The clock of the manor rang nineteen hours when Gustavo Cardoso pushed the front door of his home.
At the age of forty-eight, he bore the burden of being the man who appeared in business magazines and financial sites.
Everyone smiled at him in the meetings, but no one really knew him beyond his immense fortune.
On this day of his forty-eighth birthday, absolutely no one had called him to wish him good.
He placed his briefcase on the Italian leather chair and loosened the knot of his tie, which was worth more than several monthly salaries.
He remained motionless in the center of the largest room of his mansion, surrounded by a luxury that now seemed to him foreign.
Eighteen rooms, gardens with fountain, a cellar filled with wines from four continents, and a silence so deep that it became painful.
His phone had rang twenty-twice that day: board meetings, investment proposals and calls from lawyers.
Nothing more. Not even his sister Camila, who lived thirty minutes away in the exclusive neighborhood he had bought for him.
