My Ultimate Gacha System-Chapter 336 - 10: Making mama Proud II

Property Three — Via dei Bardi, Settignano 12:20 PM

Settignano sat on the hill above Florence and the road up to it wound through stone walls and cypress trees and past the occasional villa set back from the street behind iron gates, and the neighbourhood at the top was the kind of quiet that came from being above the noise rather than removed from it — you could see the city below and hear nothing from it.

Via dei Bardi was a residential street of two- and three-storey buildings from the postwar decades, renovated at different times by different owners so that the street had a pleasant visual inconsistency, and the building where the third apartment sat had been recently re-rendered in cream plaster with dark green shutters and a heavy wooden entrance door that Gianfranco opened with a key that looked like it belonged to the building’s original construction.

The lift was old but worked, and it took them to the second floor where a single door opened onto the landing.

Gianfranco unlocked it.

Isabella walked in first.

The entrance hall was small — coat hooks on one side, a console table, a mirror above it — and opened directly into the living room which was not large but had two sets of windows, one facing the street and one set of french doors opening onto a balcony that faced the city, and the afternoon light from the city-facing side came in at an angle that moved slowly across the parquet floor.

The parquet was original — narrow-strip oak that had been sanded and re-oiled at some point but retained the slight unevenness of old wood that had lived through decades of different feet and different seasons — and it was warm underfoot and made a quiet sound when you walked on it that new floors never made.

Isabella moved through the living room without speaking and pushed the french doors open and stood on the balcony.

The view was Florence in the middle distance — terracotta rooftops and the dome of Santa Croce visible above the skyline and the hills beyond the city going green and then grey, and closer in the rooftops of Settignano’s own neighbourhood dropping away below the street, and washing lines between two buildings across the way with sheets moving in the late morning air.

She stood there for a moment and then came back inside.

The kitchen was along the back wall of the apartment and the previous owners had renovated it two years earlier — not expensively, not in the magazine style of the Oltrarno apartment, but properly, with care. White units with simple handles, a gas hob with four rings all of which lit when Gianfranco demonstrated, Italian slate tile on the floor in a warm grey that showed no seams, and a window above the sink with a white wooden frame that looked out over the neighbourhood’s back gardens toward where the hill continued rising and the trees were dense and close.

Isabella stopped in the kitchen doorway.

She didn’t say anything, and Demien watched her from behind while she stood looking at the window above the sink, and her hands came up in front of her and pressed together the way they did when she was holding something in, and Gianfranco moved quietly to stand near the hallway.

After a moment she walked to the sink and stood at the window and looked out at the gardens below and the trees above them, and her hands settled on the edge of the countertop.

She turned on the tap. Turned it off. Pressed the flat of her hand against the slate tile on the counter.

"Two bedrooms?" she said, and her voice was slightly different from how it had been for the last two hours.

"Two bedrooms," Gianfranco confirmed from the hallway. "One bathroom, fully redone last year. The building has a cellar storage unit included. Four hundred thousand euros total."

She nodded once and walked back through to the living room and pushed the french doors open again and stood on the balcony for the second time, and this time she stayed there longer while the city sat below her in the midday light.

Demien came to stand beside her.

She didn’t look at him and he didn’t speak.

After a minute she said: "The kitchen has a proper window."

"It does," he said.

She was quiet.

"Tell me you don’t want it," he said.

She pressed her lips together and her chin moved slightly. "I didn’t say that."

"Then we’re done looking," he said, and he went back inside to where Gianfranco was standing. "Make the offer."

Gianfranco stepped into the hallway with his phone while Isabella came back in from the balcony and stood in the kitchen again with both hands flat on the countertop and her eyes on the window above the sink, and the room was quiet except for Gianfranco’s voice from the hall speaking to someone at the agency.

"The numbers," Demien said from the kitchen doorway, because she would want to know before anything moved forward. "Eighty thousand down. The rest on a twenty-five year mortgage — about eighteen hundred a month. I cover it."

She turned to look at him. "That’s a long time."

"Twenty-five years," he said. "I know what that is."

"What if something happens. An injury, a—"

"Then there’s a buffer in place," he said. "Federica built that before we got here. It’s not impulsive. I did this properly."

She held his gaze and then looked back at the window, and the gardens below were still and the trees above them were still and Florence went about its Wednesday somewhere beneath the hill.

"Eighteen hundred a month," she said.

"Yes."

She was quiet for a moment.

"You raised me alone for nineteen years," he said. "Let me do this one thing."

She pressed the back of her hand against her mouth briefly and then took a breath, and she didn’t look at him while she nodded, and that was enough.

Thursday, June 1, 2023 BMW Dealership, Bergamo 11:30 AM 𝐟𝕣𝗲𝕖𝕨𝗲𝐛𝗻𝗼𝐯𝗲𝚕.𝗰𝚘𝐦

Marco had called him Tuesday morning and told him to be free Thursday and to dress like a human being and not a footballer, which was Marco’s way of saying no tracksuit, and when the car came to pick Demien up at eleven it drove to the BMW dealership on Viale Giulio Cesare and Marco was already standing outside it on the pavement with his hands in his jacket pockets.

"What are we doing here?" Demien said.

"I owe you a birthday present," Marco said.

Demien looked at him.

"April thirteenth," Marco said. "I was there. I came to Florence, we had dinner, your mother made that cake." He paused. "And I showed up with nothing because I hadn’t figured out what to get you yet and I told myself I’d sort it when the season was done." He looked at the dealership entrance. "Season’s done."

"You don’t have to buy me a car," Demien said.

"I know I don’t have to," Marco said. "I’ve known you since you were sixteen. I was there when Fiorentina let you go. I was there when you were in that apartment in Florence not leaving the house." He paused. "I made one phone call to Atalanta and you did the rest. Everything that’s happened since — that’s you." He looked at Demien. "You’re not just a client. You know that. So stop arguing and come inside."