Ten thousand meters above the United States of America, 1998

Luciano Benetton was on an airplane, reading a letter. In the few minutes he took to read it, he traveled from Nevada to California. In the private jet, there were media relations people and people from the commercial department. Most of them were asleep. Some of them were not even born when the business began.

Eight thousand stores. Eight billion dollars. The next move. The next meeting with the press. The images... The United Nations... Toscani... the green hair. The questions, the answers. How much longer could he keep going?

Eight thousand stores. Eight billion dollars. This was the reality. There was another time, though, when all this was just a dream.

Luciano rarely looked back. He could remember most things as they really happened, but he hardly ever spoke of them. He spent most of his time in the air. Maybe, beneath the successful businessman, there was still a small boy afraid of staying in one place for too long.

Badoere, northern Italy, April 7, 1944

The Americans and British were moving up from the south and their planes were destroying villages, towns, and cities.

When the bombs threatened their home town of Treviso, the Benettons sheltered in the village of Badoere and shared a house with a farming family. Each day, they tried to carry on life as normal.

This morning, Leone had already gone into town to work at his bicycle rental business. Now Luciano, his eight-year-old son, was getting ready to cycle to school. It was a thirty-kilometer round trip, but school was important. His father wanted him to study and become a doctor.

"Eh, Luciano," the farmer's wife was calling. "Wait, don't go."

He ignored her and started to ride away.

"Luciano!"

This time the voice was his sister's. Although she was younger than him, he could never ignore Giuliana.

"You can't go today," she was saying. "The bombers are coming."

"They always say that. So what's new? They'll never touch the school."

But he was thinking about his father, who was already in the town. At that moment, in the distance, the alarms began to sound.

Much later, the door opened and Leone Benetton appeared. He told them what had happened. He had taken shelter and somehow escaped the bombs. Afterward, the dead and dying were everywhere. The river was red with blood. Over 1,000 people had died.