The Italian Mafia Inexperienced Mistress

VITTORIA'S POV I was still putting my earrings on when Aria called for the third time. “Vittoria, where are you? The stock is down seventy percent and the vultures are already circling.” I pressed the phone against my ear, weaving through the early morning traffic with one hand on the wheel. “I'm two minutes away. And stop calling them vultures, they’re reporters.” “They’re vultures,” she said tonelessly. “And they know your father's name.” The first call had come at 6:47 AM. I was still in bed, and Aria was breathing wrong - fast and panicked, like she'd been running. "Turn on the news," she'd said. "Right now." Every single channel was running the same thing. "Atlas Crest Corruption Scandal. Government Contracts Obtained Through Bribery," my father's face-stern and professional, appearing on screens across the city with images of the building from last week that had collapsed last Wednesday and caused the death of twelve workers. Twelve families had been destroyed, and we'd done it on purpose. I had spent Thursday dealing with legal ramifications and on Friday Aria and I brought relief items to the grieving families. One woman had called me a murderer. She wasn't wrong, apparently. My stomach had dropped before my brain could process the information. When I pulled up to Atlas Crest’s headquarters, I understood why Aria had sounded like she was drowning. The reporters were everywhere. At least thirty of them, all crammed in front of the glass entrance like a pack of hyenas surrounding a gazelle. Cameras flashed and noise erupted, and some reporters were frantically shoving microphones in the faces of confused employees entering the building. The security guards were doing an awful lot of gesturing, but they seemed overwhelmed. I sat in the car for about thirty seconds, taking deep breaths before one reporter, a woman, shouted my name and everything became painfully real. "Miss! Is it true the company is responsible for the collapse?" "Were you aware of the corruption?" "What do you have to say about this?" The questions tumbled in, louder and more aggressive with each second. I slowly pushed my door open and stepped out, my heels clicking on the road. The sound immediately amplified as reporters scrambled toward me, microphones almost in my face, cameras whirring and clicking as I walked. My world began to spin. But I didn't answer, not one question. If I spoke now, I would lose control, and control was all I had. “Vittoria!” I heard Aria's voice amidst the crowd but couldn't see her. She was waiting when I pulled up to the side entrance, looking like she hadn't slept. Her dark hair was pulled into a messy bun, and yesterday's makeup was smeared under her eyes. On paper, she was my assistant. In every other way that mattered, she was my best friend and the only person in this entire building who actually knew who I was. I felt her hand close around my wrist, grounding me, guiding me through the glass doors. "This way." As soon as the doors closed behind us, the cacophony subsided to a distant murmur. I stopped, trying to catch my breath, my knees threatening to buckle. "Here," she said, pushing a bottle of water into my hands. I took it gratefully and downed it in one go. "What happened?" I asked, finally finding my voice. She didn't answer, only handed me a tablet. "Look." The screen displayed our stock prices. Red arrows plunging downwards, losing thousands of euros with each passing second. "How bad is it?" I asked. "Bad enough that the shareholders have called an emergency meeting. It’s due to start in the next thirty minutes." My stomach plummeted. "Without my father?" "Your father isn't here. No one can locate him and no one is particularly willing to wait for him to turn up." I nodded like I understood, although I truly didn't. "I'm going to fix this," I said, and I sounded more confident than I felt. Aria didn't seem convinced, but she nodded. My office was on the thirty-second floor. I spent the ride up trying to plaster a calm facade on my face. Ten minutes later I was calling journalists, lawyers, anyone who I thought would listen. I tried to tell them it was a misunderstanding, a mistake, incomplete information. No one answered, or they would answer only to hang up before I could finish. I paced in front of the floor-to-ceiling window when Aria burst into the room. "You have to leave. The shareholders are voting on whether or not to remove your father as CEO." My mind went blank. "Now?" "Twenty minutes in the boardroom." "Does he know?" "He's not answering his phone. Vic, he's probably still asleep in Berlin and-" "I'll go," I said. Aria grabbed my arm. "He doesn't know you're here, and he doesn't know about the meeting. Those shareholders... They're going to eat you alive." She was right but my father wasn't here, and someone had to be. The boardroom was chaotic when I entered; I counted eleven shareholders. They were already shouting at each other, hands gesticulating, the room tense and something even more unpleasant than that. Greed, maybe. That instinct that drives you to save yourself before everyone else drowns. "We need to pull our funding before the police can even get involved," someone was saying. "We vote him out immediately," another replied. "If we take him out of leadership now, we can argue that the decisions were made by rogue management-" They all turned as I closed the door. For a second, the air seemed to hold its breath; I felt as though I'd just barged in on something I shouldn't have seen. I recognized maybe half the faces but the rest just stared at me like I was a secretary that had accidentally stumbled into the wrong room. "Vittoria Campi," I announced as I walked toward the free chair in the row farthest from the door. I spoke louder than I thought my voice would go. "I'm here regarding the company's current state." "And who are you?" The man asking was elderly, his hair was white, and the question came with the kind of ingrained arrogance that a man who had commanded respect for decades could summon with a single, sharp inflection. "This is a closed shareholder meeting." "I work here," I explained as calmly as I could, "And I know more about the specific issues of this situation than anyone in this room." "You're not a shareholder," someone else said. "No," I admitted, "But I'm also the only person in this room who actually knows the CEO." I knew I'd said the wrong thing the second the words left my mouth and I could see it in the faces that turned towards me. "We vote," the white-haired man said with sudden, curt authority ignoring me. "All in favor of removing Salvatore Campi as CEO?" Five hands went up. "All opposed?" Four hands went up and one I had positioned in the air that would never count. Mine. The other four still had their hands down, still undecided. The white-haired man's jaw set. "It's a tie. We will reconvene in two days. Assuming, of course, that the major shareholder can be available for his vote." "The major shareholder?" I asked again, not caring who heard. "Vincenzo De Luca," someone murmured, as though it was obvious. "He will be there," another voice said, almost too quiet to be heard, "He always is." There was an almost palpable sense of fear as they said his name. One by one, they filed out of the room, already on their cell phones, already drawing up their plans. I stood among the discarded chairs and felt something I had never felt before. Completely, utterly powerless. I stepped into the corridor and pulled my phone out to call my father. The phone rang four times before going to his voicemail. I didn't leave a message, his tone so calm and professional, telling me he was unable to take my call. Aria found me by the stairwell, away from the general traffic in the hall. "What happened?" she asked. "It's a tie," I answered her, "They need Vincenzo De Luca to cast the deciding vote." "Oh God," Aria whispered. We rode down the elevator together. There was nothing we could do but wait for the decision to be made. As we passed the main floor I glanced at the TV screen in the break room. The anchor's face was grim; a still of a building hung behind her. It was the collapsed one no more; a new building. "...legal action is being prepared," the anchor was saying. "Against Salvatore Campi and all responsible parties involved in the—" The elevator doors closed but it was too late, I'd already heard it.