Loose End - Eva Mikula

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is clear to you; where you no longer need to escape from the injustices suffered to get out of the woods; I just have to find the courage to accept my story, tell it to everyone, just like the story of Little Red Riding Hood is told to our children. Now I write my story for myself, surrounded by a beam of light.

      2. SO STRONG SO ALONE

      In 1999, at the age of 24, I decided to move on. The seven criminal trials against me had ended. In my head I had only my life, my future. I had to leave behind a piece of the past, stay away from TV, from the spotlight of the public scene, because everything that talked about the history of the White One Gang, the trials, my private life, was annoying, it made me uncomfortable. It did not represent the real Eva, I was not the one told by the media to public opinion.

      That parenthesis no longer belonged to me. I wanted oblivion to erase the stereotypical figure of the woman of the leader of the gang of murderous criminals, for all of them I was always and only Fabio Savi's ex-girlfriend.

      It was time to try to fulfill the dreams I had cultivated since childhood. I had to find my "logic", my path, at least so my head and heart asked me, only in this way I would have had more hopes and more possibilities, because, up to that moment, the male figures in my life had transmitted me only traumas, illusions , betrayals and sufferings.

      It was in 1999, during an evening with some friends, that I met the Neapolitan footwear entrepreneur, in his sixties, Franco. His company had gained a good chunk of the Italian market in the production and distribution of shoes. His strong points were the casual line, made in Alicante, Spain, and the "fashion" line conceived in a factory near Naples, which is also the headquarters of the company management. He gave me the opportunity to show him the designs in which I had tried my hand at imagining models of women's footwear to be proposed in the following season. He examined them carefully. He liked them and chose some, following his indisputable professionalism acquired through years of experience in the field.

      His nephews, sons of the sisters, also worked with him. It was a constructive commitment that offered me the opportunity to travel. I felt fulfilled and satisfied. Franco treated me like a daughter, and played an important role in my maturation process, as a woman and as an entrepreneur. He took me to heart, introduced me to his family, his wife, his two daughters, all his collaborators and his friends.

      He was aware of my story, learned from newspapers and televisions, but he was always very respectful of the decision to leave everything behind, he never asked me for anything with the intention of knowing or learning more. He was only interested that I could grow professionally, that I fit into society and that I was protected from the risks that a beautiful young and lonely girl can run, easy prey to the mechanisms that detach you from reality and from a sober lifestyle.

      Franco was like a father, able to pass on the value of independence to me, to teach me the techniques of commerce, the management of work and private life. However, I did not imagine that disenchantment was, once again, around the corner.

      I realized that his grandchildren, a few years older than me, did not have a correct commercial behavior. For example, they took an order for a thousand pairs of shoes from a wholesaler, but only invoiced eight hundred. They cashed the rest in black and the money ended up directly in their pockets. They did this for their own interests, to the detriment of the company. I told Franco about it, bringing him the evidence. He was upset.

      He summoned his grandchildren, his was a family business, so there was a very high risk of creating irreparable fractures even between relatives. The two grandchildren were clear and uncompromising: "Either we go, or Eva goes! ".

      I anticipated any answer from Franco, I thought about resolving the question that could have become very painful for him: "You don't have to decide anything, I've already decided. I'm leaving". I came out with regret, I didn't even give him time to reply. I went away forever, but already as I was leaving I was thinking within myself: "Eva you have to realize something of yours, exclusively yours".

      For more than four years, from 1999 to 2003, I was a happy single, independent, without a man to break "boxes and plans". I didn't want to share anything with anyone in my private life anymore. The event, in some ways painful, which caused my exit from Franco's company and my consequent renunciation of the protective umbrella that he represented for me, convinced me that the time had come to become the absolute protagonist of every aspect of my life, while maintaining a good friendship with him.

      Meanwhile, I felt more and more an active part of Italian society. In a country where everything had happened: society in crisis, terrorism, speculative finance, I saw a new world advancing. And it didn't seem so far away that I couldn't reach out and grab it.

      I did not have to and did not want to depend on anyone anymore, neither on men, nor on a subordinate job, none of this, only on my working skills. I was not engaged, I did not want to get engaged and I would not do it until I felt the firm earth under my feet. I aspired to certainties that could materialize only through the creation of my own company, the possession of a home, a car of my own.

      Not that I hadn't had any proposals or opportunities to bond emotionally to someone, but I rejected them with casual ease. I just felt a strong need to open up to myself, towards something that made me feel good. I was looking for a key to shoot, to run.

      Once a friend told me: "In the practice of the ancient martial arts we learn how to return to the starting point, through the maturation that is reached with years and years of training.

      This means that the first technique that we learned when we were young amateurs, after a journey made up of infinite challenges and fights, we are able to internalize it and execute it with the strength of a mountain and with the wisdom of an old Master ".

      What was my first "technique" when, precisely as a "beardless", I ran away from home? That of working as a waitress in a bar-restaurant in Budapest. I felt great, important, satisfied and free behind that counter or serving between tables. Even washing dishes.

      Here, that's how the light bulb went on! I was given the idea of going back to my starting point: quickly looking for and finding a place to set up a restaurant business. Do you want to compare Italian coffees and cappuccinos? And the food? I already imagined my creativity and my desire to design new things at the service of the people, perhaps with some hints of Hungarian and Romanian cuisine.

      What to do? I dreamed of a restaurant bar, I wanted to serve people. I started researching and studying the procedures for acquiring a license. I quickly discovered that it was not easy in those years, to acquire a license for a diner bar already started, cost a lot, they all started with minimum requests of one hundred and fifty thousand euros. And who had so much money?!? Not to mention the other costs required to open a business of that type.

      In front of my house, in Rome, there was a fruit and vegetable shop. The space was not very large, about 120 square meters. From the balcony I observed that very few people entered that shop. I often wondered how the owners managed to move forward. I therefore thought that it would not be difficult to convince the owners to rent or sell the business. I took the subject away, went in and asked: "Do you have any idea, if in the surroundings there is a commercial space for rent?". They replied that they knew nothing, that they hadn't heard anything or even seen any signs nearby. I insisted: "Not to be intrusive, excuse me if I'm direct, when does your contract expire? This space and also the position would be perfect for me". To sweeten the pot I added: "If you intend to sell, maybe you can agree on a small severance pay". But I was disappointed. Apparently there was no sale of the shop in their plans.

      "No" they answered almost in unison. "We live on this. We have no intention of leaving." I think, above all I feel, that some events in our life, in particular those concerning the sphere of what we would like to happen, in affections as in work, in short, in existence, do not happen by chance.

      Luck cannot always be a coincidence, I believe more in the power of thought and desires. And at that time at the top of the list of my projects, there perform a commercial activity: the project to open a bar restaurant, diner, in that area of Rome.

      But the first concrete attempt to start laying the foundations

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