6
LUCA BELLANDI
At two twenty, I stopped pretending I was going to sleep.
I went back to my room, took a cold shower, and stood for a while in front of the door to my aunt’s old rooms. I knew it was locked. Still, knowing Gabriela was on the other side changed the room somehow. The stone wall seemed too thin to keep her out of my thoughts.
I opened the nightstand drawer. The bottle of pills was where I’d left it months ago, almost full. I closed the drawer without taking one. I preferred exhaustion to the fog.
I put on a fresh shirt and went downstairs.
Apart from the guards and the sound of rain, the palazzo slept.
Emergency lighting washed the corridors in dim blue.
On the main staircase, I stopped. A strip of light showed under the project room door.
Gabriela was at her computer, surrounded by candles.
The secondary generator had failed in that wing.
She’d connected the computer to a portable battery and gone on working, as if nighttime were a minor administrative issue.
She still wore the dark dress from dinner, now under a wool cardigan.
Her hair fell over one shoulder. First I was relieved to find her. Then I was annoyed she wasn’t resting.
“You’re still working?” I asked from the doorway.
She jumped and pressed a hand to her chest.
“Damn it, Luca.”
“I thought you were going to bed.”
“So did I.” She pointed to the screen. “I have to send this to Lisbon. They’ll be starting work before the road opens here.”
I came in. Two versions of the same drawing were on the screen. She switched between them, looking for a measurement.
“Don’t you have someone who can check that for you?”
“I did. I had to let five people go.”
She took her hand off the keyboard.
“Teresa handled the pigment samples. Rui checked the surveys with me. He has two daughters, and he offered to work without pay. Miguel couldn’t look at my father’s picture when he came to say goodbye. I know I need sleep, Luca. I also know what happens if I send out a drawing with a mistake in it.”
I’d read about the staff cuts in a report. I didn’t remember the names.
“You can hire help with the advance.”
“After payroll and suppliers? Show me what’s left.”
“The payment on your personal loan is still overdue. Is that what you’re trying to cover?”
Silence fell abruptly. The color drained from her face.
“You’ve been looking into my finances.”
“The group checks everyone we hire.”
“Don’t lie to me. The group checked the firm. You checked my life.”
The notification from my lawyers was still on the phone in my pocket. I’d read it that morning. I didn’t need another look at the amount to know how far I’d overstepped.
“I asked the lawyers to keep an eye on things after Augusto died.”
“And you’ve been getting reports for three years?”
“Yes.”
She pulled her cardigan closed, as if only now realizing how exposed she was.
“My father was ill for eighteen months. He canceled projects, turned away clients, hid the diagnosis until he couldn’t work anymore. When he died, there were loans, treatments the insurance hadn’t covered, broken contracts. I could have shut it all down. I didn’t.”
“Maybe you should have.”
The hurt on her face told me I’d found the worst possible thing to say. Again.
“And fire the three who stayed? Sell the archive? You act as though I haven’t done the math.
“Or would you rather lend me the money so you can make my decisions for me?”
I hadn’t intended to ask anything in return. But I’d just used a payment notice she’d never shown me to interfere in her decisions. I kept my hands in my pockets.
“That isn’t why I asked for the reports.”
“Then why didn’t you call me?” She picked up a sheet and lined it up with the drawing on the table. “You had my number. My father had yours.
“You weren’t there.”
I stood still.
“You weren’t there when he got the diagnosis. When he lost the use of his right hand and tried to draw with his left. When we had to choose which bills to pay. And you weren’t there when we buried him.”
Every word found its mark.
“I was in Dubai.”
“I know where you were.”
“There was a deal—”
“I know. Your assistant explained when I called about the wake. Then the flowers came.”
I remembered the windowless room in Dubai, the lawyers arguing over clauses, Sofia’s message that Augusto hadn’t made it through the night.
I’d asked for a flight. The airport was closed by a sandstorm.
By the time it reopened, I’d agreed to stay for the signing. That was the part I usually left out.
Arriving late, finding Gabriela, facing the house without Augusto in it—all of that had seemed harder than staying at the table. So I’d stayed.
“You’re right.”
She’d been ready to keep fighting. The admission stopped her.
“I should have been there.”
I went to the window. The dark reflected my face among the candles.
“Augusto sent me a message two days before he died. He asked me to look after you.”
“I don’t need you to look after me.”
“I know.”
“Do you? Since I got here, you’ve tried to decide where I work, when I sleep, even whether I should keep my father’s business.”
“I’m not sure this is what he meant,” I admitted, looking at the drawings. “The reports. The money.”
She said nothing. Rain filled the room with sound. I rubbed the back of my neck, not sure why I was still talking.
“When I found out about the debts, I thought about paying them off. I could have done it without you knowing.”
“Don’t.”
“I didn’t.”
“And don’t do it later.”
I turned.
“I can still help. If you want me to.”
“Start by telling me what you’ve done without my knowledge.”
“My lawyers negotiated extensions with two creditors. I haven’t paid your debts, and I haven’t asked for anything in return.”
Gabriela pushed her chair back. “I thought I’d got those extensions by showing them the new contracts.”
“The contracts helped.” It sounded inadequate. “I won’t do anything else without talking to you.”
“Back then, I needed you to pick up the phone. To show up. My father called you his brother, Luca.”
“I missed him too.”
“From where I was standing, it didn’t look like it.”
I looked down at my hands.
“When the banks turned me down for my first hotel, Augusto mortgaged the apartment to go into business with me. He didn’t tell me where the money came from. I only found out after he’d recouped his investment.”
She frowned.
“My father did that?”
“He put your home at risk. When I found out, I wanted to give him something extra. He told me to stop trying to put a number on his friendship.”
She smiled a little.
“That sounds like him.”
“When he got sick, he said he didn’t want visitors. I could have insisted. I let it go too easily.”
“Why?”
It took me a while to answer.
“I was afraid to watch him disappear.”
Rain filled the silence. The way she looked at me had changed.
No anger now, none of the old admiration I’d always tried to ignore.
She understood, and that left me more exposed than any accusation.
She touched my arm. A simple gesture. I felt it as if there were nothing between her hand and my skin.
“He missed you,” she said. “Even when he pretended he didn’t.”
“Do you hate me for not going?”
“I did. For a long time.”
“And now?”
Her fingers were still on my sleeve.
“I haven’t decided yet.”
I almost smiled.
“Is that progress?”
“It’s a thirty-day assessment.”
I laughed softly. So did she. Her hand stayed on my sleeve; when the laughter stopped, neither of us moved away. A loose strand of hair brushed the corner of her mouth. I lifted my hand.
“What are you doing?”
“Your hair.”
I brushed the strand aside. I should have stopped there. Instead, my fingers followed her jaw. Her breathing changed.
“Luca.”
It wasn’t a warning. That made it worse. I leaned closer. Her pupils widened; her fingers tightened on my sleeve. Her lips parted, just a little. Only a few centimeters between us. A gust of wind struck the palazzo. The windows shook. Neither of us moved away.
Then I saw the photograph on the table, slipped from her open folder. Augusto smiling beside me in front of the Palazzo delle Rose. The memory hit like cold water.
I stepped back.
Her hand fell. The flush on her face became humiliation, then anger.
“This can’t happen.”
“It didn’t.”
“Gabriela—”
“You don’t need to explain. It must be the lack of sleep.”
She put the photograph back in the folder.
“Go back to your room,” I said, hating the way I sounded.
“Don’t give me orders. Not now.”
“Then take it as a suggestion.”
She returned to the table and closed the file on her computer. A warning flashed: the battery was almost empty.
“Perfect,” she muttered. “Just what I needed.”
I started toward her, but stopped short of the table.
“There’s a working outlet in the bedroom corridor.”
“I’ll find it.”
She disconnected the portable battery, put the computer in her bag, and collected her folder. Then she faced me, gripping the strap.
“If you think it was a mistake, don’t come near me like that again.”
She left. I listened to her footsteps until the corridor fell quiet.
I blew out the candles one by one. At the last, I could still feel her skin beneath my fingers.