5
GAbrIELA DUARTE
The storm worsened just after five, swallowing the mountains across the lake. I was getting ready to head back to the guesthouse when the crew began bringing the equipment in from the courtyard.
The wind bent the cypresses and tore leaves out of the garden. Rain struck the temporary windows like handfuls of stones. Within twenty minutes, muddy water was running through the entrance to the palazzo.
I watched a crew car back away from the gate. All the exhaustion I’d been keeping at bay settled on my shoulders.
“A retaining wall gave way two kilometers down the road,” Paola said, coming into the project room. “The police have closed it. No one in or out until they can assess it in the morning.”
“What about the lake?”
Thunder rattled the glass. Paola pointed at the windows.
“No boatman with any sense is going out in that.”
“How many of us are here?”
“Eighteen, including security. I’m working out where everyone can sleep. There are rooms in the north wing, but they’re not all furnished.”
“I can sleep here.”
“No, you can’t,” Luca said from the doorway.
I didn’t bother hiding my irritation.
“You’ve developed a habit of appearing when no one asked for your opinion.”
“Useful skill for an owner.”
He’d taken off his jacket and rolled his sleeves to his forearms. Such a small change, but he looked less like the president of Bellandi Aurea and dangerously more like the man who’d forgotten the ground beneath his own feet when he saw me fall. I looked away.
Since the tower, I’d thought about his hands more often than I cared to admit. Their grip on my arms. The tremor he’d tried to hide afterward.
“There’s a sofa,” I insisted.
“And there are beds in the north wing.”
“I don’t need special treatment.”
“Everyone will be using the available rooms. You’re not the exception.”
Paola lifted her tablet between us.
“I’ve ruled out the rooms with leaks. The six dry doubles won’t be enough. We’ll have to open the private quarters.”
“Open them,” Luca said.
She hesitated.
“The east corridor too?”
His face went still.
“Only what you need.”
There was a story in that pause. He moved on before anyone could ask.
“There’s a room next to mine,” he told me.
“I’d rather stay with the crew.”
Paola turned the tablet so I could see the names.
“I could share with you,” I suggested.
“I’m with the electrical engineer. I can ask if anyone will switch, but you’d have this room to yourself anyway.”
I looked at the list. The alternative was to send someone else to Luca’s corridor simply because I didn’t trust myself near him.
I handed the tablet back.
“Fine. One night. I’m going back to the guesthouse tomorrow.”
“As soon as the road’s open.”
A brief alarm sounded in the corridor. Paola checked the tablet.
“Water’s getting into the map room.”
I forgot the argument over beds. I ran with Paola and Luca to the south wing, where an internal gutter was overflowing onto wooden cabinets. Two employees were moving boxes off the floor. A dark sheet of water was already spreading across it.
“Cut the power to this section,” I said. “And bring plastic sheeting, blocks, and every empty box in the temporary archive.”
We waited for the electrician to confirm the power was off before going in.
Luca took off his expensive shoes and stepped into the water with me. Together, we carried out maps, ledgers, and rolled drawings. I recognized a set of plans my father had drawn and held them against my chest.
“These need to go somewhere dry.”
Luca took them carefully.
“Your father’s?”
“The first work on the dome. There isn’t a complete digital copy.”
We formed a chain with the staff. I chose what to take; Luca took it from me and passed it on. When I called him back to replace a wet box, he came without asking why. After forty minutes, the water was contained and his pants were soaked to the knees.
“You’ve lost a sock,” I said.
He looked down.
“A significant corporate sacrifice.”
I laughed before I remembered I was supposed to be annoyed. Paola found us still smiling and took us to our rooms. I followed with wet pants clinging to my legs, thinking that Luca Bellandi had one bare foot, and I might be spending the night beside him.
The room was at the end of a corridor well away from the restoration work.
Paola opened the door and switched on two lamps.
Pale blue silk covered the walls, and heavy curtains framed a window overlooking the lake.
There was a wide bed, a marble fireplace, and antique furniture that looked untouched for decades.
“This isn’t a guest room.”
“It belonged to Luca’s aunt. His mother’s sister.”
“I never imagined I’d stay in this part of the house.”
“Most of us are sleeping somewhere we didn’t expect tonight. I’ll have someone bring your bag from the project room.”
She laid towels on the bed.
“His room is there.” She pointed to the wall on the right. “There’s a connecting door, but it’s locked on both sides.”
I tried not to look at the unobtrusive handle beside the bookcase.
“You didn’t need to tell me.”
“Of course not.”
She left before I could decide whether she was teasing.
A generator kept part of the palazzo lit, but the main kitchen had lost power. At eight, Sofia put together an improvised dinner in the old music room. Candles stood on the piano and along the long table. The cook served bread, cheese, cold cuts, fruit, and two pots of soup heated on a gas stove.
I came down last, after a shower. There’d been a knit dress and clean underwear in my work bag; since I’d begun coming off site covered in dust, I’d been bringing a change of clothes.
I put them on, along with the flats I wore in the office.
Luca looked up when I entered. He was sitting beside Sofia.
His gray eyes traveled from my loose hair down to my shoes, then back to my face. No more than a second. Enough.
“Sit here, my dear,” Sofia said, indicating the chair across from him.
I sat and accepted a glass of wine from Lorenzo. Beatrice was beside him, immaculate despite the storm. She’d changed into a silk blouse that had probably traveled in a suitcase of its own.
“I didn’t know you’d be staying with us,” she said.
“Neither did any of us.”
“Of course. Still, it’s strange seeing you in this part of the house. Very few people are invited into the family rooms.”
“This isn’t a social visit,” Luca said. “The road washed out.”
“Some women have all the luck,” Beatrice observed.
I raised my glass.
“If being trapped in a palazzo under renovation in the middle of a storm is your idea of luck, that explains a lot about your expectations.”
Lorenzo smothered a laugh. Luca looked down at his plate, but I caught the start of a smile. Sofia didn’t bother hiding hers.
“Augusto would have laughed at that,” she said.
“My father adored you.”
“He had excellent taste. Except in ties. Once he came to dinner wearing one with little yellow sailboats.”
I laughed.
“I gave him that tie.”
“Then I withdraw my remark about his taste.”
The conversation eased. Sofia told stories about the early days of Augusto and Luca’s partnership, some I’d never heard. I learned that my father had once kept Luca out of jail in Barcelona after an argument with a contractor.
“The man called Luca an errand boy,” Sofia explained. “My grandson broke his headlight.”
“He tried to run me over,” Luca said.
“After you broke the headlight.”
“The order of events is open to debate.”
I tried to picture the immaculate man across from me in his twenties, furious on a Barcelona street. Augusto had probably arrived with documents and arguments, resigned to saving his friend from himself.
“Did my father pay your bail?”
“He persuaded the man to drop the complaint,” Luca said. “And made me pay for the repairs.”
“With interest,” Sofia added.
For a few minutes, I met the Luca who’d existed before the empire: flawed, impulsive, loyal, able to laugh at his own disasters. He was more dangerous than the cold billionaire, because he resembled the man I’d imagined I loved.
Later, as they talked about the expansion of the Duarte firm, Sofia mentioned money Luca had provided without letting Augusto know where it came from. I set down my glass.
“You never told me you paid for the expansion.”
Luca turned his glass.
“There was no reason to.”
“My father thought it came from a Portuguese investor.”
“Augusto wouldn’t accept help.”
“So you lied to him.”
“I put the money in through another company. I didn’t ask for a stake in the firm.”
“He lied with better paperwork,” Sofia translated.
Luca gave her a warning look. I tried to reconcile this with the man who’d disappeared after my father died. He’d helped at the start, without anyone knowing. Why had he pulled away when I needed him most?
“What about the garden?” I asked, changing the subject. “Paola said your grandmother came to see the roses.”
Sofia laid down her spoon.
“My daughter Elisabetta planted most of them. Luca’s mother.”
I saw him stiffen, too late.
“I didn’t know.”
“I miss that garden too,” Sofia said. “I remember your mother coming in with dirt on her shoes, Luca. You’d be right behind her.”
“Enough.”
He didn’t raise his voice, but everyone fell silent. Sofia met his eyes.
“As you wish.”
Dinner went on, but something in Luca had closed. He spoke only when he had to, then left before dessert, saying he had a call with London. I looked at his empty chair.
“Don’t take it personally,” Beatrice said. “Luca always leaves when someone gets too close.”
She sounded so sure. So familiar with him. I felt a bitter little sting.
“You seem to know the habit well.”
“Better than most.”
She sipped her wine, pleased with the mark she’d left.
Near midnight, I still couldn’t sleep. Rain battered the windows, and the palazzo creaked in unfamiliar ways.
I reviewed reports, answered messages from Cris, and tried to ignore how close the next room was.
At one forty, I heard footsteps in the corridor.
Slow. Steady. Back and forth. I opened the door.
Luca stood at a window with his back to me, wearing dark pants and a white shirt open at the throat. Without an audience, he seemed less unapproachable. Exhausted, too. He saw me reflected in the glass.
“Did I wake you?”
“I hadn’t gone to sleep.”
“You should be resting.”
“So should you.”
“I can’t.”
The admission was so blunt that I took a moment to answer.
“Because of the storm?”
“No.”
“Work?”
He looked toward the lake, invisible in the dark.
“I haven’t slept well in years.”
I went closer, leaving a few steps between us.
“Does walking help?”
“Sometimes.”
“My father used to make tea.”
“Your father put brandy in his tea.”
“That explains why it worked so fast.”
Luca laughed. Not the brief, controlled smile he gave people in meetings. A real, low laugh that changed his whole face, reminding me why loving him had been so easy before I understood the danger. When it faded, we were still looking at each other.
“I’m sorry I brought up the garden.”
“You didn’t know.”
“Sofia misses it.”
“Sofia misses her daughter.”
“Maybe it’s the same thing.”
He turned to face me fully.
“Do you always try to restore everything that’s broken?”
“Only if the structure can still hold.”
“How do you know the difference?”
I thought of the firm’s debts, Augusto’s drawing boards, my determination to keep a legacy alive when it might already be gone.
“I don’t always.”
The next thunderclap was distant. Still, when the lights flickered, Luca lifted a hand as if to reach for me. He stopped before he touched me. I watched his hand.
“Good night, Luca.”
“Good night, Gabriela.”
I went back into my room and closed the door. A few minutes later, the footsteps started again. I turned my pillow over to the cool side and kept listening.