Chapter 3 - The Woman Beside the Infinity Pool
Harper Wynn's favorite photograph from Santorini showed her alone at an infinity pool with a white sea wall and no sign that the man paying for the villa had a pregnant wife.
She posted it at nine, collected compliments until ten, and spent the next hour ignoring a call from Anton Bellini.
At eleven, he stopped calling and sent a photograph instead: her signature on the paperwork for Wynn Hospitality Consulting. Under the signature, in smaller type, were amounts she had been told represented legitimate marketing fees. Four of them matched transfers Norah's lawyer had begun tracing.
Harper's stomach tightened. She called him.
“You told me the consulting company was for an appearance contract,” she said.
“It is. Don't be emotional.”
“Why is Mrs. Rossi on the authorization?”
“Because it is family business. You want the rest of your fee or not?”
Harper looked at Matteo's discarded jacket on the bedroom chair. “You said this trip was the end of my part.”
“It will be if you make sure he stays away from Boston through Monday.”
The call ended. Harper stood by the window a long time. She had begun seeing Matteo knowing he was married. She couldn't rewrite that choice. But she'd never agreed to be the public face of a shell company, and she hadn't expected Anton to use her as leverage against a pregnant woman she'd never met.
Matteo came in without knocking. “Who was that?”
“My agent.”
“Your agent calls you about my wife?”
Her face betrayed her. Matteo noticed. He took a step toward the phone and stopped himself before reaching for it. “Tell me what you know.”
Harper set the device facedown. “You're asking me for honesty now?”
“I'm asking because Norah's gone and something is wrong with my accounts.”
“Maybe look at what you did to her before you blame anyone else.” Her voice shook. “I knew I was your mistress. I didn't know my name was on some business tied to her money.”
Matteo stared. “What business?”
She showed him the photograph Anton had sent. Matteo recognized the authorization format at once, though he couldn't establish whether the transaction itself was valid. Norah's name appeared where it should never have appeared without her knowledge.
He called Anton. His chief financial officer answered brightly, asking about the weather and whether Harper liked the villa. Matteo interrupted.
“Why is my wife's authorization on a transfer to Wynn Hospitality?”
A beat of silence. “Your wife has been making unusual withdrawals, Matteo. We're containing the damage.”
“Those withdrawals were yesterday. This document predates them by eleven days.”
“I'll check the records.”
“You'll preserve them,” Matteo said. “All of them.”
Anton disconnected.
Matteo looked at Harper. “Who put you in contact with him?”
She pressed her lips together. “He approached me after a charity fundraiser. Told me you needed someone discreet to plan the trip. Then he said you'd pay me to promote the resort. I thought it was tacky, not illegal.”
“You accepted money to sleep with me?”
“I accepted money for an advertising contract. I slept with you because I liked being wanted by someone powerful.” She swallowed. “That doesn't make me innocent. But it makes me less informed than the men who arranged it.”
Matteo stepped onto the terrace, suddenly sick of the water and the sunlight. He had been unfaithful long before Anton offered Harper a contract. The betrayal was his. So was the arrogance that had made his staff comfortable arranging the details.
He booked a return flight. Harper asked for separate travel, and he agreed. At the airport he offered her an envelope. She declined it.
“I already have a lawyer's number,” she said. “I'm going to use it.”
In Boston, Norah and a financial-crimes attorney named Lena Ortiz reviewed the same suspicious company without touching the money. Lena had worked on cases involving stolen retirement funds and knew how easily a sympathetic spouse could become an accused participant.
“Your transfer approvals are important,” she told Norah, “but they don't prove you own the funds. We need the banks to preserve the access records. We need to identify who established the beneficiary accounts. And we need you to stop accessing Matteo's systems.”
“I have.”
“Good. You can tell the truth without doing more damage.”
Norah nodded. She hated being treated as a possible criminal. She hated more that the lawyer had a point. Fear had pushed her into a decision that might harm her daughter if she couldn't explain it.
Her father, Joseph Quinn, arrived with two paper bags of groceries and the old blue cardigan she'd forgotten at his house. He was sixty-eight, stooped from decades at a desk, and had never approved of Matteo's business. He didn't begin with I told you so. He took one look at Norah's face and put the groceries away.
“Are you eating?”
“Yes.”
“That's not an answer. I brought soup.”
She followed him into the kitchen. While he stirred the soup, she told him about the affair, the transfers, and the phantom authorization. He listened until she had finished.
“Your mistake doesn't excuse his,” he said. “His mistakes don't excuse yours. We take each one in daylight.”
Norah laughed sadly. “You could've told me you were proud of me.”
“I am proud you walked out of a room where you weren't safe to speak. I'm worried about the money. Both things can be true.”
After dinner, a delivery arrived at the apartment lobby: a box containing a silk baby blanket in pale yellow, the color of the sleeper in Norah's suitcase. No sender. No gift note. Tucked beneath the blanket was a photograph of Norah leaving her doctor's office the previous day.
On the back, written in thick black marker, were seven words:
YOU CAN'T HIDE A BABY FROM FAMILY.
Norah called Lena and the police. Then she called Matteo herself for the first time since she'd left.
“Did you send something to my apartment?” she asked.
“No.”
“Someone followed me to my doctor.”
Matteo's voice changed. “Where are you?”
“Don't ask me that. Find out which of your people knows where I am.”
He was quiet long enough to understand the distinction.
“I will,” he said.
May you like
Norah looked down at the photograph. In the glossy reflection of the clinic door was a dark sedan. Its registration plate was obscured, but the small silver wolf emblem on the hood wasn't.
It was a vehicle from Matteo's own fleet.
