Chapter Twenty Three
Victoria
I am not working. Technically.
My laptop is open, and I am sitting at my kitchen table with a cup of tea gone cold beside me, so from a distance, this could look like work. A responsible Saturday evening. A woman catching up on emails. Reviewing notes.
Preparing for Monday like a normal, ambitious professional who definitely has not spent the last twenty-four hours letting a powerful client wine her and dine her, take her to bed over and over and… then send her home with a bag of lingerie.
But I am not working.
I am researching Mario Conti.
I stare at the search results on my screen and feel guilt crawl hot and uncomfortable up the back of my neck.
This is inappropriate.
It is invasive.
It is also completely predictable, because I am incapable of leaving a question alone once it lodges itself in my brain.
Especially when the question has dark eyes, silver at his temples, a house with adult sons, and a dead wife no one seems to discuss in anything more than the vaguest terms possible.
I take a sip of tea, make a face because it is cold, and set the mug back down.
“Just background,” I mutter to myself.
Which is what I said twenty minutes ago.
And forty minutes ago.
And an hour ago, when I first typed his name into the search bar.
Mario Conti.
Mario Conti Napoli.
Mario Conti moglie.
Mario Conti Anna.
Anna Conti.
That one had made my stomach twist.
I have researched him before. Of course I have.
Not obsessively. Not like this. But when Conti Enterprises approached my firm, I did what any competent attorney would do.
I checked corporate histories, acquisition structures, public litigation, regulatory issues, ownership records, press mentions.
Enough to understand the client. Enough to know where the risk might be.
The problem is that Mario Conti does not exist online like normal people exist online.
His Chicago business presence is polished and current. Corporate profiles. Acquisition announcements. A few business journals discussing Conti Enterprises’ aggressive expansion. Mentions of real estate holdings, logistics contracts, hospitality interests.
Before Chicago, everything becomes harder.
Italian or paywalled. Fragmented and old.
Names repeated in articles with too many branches of the same family tree and not enough context. Business filings in Naples. Photos from charity events. Brief references to Francis Conti, to old companies, to shipping, construction, hospitality, security.
And then there are the things not said.
The gaps. The careful omissions.
Those are the things bothering me now.
This morning, when Mario told me I was the first woman he had brought home, something in me had gone embarrassingly soft.
I had liked it.
Too much.
I had liked knowing that the house had not been some revolving door of women.
That he had not brought me into a place where countless others had stood in his bedroom, his closet, his garden.
I had liked feeling chosen, even though that is a dangerous word and I should know better than to let it anywhere near a man like him.
Then the other part of my brain caught up.
The suspicious part.
The part that hears an absence and asks why.
He had a wife. His sons had a mother.
Anna.
And she died about ten years ago, from what I can piece together.
That is all I know.
Literally. That’s it.
Not how or why.
Nothing that’s happened since.
And I hate not knowing.
So now I am here, sitting at my kitchen table, using browser translation on Italian articles that still barely make sense.
I skim through another one.
Nothing.
Another.
A photo of Mario at some event years ago, younger but still unmistakably him. Black hair, no silver yet. Dark suit. Severe expression. A woman beside him with pale blond hair swept back from her face.
Anna, the caption says.
My stomach tightens.
She was beautiful.
I do not know why that surprises me.
Of course she was beautiful.
She has the kind of face that looks like it belongs in old photographs. Elegant bones. Full mouth. A cool, distant kind of poise. Mario stands close to her.
I stare at the photo far longer than I should.
Then I close the tab.
This is grotesque.
This is me poking around in a dead woman’s life because I slept with her husband.
A sound that is not quite a laugh and not quite a groan leaves me.
“I am going to hell.”
I go back to the search results anyway.
Most of the articles say the same things. Anna Conti, wife of businessman Mario Conti. Died unexpectedly. Survived by her husband and twin sons. Private funeral. Family requested privacy.
“Unexpectedly.”
That word appears in nearly every article.
But no cause.
No mention of illness or accident. It couldn’t be natural causes.
Just a lot of nothing.
The lack of information bothers me more with every tab I open.
Maybe that is normal in Italy.
Or maybe just in wealthy, private Italian families with enough influence to keep personal tragedies out of the press.
Maybe it means nothing, and I’m overthinking it.
Maybe I should close my laptop and stop acting like a woman one bad search away from purchasing a corkboard and red string.
I do not close my laptop.
Instead, I search again.
Anna Conti morte causa.
Anna Conti trovata morta.
Mario Conti sospetti.
The last one makes me pause before I hit enter.
Suspicion.
It feels ugly even typing it.
I press enter anyway.
A few legitimate-looking results appear.
Then a cluster of trash articles.
Sensational headlines with bad fonts and ads cluttering the screens. Sites with names that practically scream gossip, scandal, speculation, and questionable sourcing.
I ignore the first few.
Then one headline catches my eye.
My Italian is not good enough to read it quickly, but the automatic translation loads a second later.
“The mysterious death of Anna Conti: What happened inside the Conti home?”
My skin goes cold.
The site looks like the Italian version of a gossip rag, the kind of place that would publish photographs of celebrities buying tomatoes and call it a secret affair.
I should not click.
The page loads slowly, ads crowding the margins.
I close two pop-ups and scroll past a photo of Anna that looks like it was taken at a formal event. Same blond hair. Same composed face. Same impossible polish.
The translation is clunky, but most of it is worthless speculation about the Conti family, old rumors about Naples, hints about business rivalries written with just enough ambiguity to avoid a lawsuit. There are paragraphs full of implication and no evidence.
Then I finally reach the section about Anna.
My hand stills on the trackpad.
According to the article, Anna Conti was found dead in the home she shared with Mario Conti and their sons.
A housekeeper called emergency services.
The article does not say where Mario was. It does not say where Matteo and Tomasso were. It does not say how Anna died. It says only that emergency services were called and that the cause of death was not publicly released.
I read the next paragraph and pause.
Then again.
Then I physically recoil from the laptop.
“No.”
The word comes out sharp in my quiet, empty kitchen.
The article is suggesting—
No.
It is not even suggesting.
It is doing that cowardly gossip-rag thing where it asks questions so it does not have to make accusations.
Was there tension inside the Conti marriage?
Had Mario Conti’s business dealings placed pressure on the family?
Could the powerful Conti name have influenced the silence surrounding Anna’s death?
Was the official story incomplete?
My heart begins to pound.
This is disgusting.
This is garbage.
Mario?
No. No way. Not a chance.
The denial is instant. Visceral. Almost angry.
Not him.
Not the man who pulled the sheet over my shoulder this morning when the air was cool. Not the man who fed me breakfast in his garden. Not the man who reminded me more than once that I could say no. Not the man who held my hand and waited for me to squeeze once or twice.
Not him.
Not that.
Absolutely not.
I push away from the table. The chair legs scrape against the floor.
My breath is suddenly shallow.
How well do I actually know him?
The question slips in before I can stop it.
I have spent two nights with him.
Two nights.
And a handful of hours in the office.
A few meetings. A few conversations. Dinner. Sex. Breakfast. A bag of lingerie that I still have not unpacked because looking at it makes me feel both treasured and reckless.
That is not knowing someone.
That is attraction.
Chemistry.
Madness.
I know he is intense.
I know he can be ruthless.
I have seen it in his face. In the office, the conference room. I have seen enough to understand that Mario Conti is not merely a businessman with sharp edges.
Some of the things implicated in those articles are true. I'm not stupid. I'm not na?ve.
There is violence in him.
Controlled and well-hidden.
But it’s there.
I have felt it like a current under his skin.
I told myself that was part of the danger. Part of the world he came from. Part of the thing I was pretending not to understand because understanding it fully would require me to walk away.
But I never thought—
No.
I press my fingers to my mouth.
I never thought he would be capable of violence toward his wife.
The mother of his children.
A woman in his home.
No.
No way.
The idea is obscene.
It does not fit with the man who touched me so carefully after being rough.
It does not fit with the man who looked at me like he would burn the world down before letting anyone else see me exposed.
It does not fit with the way he speaks about family, with the way he looks when he talks about his sons.
With sons who would leave the house so he can bring me there.
Hell, sons who would even still be around if he did something like that to their mother.
Unless that is the point.
My stomach turns.
Powerful men are good at making people believe them.
Powerful men are good at controlling rooms, stories, evidence, silences.
Oh God.
My hands are cold now.
I think of the Atlantic City Contis.
The articles I found about them were not exactly explicit, but there are reputations that do not require records to exist. Names whispered in the dark. between lines. A family that sits half in the legitimate world and half in the dark.
And Mario’s family is connected to them.
By blood, even if not by business.
I am not stupid enough to think the Chicago Contis are clean.
No one builds that fast, that smoothly, with that much loyalty and no shadows.
I know that.
I have known that since the beginning.
Maybe before the beginning.
But knowing a client has ties to violence is not the same as staring at an article implying he may have killed his wife.
I stand abruptly.
Then sit back down because my legs feel unsteady.
The laptop screen glows in front of me.
Anna Conti’s face is still there.
Beautiful.
Dead.
Found in her home.
Cause of death not released.
My throat tightens.
Is that what this is?
Is that the reason there is so little information?
Is that the reason legitimate outlets say almost nothing and only this awful little site says the thing no one else will?
Because everyone knows.
Because everyone is afraid.
Because Mario Conti has enough power, enough money, enough influence to keep a death quiet.
I think of his hands.
On my waist.
In my hair.
Around my wrists.
Gentle when I needed gentle.
Hard when I begged for hard.
I think of those same hands around another woman’s throat.
“No,” I say again, but this time the word is weaker.
My skin prickles.
Am I sleeping with a murderer?
The thought is so awful, I almost laugh from shock.
Am I sleeping with a man who murdered his wife and covered it up?
A man with grown sons who know, or suspect, or do not know at all?
A man with brothers who would protect him?
A man with so much power and influence that only a gossip rag would even dare come close to asking the question?
I stare at the screen until the words blur.
Then I close the laptop.
The apartment goes dark without the glow of it, and I realize for the first time just how long I was sitting there on my laptop.
I stare out the little window over my sink into the dark night, my heart pounding, my cold tea untouched beside me, and try to make myself believe the simplest explanation.
Gossip. Trash. Speculation.
A cheap article feeding on a private tragedy.
That is all.
That has to be all.
But the question has already rooted itself.
And now I cannot unthink it.