THE MAFIA BOSS THREW OUT HIS PREGNANT WIFE FOR A MISTRESS... BUT FORGOT WHO BUILT HIS EMPIRE

Chapter 06 - The Other Mara

The woman on the stairs was not a lookalike. She was a stranger, pale with embarrassment, one hand resting on the fake curve beneath her coat.

When she saw the real Mara, she stopped. Roman stepped forward and told the two men accompanying her to leave the stairwell. Neither moved until the stranger said, "Please. I want to go home."

Elena came from the library. "Nobody is going anywhere until we've established what happened here," she said. Then, to the stranger, more gently, "You are free to leave, but it would help if you chose to speak with me first."

The young woman began to cry. She was thirty or so, with rough hands and a shopping bag from a discount store. Her name was Angela Torres. She worked part-time as an actress in promotional videos and had answered an advertisement for a private medical simulation.

"They said it was for training," she whispered. "They paid six hundred dollars. I wore this padding and answered questions about anxiety after childbirth. I didn't know the patient was real."

She removed the cushion from beneath her coat and held it like a parcel she no longer wanted to touch.

Mara could scarcely speak. She was standing in the home where she'd planned to bring her baby, looking at a woman paid to imitate her pain, while her husband searched for someone else to blame.

"Who hired you?" Elena asked.

"A man called Mr. Rook. I never met anyone else. I have the texts."

Rook was the registered agent for North Quay Partners. Mara knew the name from Nico's invoices. A shell company was no longer just a suspicion.

Roman's phone rang. Nico, again. Roman rejected the call and finally seemed to understand the shape of what was happening.

"How many signatures?" he asked Mara.

"At least two that I know about. A medical referral, an acknowledgment, a trustee petition."

He stared at Angela's visitor badge. "Jesus Christ."

"Not a substitute for an apology," Mara said.

Roman looked at her with something close to shame. "I'm sorry."

She believed he was sorry, for that moment. She also knew regret often arrived only when a man learned he was not in control of the consequences.

Elena spoke to Angela privately and encouraged her to get her own attorney. Angela allowed the texts to be preserved and agreed to make a statement. Mara asked whether the woman had a safe way home. She said she could take the bus.

Jo would have given her a ride. Mara recognized the thought as her mother's, and she arranged a cab instead.

They left the mansion at noon. Roman walked them to the steps. Bianca stood at the upstairs window but did not come down. Mara saw her pull the curtain aside as their car passed through the gates.

At Mercy Street, Ruth waited in Jo's bakery with two women who lived in the apartments by the river. One was Mrs. DeLuca, eighty-three, who grew basil in coffee tins along her windowsill. The other was Sharlene Price, a school custodian raising two grandchildren after her daughter died.

"The men came with clipboards," Sharlene said. "Said we'd have to be out by the first. I asked for the notice in writing. He told me to speak to your husband."

Mrs. DeLuca folded her hands on the table. "I remember when your mother brought groceries the winter the boiler failed. She didn't tell anybody it was her. She put the bags by the door, knocked, and went away. People who want credit stand around until the door opens."

Mara could hear Antonia laughing at that. She'd worn an old red scarf until the silk at the ends had gone thin.

"No one is moving yet," Mara said. "The sale is paused. We're going to get you an attorney for the housing questions. And I want you both to write down everything the men told you."

The women exchanged glances. Sharlene swallowed. "I wasn't sure you'd care anymore. With what happened at your house."

That was the first time Mara understood the public cost of her private humiliation. Roman had made a spectacle of replacing her, and the people who relied on her had assumed that she no longer held any power.

"I haven't forgotten how this company began," she said. "That doesn't change because Roman forgot."

Later, with Elena, Mara examined the original financing papers. North Quay had already received over six million dollars. The money had moved through consulting accounts and then out to a foreign holding company. The beneficiary's name had been obscured, but one transfer carried a memo: *V. B. relocation expenses*.

For a moment Mara thought of Bianca Vale. Then she looked at the letters again. They were the wrong way around. She caught herself reaching for a conclusion because it would be satisfying, not because it would be true. That was how Nico wanted her to think: accuse the mistress, lose Roman's cooperation, and turn a corporate fraud case into a spectacle of jealousy.

"We need the beneficiary bank," Elena said. "No guesses."

At five, the bank's counsel agreed to place the sale proceeds in escrow until the hearing. That would give the tenants breathing room. Mara should have felt relief.

Instead she kept thinking of Roman at the nursery door, small on that chair, not innocent and not entirely the man she'd married.

Jo found her staring at Antonia's recipe cards. "Your mother would have told you something unpleasant."

"That I should have left earlier?"

"No. She knew leaving is harder than outsiders think." Jo drew out a chair. "She'd say being right doesn't make you well. You still have to eat supper."

So Mara ate the vegetable stew Jo put in front of her, and afterward she took a walk past the shuttered tailor's shop and the boarded cinema. A man carried a sleepy child across the road, the child's head tucked into his neck. It made her throat tighten.

She had once pictured Roman doing exactly that with their daughter.

At eight, her phone rang. Bianca's name appeared, then vanished. A text followed.

*The money wasn't for me. Nico paid someone to keep an old accident quiet. If you go after him, ask Roman what happened on Pier Twelve.*

Mara called back. Bianca answered from a noisy street.

"Who was hurt?" Mara asked.

Bianca was breathing hard. "My father. Fifteen years ago. He worked for the Vescari company before it was called Vescari. Roman signed the inspection. Nico changed it afterward."

A bus roared past Bianca, swallowing her next words.

"Where are you?" Mara asked.

"I'm outside a police station. I went to tell them what Nico made me do."

"Good. Stay inside."

"Mara?" Bianca's voice broke. "He said he'd paid to silence a witness. I thought he meant my father."