Page 1 of Palazzo
Chapter 1
Cosima Saverio sat on the terrace of her penthouse apartment in Rome, looking out over the familiar monuments and rooftops of the city as the sun came up. In the distance, she could see Saint Peter’s Basilica and Vatican City, the dome of the San Carlo al Corso Basilica, and to the north, the Villa Medici and the Borghese Gardens. It was a view she never tired of. It was her favorite time of day, before the city sprang to life. It was already warm and would be hot by midmorning. As she stood at the rail of the balcony a few minutes later, she could see below the Piazza di Spagna, the Spanish Steps, the Fontana della Barcaccia, and the Trinità dei Monti church.
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The apartment was conveniently located on the top floor of the store, which was her family business. The Saverios made the finest leather goods in all of Italy, or all of Europe, rivaled only by Hermès, whichwas a worldwide enterprise. Saverio leathers were sold only in their two stores, one in Venice, the other in Rome.
Like all of her ancestors, Cosima had been born in Venice, to an illustrious family that traced its history back to the fifteenth century. The Palazzo Saverio in Venice still belonged to them, although her father had moved the family to Rome shortly after her younger sister, Allegra, was born, and Cosima had lived in the same apartment with her parents and brother and sister on the top floor over the store almost all her life. Her younger brother, Luca, had his own villa now on the Via Appia Antica, and her sister lived in a smaller apartment on the floor below her, with a design studio. It was more convenient for Allegra because it had an elevator, which didn’t go to the top floor. Cosima lived in solitary splendor in the same apartment she had grown up in. She reached the penthouse apartment by a narrow staircase, and the terrace gave her a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree view of the city she considered her home. Venice was their history, but Rome was where she lived and worked, and ran the family business she had inherited fifteen years before, at twenty-three.
As a young girl, it had never been her plan to run the business or even work there. When they were children, her father intended to have her younger brother, Luca, run it one day, and step into his shoes. Luca had never shown any interest in it, even as a boy. His friends had been the spoiled, indulged sons of other Italian noblemen, and he had a passion for fast cars and beautiful women at an early age. He didn’t have his father’s interest in business, or his grandfather’s talent for creating beauty as a remarkable artisan. Ottavio Saverio had designed each piece for his shop in Venice, whethera saddle or an alligator handbag or an exquisite pair of custom-made shoes. People who were familiar with the finest of everything could recognize a piece created by Saverio anywhere.
Ottavio Saverio had been the eighth child and only son of a respected banker in Venice. He had inherited the palazzo in Venice by default when each of his sisters married and moved away to Florence, Rome, and other cities in Europe. None of them wished to be burdened by the palazzo where they’d grown up. It was four centuries old and troublesome and expensive to maintain. Ottavio had used his inheritance to buy all of his sisters’ shares of the palazzo. He had used what was left to establish the store in one of the narrow streets off the Piazza San Marco where he created his magnificent leather pieces, and gained a reputation throughout Italy, and eventually Europe, for the exquisite work he did. Each piece was a masterpiece of beauty and luxury, made of the finest leathers and exotic skins. Every creation was unique at first. He filled the orders quickly and the business grew into an astonishing success in less than a decade. For all the years that he ran it, he was the master craftsman and genius behind the name. Saverio products were sold only at the store in Venice. Women waited a year or even two for their orders to be filled and were never disappointed by the results. Ottavio’s list of clients included royals, famous women, movie stars, and wealthy people from all over the world.
His son and only child, Alberto, never became a craftsman like his father, although Ottavio made him study as an apprentice for two years so he would understand the products they were selling and how they were made. But Alberto was more interested in thebusiness side of the store. Once he inherited the company, Alberto maintained his father’s tradition that Saverio products were sold only in their own store and nowhere else.
When his father died, Alberto kept the store in Venice, and moved his wife, Tizianna, and their three children to Rome. He bought the building that still housed their store, and built the apartment that had previously been home to their whole family and where Cosima lived alone now on the top floor. She had designed Allegra’s apartment on the floor below, when she was old enough to live alone, so they each had privacy. Luca had already moved out by then, when he turned twenty-one and Allegra was still only seventeen.
When their father opened the store in Rome, it was spectacular and increased the business exponentially. Alberto had groomed his son to run the business ever since he was a little boy, but he had never succeeded in capturing Luca’s interest. Luca neither understood nor cared about the magic of what they made.
What Alberto had wanted was to have their business grow without giving up any of his father’s traditions. It was a fine line between the two, and Alberto had grandiose plans that were always just slightly more expensive to implement than he’d anticipated, so the business wasn’t as profitable as it should have been. He had a flawless eye for quality and beauty and was an extremely elegant man himself. He and Tizianna were among the social leaders of both Venice and Rome and exuded an aura of elegance and style.
Cosima inherited some of that, but she had a more retiring nature than her parents and loved her studies. She’d always been relieved that she would never have to run the business. She worked at the store in Rome for a month every summer to please her father. Shewas a dutiful daughter. Luca managed to escape that because he was five years younger than Cosima, and Allegra was still a child.
In July and August the family went to their other home in Sardinia. They spent two months on the family’s boats and entertaining the friends they invited to stay with them. Invitations to their home were greatly sought after. Alberto and Tizianna were fabulous hosts, and were invited everywhere in return, or by new friends in the hopes of being invited to stay in their home. They were generous with their hospitality and lavish with their guests. Cosima still remembered the extravagant parties her parents gave, both in their apartment in Rome and at the palazzo in Venice, where they held grand balls.
After lengthy discussions with her father, Cosima had chosen a career in the law. She went to university in Rome and lived at home. She loved her years at university, her studies, and the friends she made. Her father teased her that she would be the attorney for the business one day. He never expected her to practice law, but he thought it would be useful for her in business, if she didn’t marry first. Her mother had never worked, and he didn’t expect his daughters to.
Allegra, the youngest of the three children, had inherited her grandfather’s talent and had a passion for design. She was always sketching a dress or a bag or a shoe on a scrap of paper. She had a bright, happy nature and enjoyed living on the fringe of her parents’ busy social life even when she was very young. They would let her stay at their parties for a short time, and she always wished she could stay for the entire evening. Cosima was less interested in their parties but always had a flock of suitors among the sons of their friends,even though Allegra was far more flirtatious than her older sister by nature. Cosima always had a more serious, studious side, much more so than her younger brother and sister.
Luca was five years younger than Cosima and Allegra was nine years younger than her older sister, four years younger than Luca, and hated being treated like a baby. She couldn’t wait to grow up and discover a broader world. Luca hated spending time with his family and preferred to be with his own friends. He had a wild side in his teens. His parents struggled to curb it with little success.
At twenty-three, Cosima had one year of law school in Rome left to complete. She arrived at the family home in Sardinia after working at the store for a month during her school holiday, as she always did. She worked in the administrative offices, not with the customers, and won high praise every year for her efficiency. She had the precise mind of a future lawyer, and also her mother’s blond beauty. Allegra and Luca had their father’s dark hair, and Cosima and Allegra both had their mother’s deep blue eyes. Tizianna was from Florence, and Cosima had her typically Florentine fine-featured beauty. Luca and his father had classic aristocratic faces that belonged on a Roman coin.
The summer before Cosima’s final year in law school, she arrived in Sardinia just as her parents were about to leave for a weekend in Portofino with friends who had a home there and had just bought a new speedboat. Luca was supposed to go with them, but a party in Porto Rotondo given by friends of his changed his mind at the last minute and he decided to stay in Sardinia. Cosima stayed in Sardinia with him. She was tired after having worked six days a week at the store for the last month. So her parents left for the weekend and tookfourteen-year-old Allegra with them, since their hosts had a daughter the same age. They had a son close to Luca’s age too, but Luca found him dull and was happy to escape the weekend in Portofino. Even the lure of the new speedboat didn’t sway him.
The house was quiet after they left. Luca disappeared immediately with his friends, and Cosima relaxed and lay in the sun and was happy to have some time alone. She knew they were expecting a house full of guests the following weekend and her parents would expect her to help entertain them, so she was happy to have time to read and take it easy before they came back.
The weekend in Portofino ended in disaster. The hosts allowed their exuberant, reckless nineteen-year-old son to drive them all in the new speedboat. He collided with another boat at full speed, going dangerously fast in the new boat he wasn’t familiar with. The two boats crashed and exploded in midair. Both sets of parents were killed instantly, as were the hosts’ son, who had been driving the boat, and daughter. The only survivor was Allegra, badly burned on much of her body and with a spinal cord injury so severe that she had to be airlifted to Rome for surgery.
Cosima got the call on Saturday afternoon. She came into the house from the pool to answer the phone. Twenty minutes later, she was dressed and waiting for a cab to take her to the airport to fly to Rome to be with Allegra. Her parents were dead, and she was in shock, unable to believe what had happened. She was torn between grief for her parents and terror for her sister after the accident. Everything rested on her now, and the responsibility for her brother too. She was suddenly faced with adult decisions. She couldn’t reach Luca, who was on the family’s boat in Porto Rotondo, before she left.She had to leave him a note with the terrible news. He called her crying when she got to Rome and they sobbed together about their parents and Allegra.
Cosima spent the next weeks at her sister’s side as Allegra recovered from surgery and was kept in a medical coma while she healed from the burns. It gave Cosima much time to think and grieve for her parents. After the surgery, the doctors told Cosima that Allegra would never walk again. Her spinal cord had been severed. It was yet another terrible blow after losing their parents.
Cosima left Allegra only long enough to plan and attend her parents’ funeral in Venice and returned to her sister at the hospital in Rome as quickly as she could. She let Luca return to Sardinia after the funeral, as he wished, since she had no time to spend with him while Allegra was in the hospital, and he didn’t want to spend the rest of the summer in Rome.
Luca was greatly subdued and in deep grief over his parents at first. But as he began to feel better, he returned to his old ways and by the end of the summer was going wild with his friends, who came from all over Italy to visit him with no supervision. Cosima was in Rome, couldn’t control her brother, and didn’t want to leave Allegra alone. She was struggling with the loss of her parents too, and the use of her legs. Cosima left her only for very brief periods of time to go to her father’s office and attempt to understand what she needed to know. Her father’s assistant and the family attorney, Gian Battista di San Martino, were both very helpful, trying to impart as much information as they could in a short time. They brought papers to the hospital almost daily for Cosima to sign. And Gian Battista was a constant presence and strong support for Cosima to rely on. He tookher out to dinner sometimes just so she would get a change of scene from the hospital.
It was two months later, in September, when she got Luca back into some semblance of control, and back to Rome. He refused to return to the university where he’d been studying, and insisted he needed time to “mourn” their parents, which in his case meant going to every party in the city, being out every night, and consuming large amounts of alcohol. But he was back at their apartment, and she got him to check in with her several times a day, so she at least knew where he was, although he often stayed out all night and came home in the morning. She suggested that he work at the store, which he refused to do, and with no set activity, he did whatever he wanted. He stayed out late, slept half the day. She didn’t have time to force the issue with him. She was busy with Allegra. And Luca became harder and harder to control. He was enjoying having no parental supervision at eighteen, and paid little attention to Cosima and her rules.
Allegra’s progress was slow but steady. She’d had several skin grafts and painful surgeries, but she was surprisingly brave, and philosophical about her injuries. She was quieter than before, after the loss of her parents. But unlike her older brother, she was back in school by Christmas, with a remarkably positive attitude. She would be in a wheelchair forever, but Cosima nursed her as lovingly as any mother, and without parents, the two sisters were even closer than before. Cosima had hired a man to carry Allegra up the staircase to their apartment. Luca was almost never there to help them.
Within six months, Cosima was more serious than ever, still mourning their parents, and had been catapulted into fulladulthood. She was running the business, learning as she went. It was the hardest year of her life, and once Allegra was out of the hospital, Cosima went to Venice as often as she could to oversee the store there. Sometimes Gian Battista went with her when he had the time. When he didn’t, the palazzo in Venice, where they had spent holidays and family time, seemed achingly empty. It was painful to remember how vibrant it had been when her parents were alive, and how sad it seemed now. Cosima had no time to see her friends or do anything except work at the stores and take care of her sister. Gian Battista was the only source of support in her life.
Allegra was determined to be as independent as she could be once she came home from the hospital. She still talked about designing for the store one day, as though to confirm she had an active future ahead of her. Their longtime housekeeper, Flavia, helped Allegra when Cosima was at work. When she wasn’t working or with Allegra, Cosima was chasing Luca down and trying to help him find a sense of direction. He took full advantage of the lack of parental control and fought Cosima on every point.
Their parents’ estate was divided equally among them, and Cosima rapidly discovered that her father had spent more than the business had made, on their lifestyle, constant entertaining, several homes, luxurious boats and cars, and extravagant improvements to the store. She was constantly trying to rein in expenses, to pay the bills and her parents’ debts, and fighting to keep the business afloat. She couldn’t let it go under. She wanted to honor her father, which was a mammoth task for a girl then twenty-four. Her own studies fell by the wayside. She had more important tasks at hand while runningthe business, taking care of Allegra, and trying to keep Luca in control.
Her father had bought another, bigger building in Rome before he died, on the Via Condotti. He was hoping to enlarge the store into something even more grand. Cosima sold it as soon as she was able to, before construction was started. She sold it at a loss, but they needed the money, and she poured it back into the business. Their production was so meticulous and so slow that she wasn’t able to increase their income immediately, and had to find money from other sources, just to keep the business going and meet their expenses and payroll.
