The Mafia Princess He Abandoned Became An Art Queen Chapter 08
A few days later, Melissa sent me a tabloid link.
The headline was pure melodrama:
Former Art-World Darling Now Waitressing at a Diner. With $80 Million in Damages, She’ll Never Pay It Off.
I opened it.
In the photo, Irene was wearing a faded apron, her hair pulled back in a rough ponytail, no makeup, dark circles under her eyes.
She was bent over wiping down a table, with a stack of dirty dishes still waiting beside her.
The Conti princess, once flawless on every red carpet, had lost every trace of glamour.
The comments were merciless.
“She said Rossella wasn’t good enough. Turns out she’s the one who isn’t.”
“She stole for five years and owes eighty million. How many plates is that?”
Melissa wrote, “She filed for personal bankruptcy. The court still ordered her to pay eight million in damages. She can’t. A group of studios sued her together, and she can’t even cover her legal fees.”
Sylvia messaged too: “She got into a screaming match with people online and got her account suspended. Now she doesn’t even have anywhere to vent.”
I finished the article and closed the tab.
The rain outside had stopped. The sky had cleared.
December. Venice.
The ceremony hall was enormous, with vaulted ceilings and golden light washing over every face.
I sat in the third row, wearing a dress Sylvia had commissioned for me three months earlier.
Smoky gray satin, from the same line as the one I’d worn to the Conti gala.
Melissa and Sylvia sat behind me, clutching each other’s hands, somehow more nervous than I was.
I wasn’t really listening. My heart was pounding too hard.
Then I heard my name.
“Rossella Conti.”
I stood slowly.
The hem of my dress brushed the seat as I rose. I took a breath. My palms were damp.
The walk to the stage felt endless.
Camera flashes burned in my eyes.
I stood at the microphone. The hall went quiet. Hundreds of eyes on me.
My social anxiety hadn’t disappeared. Not even now.
My heart was hammering so hard it hurt.
But I started speaking.
“This work is called The Undercurrent.”
My voice trembled slightly through the microphone.
“It means the tide beneath the surface, the current that keeps moving, unseen.”
“When I painted it, I had no family. No one who loved me. I had one tiny room and a laptop that overheated constantly.”
The room was completely silent.
“I used to think a person only mattered if she was loved, if she was seen, if she was recognized.”
“I know now that isn’t true.”
“Sometimes you have to build yourself piece by piece in a room where no one is looking.”
I paused and let my eyes sweep over the audience.
“So to anyone out there in a dark place, to anyone being dismissed or stolen from…”
“You do not need everyone to understand you.”
“And you do not need to wear yourself down trying to become whatever someone else wants.”
“As long as you’re still creating, still moving forward, you’ve already won.”
The applause started softly, then swelled until it washed through the entire hall like a wave.
I bowed.
As I turned to leave the stage, my eyes caught, almost by accident, on the last row.
Someone stood in the corner clapping, dressed in a dark suit, his hair more than half gray.
I couldn’t make out his face.
I didn’t try.
After the ceremony, Melissa hugged me and cried until her mascara ran.
Sylvia handed her tissues and teased her for being more excited than I was.
The three of us took a small mountain of photos backstage. Melissa posted one on Instagram with the caption: Queen Rossella.
I scrolled through my phone. Another unknown number had left a message.
Just one word: “Congratulations.”
I turned the phone face down on the table. I didn’t block it, and didn’t reply.
The day I opened my studio in Paris, Sylvia and Melissa flew in to celebrate.
The studio was on the third floor of an old building in the east of the city, with a huge south-facing window that flooded the workbench with sunlight and made the silver stock and half-finished pieces glitter.
The photo of the shattered computer was still on the wall.
I set my laptop by the window so that whenever I looked up from working, I could see the Tower.
On the first day, someone left a bouquet of white roses outside the studio door.
The card read, “Congratulations on the studio.”
There was no signature.
I glanced at it and left it outside.
Sylvia offered to throw it away. I said, “Leave it. The flowers didn’t do anything wrong.”
That evening, after the last guest left, I stayed in the studio a little longer.
The sky outside the window was beginning to darken.
I gathered my things and headed downstairs.
Under the streetlamp stood a man.
Mario.