My Ultimate Gacha System-Chapter 335 - 9: Making mama Proud I

Wednesday, May 31, 2023 Florence 9:45 AM

Gianfranco arrived at Isabella’s building at quarter to ten in a black Alfa Romeo Giulia, and he was a man in his mid-fifties with silver hair and the measured energy of someone who had been doing this long enough that nothing about the process surprised him anymore, and he shook Demien’s hand first and then Isabella’s with equal attention and opened the rear door for her before getting back behind the wheel.

"Three properties today," he said while pulling away from the kerb. "I’ve tried to give you range — different neighbourhoods, different character. Tell me what you respond to and what you don’t, because that’s more useful than any specification I could put on paper." He glanced in the mirror at Isabella. "And Signora, I mean you specifically. It’s your home we’re finding."

Isabella looked slightly startled at being addressed directly and then nodded. "Okay."

The drive to the first property took twelve minutes through traffic that moved with the particular deliberate slowness of a Wednesday morning in Florence, and Gianfranco talked through the city’s property market in a way that was informative without being a lecture — prices had risen sharply in the historic centre since 2020, the residential neighbourhoods on the city’s inner ring were better value, Settignano and the hillside areas were gaining demand from buyers who wanted quiet proximity rather than central access.

"What about noise?" Isabella said from the back seat. "I’ve lived near a main road for twenty years. I don’t want that again."

"The three properties I’ve selected are all on secondary streets," Gianfranco said. "No through traffic. The Settignano property specifically — you’d hear almost nothing from inside."

She was quiet for a moment. Then: "And the neighbours. The building management. Are these buildings that are looked after or are they buildings where nobody speaks to each other and the stairs are always dirty?"

Gianfranco glanced in the mirror briefly. "The Settignano building has an active condominium committee. Meetings twice a year, shared costs split properly, communal areas maintained. The Rifredi property is private so that’s less relevant. The Oltrarno building—" He paused. "It’s newer, so the culture is still establishing itself."

"Meaning nobody knows each other yet," Isabella said.

"More or less," he said.

She nodded once and looked out the window while Florence moved past, and Demien sat in the front and said nothing because she was asking exactly the right things in exactly the right order.

Property One — Via Lambertesca, Oltrarno 10:12 AM

The building was on a narrow street in the Oltrarno and the entrance hall had been recently renovated with large-format grey tiles and a brushed steel intercom panel and a letter-box system that looked like it came from a design catalogue, and the lift was small and mirrors on three sides made it feel smaller while they rode it to the third floor.

Gianfranco unlocked the apartment and stood aside.

The living room opened immediately from the entrance — an open-plan space with pale engineered oak floors and white walls and a kitchen along the far side with handleless matt cabinets and an island unit in the centre with marble-effect quartz, and floor-to-ceiling windows along the south wall let in a slab of light that made everything feel clean and considered and expensive.

"Eighty-two square metres," Gianfranco said. "Fully renovated eighteen months ago. Two bedrooms, one bathroom, private garage space included. The kitchen appliances are all Miele. Underfloor heating throughout." He paused. "Three hundred and eighty thousand euros."

Isabella walked in slowly and her shoes made no sound on the oak floors and she moved toward the kitchen first the way she always did, and she ran one hand along the quartz island surface without saying anything while she looked at the appliances built into the white cabinet fronts.

Demien watched her.

She moved to the window and looked down at the courtyard below — a private courtyard shared with two other buildings, a stone fountain in the centre, two olive trees in terracotta pots, a locked gate on the far side.

"It’s beautiful," she said.

"It is," Gianfranco agreed.

She turned from the window and looked back at the room and then at the kitchen and then at Demien. "It’s too beautiful," she said.

Demien looked at her. "What does that mean?"

"It means—" She gestured at the island, the handleless cabinets, the underfloor heating she hadn’t asked about but already knew was there from the warmth coming through her shoes. "I would be afraid to cook in this kitchen. I would be afraid to leave a coffee ring on this surface. I would spend every day feeling like I was going to ruin something." She shook her head slightly. "This is not a kitchen for someone who makes tiramisu on a Tuesday afternoon."

"You could still make tiramisu," Demien said.

"Not in this kitchen," she said firmly. "In this kitchen you make things that look like the food in magazines. I don’t make food that looks like magazines."

Gianfranco had the grace to look at the floor.

They left.

Property Two — Via di San Donato, Rifredi 11:05 AM

The second property was technically a house rather than an apartment — ground floor and first floor of a detached building on the edge of the Rifredi neighbourhood, which was north of the centre and residential in the way that areas become residential when the tourists don’t come and the same families have lived on the same streets for three generations.

Three bedrooms, a kitchen that opened onto a garden, a living room with a fireplace that had been bricked up at some point in the 1980s, and the garden itself — a long narrow strip of land with a fig tree at the far end and raised borders that had been left to grow in their own direction for several seasons, and a terrace along the back of the house with terracotta tiles, several of which had cracked through winter frost and would need replacing.

The kitchen had the opposite problem from the first property. The units were original — pale yellow laminate fronts from the 1990s, a hob with one gas ring that didn’t light properly, a window above the sink with a plastic frame that had yellowed and warped slightly, and grout between the floor tiles that had never been white and wasn’t now.

Isabella stood in the kitchen and looked at it steadily and said nothing for a moment.

"The kitchen would need work," Gianfranco said, which was an understatement delivered with professional neutrality.

"The whole place needs work," Isabella said, and she wasn’t being critical, just accurate.

"Some updating, yes," he agreed. "But the bones are solid. The garden—"

"I want to see the garden," she said.

She went through the back door and stood on the cracked terrace tiles and looked down the length of the garden toward the fig tree, and Demien stood beside her while Gianfranco waited on the other side of the door.

The fig tree was large and old and had reached the point where it didn’t need anyone’s permission to grow, and the branches were already heavy with early-season fruit that wouldn’t be ready for two months and the leaves were the specific dark green of something that had been in the same soil for decades.

Isabella looked at it for a long time.

"It’s a good tree," Demien said.

"It is," she said. "My father had one in his garden." She paused. "Four hundred and twenty thousand. Plus renovation."

"I said I’d cover it."

"I know you said that." She turned and looked at the terrace tiles and the cracked grout and the yellow kitchen through the back door and the first-floor window frame that needed repainting. "But I would have to live in a building site while the work happens, and then I would have to manage contractors and decisions and problems that arise and I’m sixty-one years old, Demien." She looked at him. "I’m not sixty-one and fragile but I’m also not sixty-one and enthusiastic about a renovation project."

He didn’t have an answer to that because she was right.

"Find me a fig tree in a garden that someone else has already maintained," she said, and she walked back inside.

They left.