38
LUCA BELLANDI
The Palazzo delle Rose was declared an international success.
In those first months, occupancy reports arrived every Monday. The guest feedback praised the garden, the suites, and Gabriela’s choices. I skipped to the revenue figures. I didn’t need the comments to recognize her work.
Carlo refused to attend a ceremony that credited only the Bellandi family. His protest never reached the press, but it forced the hotel to keep the project plaque naming everyone responsible.
Magazines published photographs of the facade, the gardens, the restored suites. Weekends were fully booked for the first few months. Investors praised my courage in preserving the property. In interviews, there was less and less mention of the architect and more of the group.
I’d approved keeping the plaque without comment. Carlo kept Gabriela’s name before the guests; I couldn’t even say it.
The official statement said the architect had completed her involvement and returned to Portugal for personal projects. When a journalist asked about the rumors, Beatrice replied that the group respected former associates' privacy. I didn’t correct her. I didn’t go into the studio either.
The argument with Sofia came before all that, two days after the opening. I’d spent the night in Milan. My grandmother arrived at the office unannounced, phone in hand, with a copy of the statement describing Gabriela’s departure as amicable.
“Did you authorize this?”
“Legal drafted it.”
“I asked whether you authorized it.”
I looked at the copy. The statement had gone out with my approval.
“Paola told me you had her escorted out. Gabriela’s in the hospital. What did you do?”
I put down my pen. I’d received contact notifications, all forwarded to Legal. I hadn’t opened any.
“I asked her to go to a hotel.”
“She had a hemorrhage. There are three babies, Luca. She spoke to me yesterday.”
“Was Cris already with her?”
Sofia struck the floor with her cane.
“Did you hear me?”
I had. Hospital and hemorrhage stayed in the room after she fell silent. The thought of three children reached me before I could push it away.
“Is she better?”
“The bleeding has eased. She needs rest and medical care.”
I asked my secretary to close the door. Sofia remained standing.
“Why did you decide they aren’t yours?” she asked.
“I repeated the tests. And there was another man.”
“Cris?”
“Yes.”
She sat without asking.
“Gabriela told you?”
“She denied it.”
“Did she offer a paternity test?”
I said nothing.
“She did,” Sofia concluded.
“It wouldn’t change the diagnosis.”
“The test can tell you whether you’re the father. What you want has nothing to do with it.”
“I won’t spend months tied to a fraud because she knows my weaknesses.”
Sofia set her phone on my desk.
“I can call. She may not want to talk right now, but you can leave a message.”
I looked at it. I remembered the envelope on the side-room table, Gabriela asking me to listen. If I called, I’d have to return to that conversation.
“Legal has the documents.”
Sofia took back her phone.
“Your grandfather hid behind employees when he didn’t want to answer for what he’d done. You’re doing the same.”
“Don’t compare us.”
“Gabriela doesn’t need to invent three children to deserve an answer from you.”
“You don’t know her the way I came to know her.”
“Then you should trust her more, not less.”
She left, saying she’d keep trying to help Gabriela. I didn’t follow. When Lorenzo came in later, I asked about the communications received since the opening.
“They’ve gone to Legal, as you requested.”
“I want to know what they replied.”
He opened a legal report.
“That paternity claims should be handled through the lawyers. The contract documents are being checked separately.”
“Sofia says they’re triplets. And that Gabriela was in the hospital.”
“She wrote that. She asked you to take the test.”
He set the report in front of me.
“I can forward the attachments.”
“Later.”
Three children. I tried to imagine her receiving the news, but Cris appeared beside her before I could finish the scene. I pushed the report toward the other papers. Marinelli had just repeated the test. Nothing had changed, I told myself.
“And payment for her work?”
“The inspectors confirmed delivery. There’s no contractual reason to withhold the balance. Her lawyer has already demanded it.”
I authorized payment to proceed, as though paying for what the group had received were a concession I could grant. I didn’t ask anyone to call and see how she was.
“Do you want us to investigate the pregnancy?”
I looked at the folder he’d brought. Another investigation meant waiting for more photographs, reading more messages. I didn’t want to go back to that table.
“No.”
A week after the opening, my assistant told me Gabriela was at reception in Milan. I opened the camera feed. She held a folder; Cris stood beside her. Lorenzo had already gone down. I told them not to let her up and watched until the two of them left.
Later, I received a summary of the visit. It mentioned the three babies and another scan delivered to the document desk. I didn’t ask for a copy.
In the following days, allegations about Palazzo expenses began to circulate. Lorenzo brought me a summary of the coverage in Portugal. I recognized one of Gabriela’s clients among the contracts she’d lost.
“The reports show no misappropriation of funds. Correct it.”
“A correction will draw more attention.”
I could have called the press office and demanded a statement. I stayed silent. The newspaper corrected part of the story after receiving her lawyer’s documents; we kept our statement about the project’s completion.
In the fifth week, Lorenzo told me Gabriela had gone to Brazil with Cris.
She’d also refused the token-rent lease the subsidiary had offered for the archives.
After he left, I opened the drawer. My copy of the house drawing lay there, brought from the Palazzo safe.
I traced the outlines of the bedrooms and folded it again.
That night, I returned to the palace after weeks in Milan. The guests had retired. I passed through the gallery and the side room where I’d expelled Gabriela. The door was open; I went in without turning on all the lights.
A faint scratch from the box marked the table. I asked an employee whether he’d found anything that night. He remembered pieces of a check and an empty box.
“Where are they?”
“The box was put away with the opening materials. The paper was thrown out.”
I asked him to keep the box in my private office. Then I went to Gabriela’s old room. The closets were empty. I remembered her sitting on the floor surrounded by plans, pushing her hair off her face as she explained a solution. I pulled out the chair by the window and couldn’t sit down.
In the studio, a box with my name on it held what the team had set aside while tidying up: the key I’d given her, a technical book of mine, and a receipt found among the papers. It was from a pharmacy in Como. I read the date.
Prenatal vitamins, bought in the days after the Milan event. I’d still been talking to her by video then. I folded the receipt around the key and put both in my pocket.
The working drawings had been filed. Paola had left a photograph of the team in the garden on the table.
Gabriela stood in the middle, dirt on her pants, hair hastily tied back.
I stared at her face. I took the photograph when I left; the blue fragment she’d given me years earlier remained in the safe.
The next day, before returning to Milan, I stopped at the ruins on the hill. The fig tree had lost some leaves. I stayed outside the walls, where she’d sat to draw.
There, she’d imagined a house. For a few minutes, I’d imagined someone waiting when I came home. Now I told myself fantasies were merely lies told in silence.
“It’s over,” I said aloud.
Over the following years, I bought hotels, opened offices, and filled every available space in my schedule. The team learned not to bring Gabriela’s name into meetings. Sofia wouldn’t accept the rule.
My grandmother had tried to visit before Gabriela left, offered help afterward, and received a request for distance through her lawyer.
Gabriela wanted no contact with the family during the pregnancy.
Sofia respected that, but repeatedly asked whether I would take responsibility and contact her through the channel she’d left open.
I refused. In time, my grandmother spoke to me less.
Paola moved to another project; Beatrice remained on the board.
My dealings with Beatrice were strictly professional. I had no reconciliation to offer her. I kept my meetings in Milan and accepted trips I would once have delegated. I never slept at the Palazzo again.
Once a year, the system sent the conservation report signed by the technical team. I told Matteo I opened it to check costs, but first I looked for Gabriela’s notes, preserved in the margins of the original plans.
Don’t overpolish, she’d written beside an old wall. Age is part of its beauty. In the third year, a manager proposed replacing the annotated versions with standardized documents. I approved new reference copies but insisted the originals be preserved and the professional credits retained.
“The manager asked whether you’d like to invite her to review the conservation plan,” Matteo said.
“No.”
“The contract is over,” I added before he could press. After he left, I kept the report open to the same page. A note about mortar ended in an exclamation point. I could almost hear her saying it.
On the first anniversary of the opening, I declined the invitation. On the second, Sofia went without me. On the third, I watched a news segment with the sound off. On the fourth, I stayed on another continent.
I kept my copy of the drawing, the tile fragment, and the team photograph in a Milan safe. Sometimes I opened it only to check that they were still there.
Now I know how many times I could have broken that silence. In those years, I kept telling myself Gabriela had chosen Cris and moved on in Brazil. The diagnosis remained with the other documents. While I refused to ask her lawyer for news of the three, the children grew up far from me.