?”
“The father came forward. A consultant for the group. She’d been having an affair with him for almost a year.”
Courage hadn’t brought Paolo to me. He said Beatrice had asked him for money to keep the secret and threatened his career when he refused.
He’d brought messages, photographs, dates.
I spent a night going through them before confronting her.
The betrayal was real; as for the paternity, I’d taken the dates and his certainty as a definitive answer.
“Did she know the child wasn’t yours?” Gabriela asked.
“She knew it might not be. She said she’d chosen to believe the version that offered her a better life.”
“And she chose for you.”
“Yes.”
I lowered my eyes. She rested her hand on my arm.
“Luca . . .”
“Beatrice denied it until he showed her the messages. Then she said she’d been afraid of losing me, that I’d be a better father. She said blood shouldn’t matter.”
“And the baby?”
“She lost the pregnancy a few weeks later.”
Gabriela squeezed my arm.
“I’m so sorry.”
I almost told her the rest. The tests I’d sought afterward, still wanting to know whether there was any chance the child could have been mine.
The diagnosis of azoospermia and Marinelli’s conclusion that I couldn’t father a child.
I’d used that conclusion to put the doubt to rest. Beatrice hadn’t learned about the diagnosis until years later, when we’d become involved again; she couldn’t have counted on it during the pregnancy.
The pity would be unbearable. More than that, telling her would force me to face the future she’d described in Venice: a noisy house, children, a life that carried on. She’d have to decide whether to give that up for me. It was still too soon to know if there would be a future to decide on.
“That’s why you never trusted her again,” Gabriela said.
“That’s why I never trusted anyone again.”
“Until now?”
I looked at her.
“I’m trying.”
“And when you’re afraid, do you think I’ll do the same thing?”
“Not consciously.”
“But you did when you saw me with Cris.”
“Yes.”
She took her hand off my arm.
“I’m not Beatrice.”
“I know you’re not.”
“I don’t want to have to prove it every time you get scared.”
I wanted to promise she’d never have to. I remembered Cris in the office, and the absurd anger I’d felt when he hugged her.
“I start looking for signs before I even realize what I’m doing.”
“Then ask. Talk to me, the way you’re talking now.”
She rose from the bench. I caught her hand before she could move away.
“I don’t think you’re like her.”
“I want you to keep remembering that.”
I drew her closer. She hugged me, and I wrapped my arms around her.
“Just don’t turn everyone I love into a threat,” she murmured.
I kissed her hair.
“Never.”
She rested her head on my shoulder. The promise was easy with her there. My phone vibrated with a message from the Lisbon lawyer. I left it in my pocket.
The next day, I found her surrounded by samples and three young restorers. She’d changed a detail drawing after a suggestion from Paola and was explaining the new joint, using two pencils to demonstrate.
“Here to inspect?” she asked when she saw me.
“To observe.”
“Then hold this. I need another hand.”
I spent ten minutes holding up a frame while she and the intern discussed how to secure it. By the time she dismissed me, there was white dust on my suit sleeve.
“You look like one of us,” she said.
“Does it come out?”
She brushed my sleeve. The cloud of dust made us cough and laugh at the same time.
Later, I confirmed the deadline for signing the deed with the lawyer.
I opened Gabriela’s messages on my phone but ended up asking only about dinner.
I was putting off the explanation until she could no longer stop the purchase.