The climax came when he entered the house with an elegantly dressed man: Riccardo Bianchi, a real estate appraiser. “Just a friend,” he said with his fake smile. But Riccardo’s eyes shone with eagerness.

“Excellent location, old Viennese neighborhood. Selling quickly. But of course, everything has to be demolished,” Riccardo said, without even looking at me.

I felt like I was saying goodbye to every corner of my life, while a stranger turned my house into numbers on a sheet of paper.

It was then that I remembered my grandmother’s words: “This isn’t just a house, it’s your fortress. Men come and go, but the fortress remains.”

When Alberto and his mother, Señora Lucía, began stuffing photographs, letters, and old books into sacks, something broke inside me. But not toward destruction. Toward clarity.

Another memory returned: a business card forgotten in a drawer, belonging to a faithful friend of my grandmother’s, Alexander Weiss.

“If the destroyers ever enter your house and you can’t do it alone, call him,” he had told me.

At that moment, I understood: the game was up. I smiled for the first time in a long time and told Alberto what he wanted to hear:

“You’re right.”