“Nice little party,” she said with a grin. “Is there anyone who isn’t here?”
“Very few,” he responded with amusement. “I’ll see you outside in a minute.”
He squeezed her hand one more time before turning to greet the newly arrived guests. Alex looked around curiously. The tasteful yet impersonal furnishings of the house might have been a masterpiece of interior design, but the entire place somehow reminded her of a mausoleum.
“It’s incredible, don’t you think?” Zack grinned. “I want a house like this someday.”
“I’ll say,” Alex said, raising her eyebrows. “This is no house, it’s a temple!”
“Well, it’s impressive. If you live like this, you’ve really made it.”
He was right about that. They walked down a few steps to the large terrace. It offered a breathtaking view across a parklike garden, decorated with antique white statues, a large white marble swimming pool, and a pool house. People were crowded around tables and benches on the grass between the terrace balustrade and the pool. A band played Italian folk music on stage risers, and an opulent buffet was served under big white pagoda tents. Everything was beautifully decorated with colorful paper lanterns, burning torches, and splendid flower arrangements. A bar surrounded by cocktail tables was right next to the pool. It was the perfect setting for a high-society summer party.
They met almost the entire board of LMI on the terrace. Vincent Levy, Isaac Rubinstein, and Hugh Weinberg were here with their wives. A bit later, Michael Friedman and Max Rudensky—owners of a famous brokerage and arbitrage firm—also arrived. The mood was relaxed, and when Levy suggested that they take a look at the buffet, everyone but Alex turned toward the steps. From the corner of her eye, she saw that Sergio had stepped out of the house and stopped at the terrace’s balustrade. The warm air smelled like lavender, and swallows shot through the gorgeous misty twilight.
“How do you like my house, cara?” Sergio asked as he stood behind her.
“It’s imposing.” She turned, and a mocking smile flitted across her face. “It seems to me that you’ve built a mausoleum for yourself during your lifetime. Like the pharaohs in ancient Egypt.”
“That’s what I appreciate about you.” Sergio said, smiling at her. “Anyone else would have said how fabulous it is.”
“We’re probably beyond the stage of courteous phrases.”
“Yes, we probably are.” Sergio leaned next to her on the balustrade. Alex gave him a probing look. He seemed relaxed and in a good mood, but she saw an attentive tension in his eyes. She suddenly remembered what Oliver had said to her that night: Are you kidding me, or are you really that naive? She was just about to pepper Sergio with some hard questions when she sensed him noticing someone approaching behind her.
“Ah, here’s my wife,” he said. Alex froze for a second, and then she forced a friendly smile. Constanzia Vitali was a cultivated woman, and her elegant dress concealed her round shape perfectly. She might have been very pretty once, but her beauty had long since faded. At fifty-five, Sergio was so incredibly attractive and full of energy that his wife looked like a withered rose next to him. He casually pushed himself away from the wall.
“Constanzia,” he said as he put his arm around his wife’s shoulders, “may I introduce Alex Sontheim? She is one of Vince Levy’s best employees. Alex, this is my wife, Constanzia.”
The two women shook hands. Alex felt a twinge of guilt at Constanzia’s inquiring look.
“You work at an investment bank?” Constanzia Vitali’s face was friendly and without any expression. “That must be quite exciting.”
“Yes, it certainly is.”
Constanzia Vitali turned toward her husband and said something in Italian. Alex, who spoke Italian quite well, understood that Constanzia was asking her husband to give his speech. Sergio answered her in a low voice, whereupon Constanzia turned around without neglecting to throw another probing look at Alex.
“Unfortunately, I have to look after my other guests now.” Sergio placed his hand briefly on Alex’s arm. “Can you take me to the city with you later?”
“Maybe. I don’ know whether I’ll stay that long.”
“It would make me so happy.”
For the rest of the evening, Alex only saw Sergio from a distance. He was in a splendid mood, joking with his business partners’ wives and his friends, dancing with his wife. He was the perfect host. Even without him on her arm, Alex enjoyed the evening to the fullest. Just a week ago, she had moved into the penthouse on the Upper West Side. Now she was a guest at a private party of one of the country’s richest men, and she was treated as someone who quite naturally belonged in this crowd. She felt flattered that so many of the people at the party knew her name.
While the wives listened in boredom, Alex conversed with their husbands about the expected rate hike by the Fed, the higher leverage in option trading versus stocks, the rapidly rising prices of technology stocks and the resulting opportunities for the market, and the consequences of political decisions on the stock market. She was sitting at a table with Zack, Levy, Weinberg, Friedman, David Norman, a board member of the NYSE, and a young man named Jack Lang from a brokerage firm called Manhattan Portfolio Management. The food was provided by New York’s best catering company, and the heavy French red wine was pure poetry; the cocktails, perfectly mixed, contributed to Alex’s failure to notice how quickly time passed.
It was already dark when she looked around for Sergio. He was nowhere to be seen. With one ear she overheard Zack, Rudensky, and Jack Lang whispering about the sensational profit margins possible when investing in venture capital companies. They talked about international business companies, or IBCs, that were incorporated in offshore financial centers such as the Cayman Islands, Samoa, Labuan, or other exotic locations. Alex didn’t jump into the conversation because she was more interested to know where Sergio was. His wife sat a few tables away and was engaged in a conversation with an older gray-haired woman.
Alex eventually excused herself and walked toward the house to find the restroom. As she walked through the vast salons and long hallways, she realized that she’d had too much to drink. She winced as she noticed a man standing across from her. He was smaller than she was; he was skinny, and his ferret-like face was disfigured by acne scars. An ice-cold shiver ran down Alex’s spine. It wasn’t his ugliness, but his strangely lifeless eyes that instilled fear in her.
“Buona sera,” he said with a coarse voice, walking past her. Alex stared after him. What kind of horrible person was this? Suddenly sober, she had the feeling that she needed to get back to the other guests as quickly as possible.
Cesare Vitali was in a bad mood. The laughing hordes annoyed him just as much as the schmaltzy Italian music, but he was especially mad at Silvio, Luca, and his brother Massimo. They treated him like a child. They had walked past him on their way into the house about a half hour ago. When he asked where they were going, Massimo replied that they had something to talk about. The men simply left him behind and disappeared into the house, where his father was likely expecting them like a king waiting for his subjects—confident, fearless, and powerful. Cesare wanted to earn his father’s attention and respect, but he somehow always screwed up. His buddies respected him, and the prostitutes on the Lower East Side feared him—which felt good—but in his father’s eyes, he was a failure who had to be kept away from the family business.
Despite the warm temperature outside, Cesare was suddenly freezing. He needed a line of coke desperately. The white powder could make his bad mood disappear instantly and turn him into the big man he wanted to be. He dumped his whiskey over the terrace railing in disgust and stood up. He had a burning interest in what they were talking about in there. Nelson was there too. Something big was brewing. In a surge of anger, he briefly considered just barging into the library. Wasn’t he, just like Massimo, also one of Sergio’s sons? Didn’t he also have the right to be part of those meetings? But he wasn’t invited. He wouldn’t put it past his father to kick him out in front of his brother and the others.