The Italian Billionaire

introduzione

I remembered when I was only a young girl, at the tender age of nine; there was this luxurious reunion in the side of my mother's family at one of my father's high-end hotels. It was designated in Milan, when the skies were so beautiful, and the weather was so inviting. The room where the grand program was hold was interlaced with French, Italian and German culture, sporting together the main ancestry of the Albrecht. In that opulent event, I recalled my Uncle Jean being there.

He was a man with fine Germanic features. He was greying but there was something young within him. Out of the main male members of the family, he was told as the simplest and casual Albrecht child of all, living at the urban city of Berlin—running a small bookshop. When one of my other uncles—Uncle James danced with his fiancée, I recalled my Uncle Jean saying in a discreet manner that, "There is no better traitor than love." I asked him about it, what did he exactly mean by that. When I did, all he gave me as a reply was a meaningful yet sorrowful look.

I never knew what he exactly meant, when he looked at Uncle James danced with his fiancée-now wife, Aunt Caroline. There was something in Uncle Jean's cerulean eyes, it shimmered dully in such a sad manner when he gazed longingly at the dancers.

After that lavish event, we went home, and his words had made me almost sleepless.

I asked Mama, then. "Mama, what does "There is no better traitor than love" mean?" She looked at me as if I had asked what the color of the sky was. Chuckling with her feminine lips, she tutted me for that question and said, "Now, where did you get that philosophy?"

"Uncle Jean." I replied truthfully.

"Oh." She said, the spark in her eyes dimming a bit when she looked at me with a small smile. "Uncle Jean really told you that?"

"Yes." I told her, "What does it mean, then, Mama?"

"Vittoria, listen closely, mia cara..." she leaned closer, her spring smelled perfume radiating. "Love is never an easy thing, and what had Uncle Jean told you is a philosophy wherein love sometimes is painful."

"Have you experienced it, Mama?" I asked curiously.

She smiled at me, "Once upon a time, I guess..."

Now, looking back, I had understood what Uncle Jean meant that eventful day.
Though, I was never a witness, nor did I experience.

Love was never easy, as Mama had told me. But, when I recalled the way his eyes gazed at the dancers, I was still confused, and I knew not what had inspired him to say that. I tried to ask Mama, but she brushed me off. When I asked Papa, he hesitated and gave me a vague answer that resembles lightly to Mama's own answer. I never knew what Uncle Jean really meant when he told me--at the age of nothing but nine, that love was a 'traitor'.

It was already 15 years since that reunion, and yet I never forget Uncle Jean and his haunting philosophy. The way he told me, the way his eyes would sadden when the music was emitting happiness and how he had given me that look of grief.

I still knew nothing of it, I could not relate—not one bit. It aroused such curiosity that was not yet attended. But when I drove to Marina de Pisciottia in a hazed late sunset to see someone dear to my heart, something told me--a vague force, that the world was to take a turning point.

I tried to ignore that sinking feeling, but when looking back—oh, how much I should have listened.