Chapter 4. Assigment and trip to Spain. *Marco*.

The days in Naples were hot, it was April and the sun in the south was beating down with brutal force. In Italy they always say that men from the south are intense and conflictive, that they don't give women a good life, that they don't respect them. But my mother always told me that when a southern Italian man really falls in love, he will do anything for a woman. 

I guess I would never know that because in my family there was this curse that had been in around for years, which they said made us incapable of loving. I knew it happened decades ago because of a family conflict, but it was never talked about among my family and I didn't even ask about it, to be honest I wasn't interested. But when my brothers married their beautiful wives and continued to see other women in a hidden manner, I began to think that maybe that story was true and we could never fall in love. 

_I can't give up my studies, I'm about to finish my final year and I have the most important university assignments.

_Don't worry about that, I've spoken to the dean and he has transferred your file to the central university in Barcelona.

_Only for three months?

Having power and money gave me benefits and opportunities, any other student would have been denied that, anyone else who didn't bear my surname.

_But I...

_Marco, it will only be a time for you to get what I ask for. Travel, get to know Spain, enjoy Barcelona for a while, it will be your last period as a young single man, take it as a holiday.

_But i'ts not a holiday father.

_Besides, Spanish women are very beautiful, and no one will be watching you there.

_Yes that's the only good thing I won't have hundreds of eyes staring at the back of my head every day.

_Marco, it's for your family, a favour I'm asking you to do me before you get married. Then you can become the head of our family's business. I will give the power mainly to you. You will be in time for your graduation and in a month's time you will come to visit to ask for Bryony's hand.

_What exactly do I have to do?

_Convince her to give her house to us for the price we've set.

_No one would sell that villa in Naples for that amount of money...

_She was always a disgrace to her family, a disgrace of a daughter, they say she went to Spain without looking back for their parents.

My father spoke of a distant cousin that I had only met a couple of times when I was little, I would have been fifteen and she was barely thirteen.

I remembered her as a girl with brown skin and black hair, and she wasn't completely Italian, she was mixed. Her father was Italian and her mother was from Dominican Republic. I remembered her mother, she was very beautiful and mine didn't like her, her Italian wasn't too good but her husband usually spoke Spanish with her.

He had died suddenly of a heart attack and had left his inheritance, which included a beautiful and huge villa in Naples to his daughter. The problem was that she had been out of the country since she was a teenager, living in Spain.

_You know Spanish, don't you?

_ Yes, although I suppose my accent is too obvious.

_The private lessons I paid for you and your brothers were mainly in English, I didn't imagine I'd end up sending you to Spain in the future.

_ Is it really necessary for me to go there?

-Son, we are interested in that house. We could buy it as soon as possible for a very low price and renting it to foreigners. Or even selling it for fifteen times more than what we are going to give her is a good deal.

We already had a lot of properties, but my father seemed obsessed by that house, he was too ambitious.

_I don't think she's stupid enough to accept a low price for a place there.

_She'll accept anything. That girl was a dishonour to her family, she only gave them problems. She was so bad academically... that they sent her to Spain to study there when she was a minor.

_And then didn't she come back?

_No, ... she never wanted to go back to Italy, she has hardly had any contact with her parents in all this time. I think only with her mother, from time to time, her parents didn't talk about her... She didn't even show up at her father's funeral. If you offer her that amount I'm sure she'll accept.

_And her mother?

_ Her father left everything to his daughter, her mother has two other properties, a flat in Sorrento and a big house in their country where they used to spend the summer.

_If you say it will be so easy, I'll be more relaxed, maybe in a few days I'll be able to be back.

_He's studying Hispanic Fhilology at the same university you're going to this term.

_At the same university?

I thought it was amazing that my father had gone to so much trouble, now I would have to see this girl I didn't even know for the first time every fucking day I was in Spain.

_You know where she lives too, don't you?

_No. But I'll bribe the principal there to tell me.

_ Dad, Spain isn't Italy.

_Money will buy anyone anywhere in the world.

_If I get him to sell us the house quickly, will I be able to go back to Naples? Or will I have to stay there to finish the course?

_Of course you can go back, you just bring what we need and that's it.

_When do I have to leave?

_Your flight to Barcelona leaves first thing tomorrow morning, you can pack your bags now.

I didn't know that this trip would change my life in every way. At that moment, I only thought about solving my father's assignment as soon as possible.  And it wasn't at all because of my future wife, apart from desire and attraction, I didn't feel anything for her. It was simply because I did not want to lose the comfort I had in Naples, a good life with everything I wanted. Although I had never known anything other than luxury, superficiality and false appearances.

So early the next morning, I took that flight ready to give my father what he wanted, as I had always done since I was a child. Because I had been raised to be obedient, to follow his steps and to please him. I looked out of the window and watched the sea of my city merge with the sky and just at that moment, the sun began to be born, and without realising it, I fell fast asleep. When I woke up I could see a different sea, the sea of Barcelona, and a full of big buildings... everything seemed different from Italy, and it was just then when they told the passengers that it was time to land.