In the days that followed, Alberto played the part of the perfect husband.
He brought me fresh juices, sent me tender messages, showered me with small attentions. But I knew his pattern too well: first the blow, then the lullaby of false affection.
The climax came when he walked into the house one afternoon with an elegantly dressed man at his side: Riccardo Bianchi, a real estate appraiser.
“Just a friend,” Alberto explained with his counterfeit smile. But Riccardo’s eyes gleamed with greed.
“Excellent location, old Viennese neighborhood. It will sell quickly. But of course, everything has to be demolished,” Riccardo remarked, not even bothering to look at me.
As he spoke, I felt as though I were being forced to say goodbye to every corner of my life, while a stranger casually reduced my memories to numbers on a piece of paper.
And then, I remembered my grandmother’s words:
“This isn’t just a house, it’s your fortress. Men come and go, but the fortress remains.”
When Alberto and his mother, Señora Lucía, began stuffing photographs, letters, and old books into sacks, something inside me broke. But it didn’t break toward despair—it broke toward clarity.
Another memory surfaced: a business card tucked away in a forgotten drawer. It belonged to Alexander Weiss, a faithful friend of my grandmother’s.
“If the destroyers ever enter your house and you can’t do it alone, call him,” my grandmother had once told me.
At that moment, I finally understood. The game was over. And for the first time in a long while, I smiled. I turned to Alberto and gave him exactly what he wanted to hear:
“You’re right.”
