31
LUCA BELLANDI
I stared at the first photograph until the faces lost their edges.
“Where did these come from?”
My voice sounded like another man’s. Lorenzo closed the blinds in the Milan office. Beatrice sat at the far end of the table. When I’d arrived and found her there, my brother had said she’d helped gather the documents. Now I was beginning to understand which ones.
“The investigator tracing the photographs from the ball found a photographer staying in the building opposite. I asked him to check what was there. Then I requested the hotel records.”
“Why was a photographer watching Gabriela’s suite?”
“Magazines pay for pictures of you. She’s already been photographed at your side. I didn’t choose the window.”
I returned to the first image. I’d ordered the investigation into Cris stopped. Lorenzo had found another way in and brought Beatrice with him. Gabriela had told me to ask before believing the worst. She’d also said Cris was family. I looked at his hand on her back.
“This proves nothing.”
“Then call her,” Lorenzo replied.
I picked up my phone. Gabriela’s name was at the top of my messages. One touch, and I could ask where Cris had slept. My thumb hovered over her name.
“Not like this,” Beatrice cut in. “Warn her about the photographs, and she’ll have time to get her story straight with him.”
“Or she’ll have a chance to tell the truth.”
“You gave me that chance too,” she said. “Remember how many stories I invented to avoid the consequences?”
I remembered. Beatrice had made every question seem like an unjust accusation until Paolo’s messages surfaced. I put away the phone. She opened another folder.
“Photographs can be misleading,” she said. “That’s why Lorenzo asked them to check the phone she borrowed too.”
She laid copies of conversations attributed to Gabriela and Cris in front of me. He believes anything I say when I mention Augusto. After the opening, my future will be secure. If there’s a child, he won’t be able to get rid of me.
The messages came with a data recovery report, complete with dates and the identification of a phone supplied by the event organizers.
“Who extracted them?”
“The company that handles the hotel’s security.”
“I want the complete material.”
Lorenzo pushed another folder toward me. It contained printouts and a file list, but no footage.
“That’s everything they’ve sent so far. The phone was returned on the day of the event. According to the report, they recovered the messages from a backup.”
I recognized the supplier’s name on the cover. They’d worked for the group since before Lorenzo took over Finance. I ran a finger over the device ID and returned to the messages. Augusto’s name was there again.
I remembered Beatrice trying to explain Paolo’s messages. The house I’d bought, the space she’d measured for a crib. I’d wanted that child so badly it had taken me too long to admit the betrayal. Now Augusto’s name sat between two sentences about money, and I struggled to finish reading.
“How did you get private messages?”
“They were sent from a temporary corporate number during the event,” Beatrice replied. “Security recovered the backup while investigating the leak.”
“Gabriela doesn’t use a corporate number.”
“She used a phone supplied by the organizers because her own battery had died,” Lorenzo said.
He added a sheet listing uses of the individual key card assigned to Cris. The first entry was the following morning. I searched for an earlier one and found none. I returned to the photograph of him leaving Gabriela’s room.
“This can’t be right.”
“There’s one more thing,” Beatrice said.
She took out a final sheet. A copy of a pregnancy-test result bearing Gabriela’s full name, sent with an ultrasound authorization. The sender claimed the documents had been mistakenly included in the event’s medical-expense file.
Obstetrics.
The air left the room.
“She’s pregnant,” Lorenzo said.
“We don’t know that.”
“The result is positive.” He pointed. “The test was done the morning after the dinner.”
“This is a breach of medical privacy.”
“It was forwarded in error. I’ve already ordered an investigation.”
I pushed the sheet away, but the word positive remained visible between my fingers.
“And she’d already booked an appointment,” Beatrice added.
I remembered our call from the garden, the evening I’d promised to keep for her. Gabriela wanted to talk when I got back. I’d told her to call if she needed me sooner. I touched the name printed on the result, as though there might be another woman called Gabriela Duarte.
We’d been together in the weeks before my trip. The pregnancy would have begun before that dinner. I checked the dates again, searching for a stretch when I’d been away from Como. There were several. With my test results in front of me, every trip now seemed to conceal a meeting between them.
“It could be yours if the tests were wrong,” Lorenzo said at last.
“They aren’t.”
“Doctors make mistakes.”
“I had two tests at the same clinic, weeks apart.”
Beatrice looked away.
“Perhaps Gabriela knows it can’t be yours too.”
I stood.
“Enough.”
“You have to consider it,” she insisted. “The board knows about the relationship. If you’re seen together by the press and she announces a pregnancy, it’ll be too late to separate one thing from the other.”
“I said enough.”
My voice made her draw back. I went to the window. Milan stretched below, gray in the rain. The helicopter was waiting. Ask before you condemn. Gabriela had made me promise, and I could still hear her voice.
I opened our messages. Her request to talk in person had arrived days before this meeting. My reply was still there, promising her the evening of my return. She had something to say. I needed to hear her without letting her see how badly I wanted those pages to be false.
I found the copy of my old reports in my personal files. I read the conclusions I knew almost by heart. Two samples. The same answer. I closed our messages without calling. I’d hear Gabriela when I could face her.
“Don’t do anything yet,” Lorenzo advised. “Go to Como. Watch. If she volunteers that the child isn’t yours, perhaps there’s an explanation.”
“And if she says it is?”
Neither answered. My question already held the fear. Beatrice closed the folders.
I gathered all the documents.
“No one speaks about this. Not to the board, the press, or Sofia. If a single image leaks, I’ll hold you personally responsible.”
Lorenzo nodded.
“What will you do?”
“Talk to her. First, I want the full footage and confirmation of where these messages came from.”
I delayed my return until night. I asked security to suspend Gabriela’s access to the private wing and notify the gatehouse; she wasn’t to be admitted if she came looking for me.
The man hesitated before confirming the order.
On-screen, the completion notice was timestamped 9:17 p.m. Only then did it occur to me that Gabriela would receive the notification. I didn’t have it reversed.
During the flight to Como, I let her call ring out.
I passed the photographs from one hand to the other.
I remembered the money she’d refused, the office sale, the dinners after which she’d fallen asleep against me.
Each memory sent me back to the messages.
Beatrice had cried too when I showed her Paolo’s.
In our messages, the photograph of the garden came with words she’d sent at seven: I’m waiting for you in the garden. I closed the screen.
The car dropped me at the Palazzo shortly before midnight. Gabriela waited in the entrance hall in a white shirt and work pants. When she saw me, she smiled and ran toward me. I forced myself not to pull away as she hugged me.
“You didn’t answer,” she said against my chest. “I was worried.”
“There were meetings.”
She lifted her face and tried to kiss me. I turned my head. Her lips brushed my cheek. The smile disappeared.
“What happened?”
“I’m tired.”
“I waited. I got a message about a security update in your wing. Did you order that?”
“I asked them to suspend access.”
She let go of my shirt. The movement hit me harder than the embrace.
“Why? We agreed to talk today.”
“I can’t talk now.”
She gripped the pocket of the coat draped over her arm. She looked about to take something out.
“Tomorrow, then. But you’re going to explain what’s happened.”
I nodded and went upstairs without inviting her to follow. In my private office, I locked the documents in the safe. The copy of the house drawing lay on the shelf above. Gabriela had drawn a wide window facing the garden. I closed the door before looking at the rest.