3
GAbrIELA DUARTE
Six hours into my trial period, I was still trying to keep the west wing from collapsing. For the past twenty minutes, I’d also been wishing a small, very particular section of ceiling would fall on Luca Bellandi.
Nothing fatal. Just enough to put a dent in that flawless arrogance.
“Another ten centimeters,” I told the crew as they positioned a shore under the damaged beam. “Easy. If you hear a crack, get out of the way. Leave the equipment.”
They answered almost together. I checked the level, noted the position, and marked it on the plan on my clipboard. Under the floodlights, everyone had deep shadows beneath their eyes. Outside, the afternoon had faded into a steady drizzle, putting more pressure on the temporary gutters.
We couldn’t have picked a worse time to discover the drains didn’t have enough slope. Or a better one. Give it another week, and the finishing work would have sealed the problem behind new walls, making it even more expensive to fix.
My phone vibrated in my vest pocket. While Carlo checked a shore, I read the message. BANCO COMERCIAL DE LISBOA: Payment overdue. Account must be brought current within five business days.
I swiped the notification away. The number stayed with me.
Our advance from Bellandi covered payroll and suppliers, not the personal debts I’d taken on to keep the firm alive after my father died.
If Luca terminated the contract at the end of the thirty days, my reputation wouldn’t be the only thing I lost. Three people who’d stayed with Augusto would lose their jobs.
I’d have to sell the floor of office space I’d inherited from him, where we still kept our technical records.
Luca knew the firm was in trouble. He didn’t need to know how much of my own life I’d put at risk to keep it going. I put my phone away and went back to the beam. While I examined the wood, at least I could stop doing the math.
“Ms. Duarte.” Carlo came over. His hostility had eased into a cautious respect. “They’ve finished taking the marble slabs off the floor above.”
“And the bathtubs?”
“Still in storage. Installation’s on hold.”
“As Mr. Bellandi asked,” someone corrected behind us.
I shut my eyes for a moment. Then I turned.
Luca was coming through the cordon in a white hard hat, his dark overcoat open over his suit.
You’d never have guessed he’d spent the day in dust and meetings.
He could have stepped straight out of a watch ad—one of those watches that would cost me years of rent in Lisbon.
“Mr. Bellandi approved it,” I said. “I’m the one who asked.”
“An important distinction.”
“It is when you’re the one who found the problem.”
Carlo suddenly needed to look at a column on the other side of the room. Luca stopped next to me and studied the shoring.
“How long?”
“Two days to make this section safe. Three weeks to replace the damaged parts and leave the plasterwork downstairs intact.”
“You have ten days.”
I laughed once, sure he was joking. He kept his eyes on the structure.
“This isn’t a negotiation.”
“Everything’s a negotiation.”
“Gravity isn’t.”
He finally looked at me.
“We need that wing clear for the systems to go in twelve days from now. Every week we lose costs the group almost a million euros.”
“Someone should have thought of that before putting false measurements in a report.”
“They’ll answer for that. Your job is to fix it.”
I pressed the clipboard against my chest.
“My solution takes three weeks.”
“Find another.”
“Ten days is possible. We just strip out all the plasterwork and put in factory-made copies.”
“Out of the question.”
“Good. Now you know the difference between a quick fix and a proper restoration.”
The corner of his mouth almost twitched. Almost.
“Meeting in the project room in half an hour. Bring alternatives.”
He started to walk away.
“Luca.”
I hadn’t meant to use his name. The workers nearby pretended they hadn’t heard.
Alone with him in the gallery, I’d already called him Luca.
In front of everyone else, I’d kept a firm hold on Mr. Bellandi.
When I was little, he’d been Uncle Luca.
Then came the teenage fantasies, and I couldn’t say it without embarrassment.
Here on the site, I suddenly wished I’d kept things formal.
“Three weeks,” I said again. “Make me promise you ten days and all you’ll get is the same kind of lie that got us here.”
He looked at me for long enough to bring back the memory of his hand on the plan that morning. So close to mine.
“Half an hour,” he said at last. “Convince me.”
When he left, Carlo reappeared beside me.
“I don’t know many people who talk to him like that.”
“I’m guessing the others have longer contracts.”
“Or more sense.”
I smiled without much humor and went back to work.
Before the meeting, I hid in a staff bathroom for five minutes. I washed the dust off my face, put my hair up again, and looked at myself in the mirror. Luca holding the paper for me. Such a small thing. It was the time he’d taken to let go that I kept coming back to.
I wasn’t that girl in the blue dress anymore. Protecting me didn’t mean he cared about me. Paying attention didn’t mean he was promising anything. He could save my contract or end it. That alone made wanting him a terrible idea.
I ran through the figures in my head until I was calm. Twenty-one suites. Six hundred forty square meters of plasterwork. Three damaged beams. Seventeen days was the shortest schedule I could responsibly commit to. I had the numbers worked out before I went to the meeting.
Paola was setting out folders in the project room. There was enough coffee on her tray to get us through a small war. Lorenzo leaned against a table, on the phone. He ended the call when I came in.
“Our palazzo’s savior,” he said.
“Not yet. All I’ve done so far is put some steel beams under the problem.”
“My brother’s been talking about you all day.”
I set down my clipboard.
“I doubt that.”
“He doesn’t need to say your name. Rescheduling three meetings and canceling a flight tells me enough.”
I looked at him.
“He canceled a flight?”
“He should be in London tonight. Apparently a Brazilian architect has given him a reason to stay in Como.”
I felt a flicker of something I couldn’t quite suppress. He’d stayed for the palazzo. Not for me. I was old enough to know better than to read anything else into it.
“A structural problem has given him a reason to stay in Como.”
“Naturally.”
Lorenzo poured two cups of coffee and handed me one. I took it.
“Augusto used to say you’d be better than all of us,” he remarked.
“He always exaggerated when it came to me.”
“Not about your talent. The firm was doing well before he got sick, wasn’t it?”
He made it sound casual. Experience had taught me that people with that much money rarely asked a question without knowing at least part of the answer.
“It was.”
“And now?”
“Now I run it.”
“On your own?”
“With a small team.”
“It must have been hard, taking all that on so young.”
“Losing my father was harder.”
He lowered his eyes, looking just sorry enough.
“Forgive me. I didn’t mean to sound insensitive.”
“You didn’t.”
Only a little too interested.
Beatrice came in with a red folder. She’d traded the white dress for a tailored burgundy suit. Even on a building site, she looked ready for a photograph.
“Gabriela.” She sounded as though we’d known each other for years. “I hear Luca’s given you thirty days.”
“He’s given this palazzo an architect who spotted what everyone else missed.”
“Of course. Still, it’s an extraordinary opportunity for someone in your position.”
“What position?”
Beatrice smiled sweetly.
“You’re young. Your company is struggling. And you’re a foreigner in a market that isn’t exactly welcoming.”
She’d chosen every word to hurt, and made it all sound like sympathy.
“You’ve done a lot of research on me.”
“I sit on the board. It’s my job to look into the people we hire.”
“Is baiting them part of the job too?”
Lorenzo lifted his cup to hide a laugh. Beatrice’s smile stayed in place.
“I like to know how people respond to pressure.”
“Now you know.”
“I’m still finding out.”
Luca arrived before I could answer. He looked at Lorenzo, at the cup I was holding, at Beatrice. His expression cooled another degree.
“Let’s begin.”
The structural, electrical, plumbing, and interiors leads took their seats.
I gave them three options. With the first, we would keep every historic feature, but we’d need twenty-one days.
With the second, we could get it down to seventeen by working shifts and changing the installation sequence.
The third got us close to Luca’s ten days. It also meant losing original work.
“The third is out,” he said.
“Agreed. I recommend option two, as long as the crew will work nights and we start the suite installations in the east wing.”
Paola checked the schedule.
“That changes what we do when the French materials arrive.”
“We can store them in the carriage hall.”
“The humidity control isn’t working,” Carlo pointed out.
“Yet,” I corrected. “The electrical crew can have it running in forty-eight hours if we put the decorative garden lighting on hold.”
The electrical lead nodded. For the next forty minutes, I fielded questions, rearranged the order of the work, and argued for each decision.
Luca said almost nothing. From the head of the table, he watched me so closely I could feel it on my skin.
By the end, we had a seventeen-day schedule that preserved all the historic features.
“Still seven days too many,” Lorenzo said.
“Four fewer than I first estimated.”
Beatrice leafed through the report.
“At considerable extra cost, too. Replacing the plasterwork might be the sensible choice. Our guests won’t know the difference.”
I stared at her.
“They will.”
“They’re staying in a hotel, not assessing historic buildings.”
“A hotel in a historic palazzo. If we strip away everything that makes it different from a new building, what exactly are we selling?”
“A luxury hotel that opens on time and on budget,” Beatrice said.
“Then add in what it will cost to redo the work you’ve already approved. That plasterwork is in the plans you showed your investors.”
Luca rested his forearms on the table.
“Approved.”
Beatrice turned to him.
“Luca, the board—”
“Will receive the new schedule. The plasterwork stays. Ms. Duarte will have the additional shifts she needs.”
I let out a slow breath.
“Don’t thank me yet,” he said. “You still have thirty days. Stabilizing the building doesn’t stop the clock. I want the whole project reviewed by then, too.”
“You want me to review two years’ worth of planning while I supervise the reinforcement work.”
“You said you didn’t need thirty days to prove you knew what you were doing.”
My own words. I wanted to throw the pen at him.
“I’ll do the review.”
“Good.”
Luca ended the meeting and left with Paola. Beatrice followed. Lorenzo lingered by the door.
“A word of advice,” he said.
“I didn’t ask for any.”
“You’re getting it anyway. Luca respects people who stand up to him. Until he has no more use for them. Don’t confuse his attention with loyalty.”
I studied his face.
“Is that a warning about your brother, or about you?”
For an instant, his smile lost its warmth.
“Perhaps you really are as good as Augusto said.”
He left me alone with the schedule projected on the wall. One wing in danger of collapse, a firm buried in debt, and thirty days to convince Luca to stand by a decision he should have been sure of before he hired me. I picked up the marker and wrote on the whiteboard: DAY 1 OF 30.
Underneath, I drew three columns: structure, schedule, risks. I filled in tomorrow’s tasks and the people responsible. Then I shut my folder and opened my own notebook.
On the last page, I wrote: Boundaries.
First: no personal conversations with Luca Bellandi. Second: no reason to feel I owed him anything. Third: never be alone with him outside working hours.
I read it over and felt better. Then I heard Luca’s low voice in the corridor, giving Paola instructions, and a shiver went through me. I added a fourth rule—remember what I’m here for—and put the notebook away in my bag.
Before I left, I went back to the whiteboard and underlined the first job for the morning.