45
LUCA BELLANDI
I returned to Italy forty-eight hours later.
Before leaving, I video-called Gabriela and the children at the agreed time. I told them I had things to settle in Italy and would be back in six days. Noah asked how many sleeps that was. We counted together.
Leaving Brazil went against every instinct. Camila had more tests the following week, and Gabriela had agreed to another visit. Still, one question needed answering where the lies had begun.
The Palazzo delle Rose rose on the hill beneath a winter sky. The restored facades were perfect. The garden Gabriela had saved flourished with an almost insolent exuberance. I hadn’t spent a night there in five years. I found Sofia in the library.
At eighty-five, she was still upright, elegant, and difficult to impress. When I came in unannounced, she set down her book and studied my face.
“You found her.”
It wasn’t a question.
“The triplets are mine. We did the test.”
She closed her eyes, a hand resting on her chest.
“How are they?”
“The boys are well. The girl, Camila, has a congenital heart condition. She’s being assessed at Aurea in S?o Paulo.”
My grandmother stayed silent long enough to frighten me.
“Three great-grandchildren,” she murmured. “And I lost five years.”
“We all did.”
Her eyes hardened.
“Don’t say ‘we’ to make your responsibility easier to bear.”
“You spoke to her in the hospital.”
“And I told you. Afterward, she asked for distance during the pregnancy. I respected that, but I let the birth pass, then months, then years. I can’t put all of that on her.”
She went to the window.
“I had her lawyer’s details. I could have written later, without asking for anything on your behalf. I kept putting it off. Don’t expect Gabriela to welcome us now because we’ve finally decided to show up.”
I accepted the distinction without retreating.
“I didn’t open the letters,” I said. “Or the documents she delivered in Milan. Lorenzo brought me summaries, and I accepted them.”
She gripped her cane in both hands.
“I wrote to her too.”
“When?”
“After she left the hospital. I asked Dario to deliver a letter, but he said it came back unopened. Paola was still speaking to Gabriela; she passed on the request for distance during the pregnancy. I didn’t check what Dario had done with the envelope.”
“Dario was your companion?”
“Marta needed time away. I accepted Lorenzo’s recommendation for her replacement. I wasn’t well, and I left some messages to him.”
I needed to hear from Dario. The supposedly returned letter didn’t explain years of silence, but it was one more delivery no one had checked.
“Where’s Paola?”
“Still working in the Florence archives. Lorenzo tried to fire her. I stopped him.”
She came from Florence the next morning. We met in the Palazzo archive room, where she’d stored some of the project documents. Seeing us together, she clutched her bag to her body.
An external auditor, called in that morning, joined us. Paola asked for the door to stay open and sat near her.
The auditor explained she’d be gathering the correspondence records. Paola agreed to notes but refused a recording. She kept her bag on her lap.
“Mr. Bellandi.”
“I want to know what happened to Gabriela’s letters. I know you helped send them.”
Paola went pale.
“Mr. Lorenzo forbade me to speak about those deliveries.”
“He’s not here,” Sofia said, drawing a chair closer.
Paola glanced at the open door and lowered her voice.
“I kept something.”
She opened her bag and took out a black notebook. Among inventory pages and construction records were notes about deliveries and orders received in the weeks after the opening.
“I wrote them down because the receipts I kept didn’t match what was in the system. When I was transferred, I took the notebook.”
It referred to letters, clinic envelopes, and a shipment to Beatrice’s office. The auditor marked dates to check. The notebook gave us somewhere to begin; I didn’t yet know what we’d be able to prove.
Paola asked for the key to the old document cabinet. Sofia found it in the archive drawer and stood beside her as she opened the door. Behind the ledgers lay a brown envelope. From it, Paola took another, patched together. I recognized Gabriela’s handwriting: Luca Bellandi. Personal and urgent.
“I found it in Mr. Lorenzo’s office trash, days after delivery,” she said.
“I taped the pieces together. It was already stored here when they sent me to Florence. I didn’t want to take it with me.
Dario asked me about Sofia’s letters that week.
Then he stopped speaking to me. I don’t know what they told him. ”
The auditor photographed the envelope as it had been stored before Paola opened it on the table. I waited on my feet, hands locked together. The ultrasound slid out. Paola turned it toward me. Three small outlines were marked A, B, and C. I had to brace my hands on the wood.
The letter had been written in the hospital after the hemorrhage. Gabriela said the babies were alive and offered the test. I recognized her writing even beneath the tape.
“The tests are consistent with the weeks we were together. My offer of a DNA test stands.”
Behind the letter lay the ultrasound copy, marked by the hospital team.
At the bottom, I read:
“I’m not asking you to be with me again. I’m asking you not to refuse to know about your children.”
I pressed my fingers to my eyes. There were no names. She’d only just learned there were three. She’d tried to reach me from a hospital bed.
Lorenzo had torn up that letter. I’d watched her on the camera and left her outside; heard Sofia tell me about the hemorrhage and refused the phone. The scan copy had been logged, the emails were with Legal. There had been other ways to know. I sat before my legs gave out.
“How many?”
“I only found this one torn up,” Paola said. “I kept the receipts and the copies Gabriela sent me. The last letter came from Lisbon. I forwarded it, but never saw a reply from you.”
“Did you tell her the letter was here?”
She began to cry.
“No. She knew I had copies, not that I’d found the original in the trash.
I tried to reach you first. Your office refused.
Then my husband lost his job at a group company, and I got a message with my daughter’s school address.
I thought if I kept quiet, they’d leave us alone.
When Sofia stopped them firing me, I accepted Florence. ”
I looked up. Five years earlier, I’d have used that confession to find someone beneath me to blame. Now I saw an employee threatened by men who bore my surname and operated within a structure built to obey without question.
“No one should have threatened you over those letters. I should have listened when you asked to speak.”
Sofia rested a hand on Paola’s shoulder.
“We’ll hear from Dario too,” she said. “And save that message, if you still have it.”
The auditor made copies and collected the originals, recording their source. I asked the lawyers to bring in an outside team to preserve the available material and request through the authorities any measures requiring a court order.
“Send the material concerning Gabriela to her lawyer, with proof of delivery.”
“We’ll separate out third-party information,” the auditor replied.
“Let me know when it’s sent.”
Sofia watched me silently.
“Lorenzo is in Milan,” she said. “There’s a board dinner tonight.”
“Don’t warn him yet. First we preserve what’s left.”
“When will you confront him?”
“When I know the full extent of the lie.”
“And then?”
“I’ll take what we can prove to the board and the lawyers.”
“I meant what will you do about Gabriela?”
I looked at the letter.
“Tell her what we’ve found. She decides whether she wants to speak to me.”
“Good. Proving your brother lied will explain how it worked. Not why you wanted so badly to believe him.”
I looked down at the old ultrasound copy. I remembered each child’s name on the new report. In that old image, I still couldn’t tell which was which.
My phone vibrated. Gabriela had sent a photograph of Camila in an examination room, holding a stuffed rabbit. She asked whether you’re coming back. She says you can join the appointment by video if you want. I pressed the phone to my forehead.
I wanted her to hear everything from me first. I looked at the patched letter and searched for a way to tell her that wouldn’t sound like a plea for absolution.
I wrote only:
I’ll be on the call. Thank you for telling me.
Then I photographed the envelope and wrote: I found the original hospital letter. It was torn up. Paola kept it. The auditor will send the material to your lawyer.
Her reply came twenty minutes later.
You received other copies, Luca.
I read the sentence more than once. Paola wrote to her too, telling her what she hadn’t had the courage to say. When she put down the phone, she was crying. Gabriela had asked her to send the threats to the lawyer and asked about her daughter.
I replied: I did. I could have read them. I set down the phone and asked the auditor to confirm the documents had been sent.
At the agreed time, I joined the call. Isabel was with Gabriela in S?o Paulo; Chiara joined from Italy, as she had at the earlier assessment.
They explained the catheterization plan and what would depend on the images obtained during the procedure.
I noted the expected hospital stay and asked how we’d receive updates during the procedure.
Camila held her rabbit up to the camera.
“Are you scared of hospitals too?”
“Yes.”
“But you’re a grown-up.”
“Grown-ups get scared too. I do.”
“Mommy does too,” she confided. Gabriela stroked her hair.
Camila asked whether I’d be there when she woke up.
“I want to be. I’ll arrange it with your mother.”
“You can come,” Gabriela said after a pause. “We’ll stay wherever the team tells us.”
The date would be confirmed after the next tests.
I repeated the day I’d return to Brazil; Gabriela nodded.
As the call ended, Camila leaned close to the camera and told me she liked pancakes without banana.
I wrote that beside the medical questions.
Then I reread the letter without looking for comfort.
Gabriela was right. The torn original was one piece of what we needed to investigate.
Those words had reached me by other routes too. I needed no further discoveries to know what I’d done with them. I put the letter copy in the folder with the documents I’d take to the next meeting.