Frannie, in love with the older man and his mistress already for a number of years, had never asked about that death, just as she had never asked about so many things in those early days.
And Fredrico had bragged about Athena too. How his lovely little niece had such a keen mind. Her spirit he wasn’t so fond of. Nor the fact that once her mother died, she inherited the other half of the Stavros fortune.
“She’s not dead! The girl’s not dead! Do you fail to understand that, you stupid bitch?”
“Tottingham is a senile old fool. Why you paid him any heed is beyond me.”
“It was true. Who else could this be? He said she was the spitting image of Angelica. And of all things, she was working for Damien Reynolds. I don’t know what that means, but it has to mean something.”
“You don’t even know it was her. They barely had a clear picture of the girl. I couldn’t say it was her and neither could you.”
“It was her. Of course it was her. Why else would she have disappeared right after Tottingham saw her?”
Frannie shrugged. “Athena always was a mystery. I don’t know why she committed suicide either,” she lied.
“She didn’t commit suicide, you worthless cow! You know she didn’t.”
“Calm down, Freddie. You’ll have another heart attack,” she said deadpan, as if it wasn’t in fact her fondest wish.
“It was her working for Reynolds and it was her in that dinky town in Montana when we finally found her—”
“Maine, Freddie. You never were very clear on American geography.”
“Wherever! She left my man dead!”
“More likely some coked-up whore he picked up stabbed him to death.” She took a deep breath. “Just leave it, Freddie.” She didn’t quite understand why he wouldn’t. “Let Athena rest in peace.”
“I’m sending somebody back in. Now. Right away. I don’t care how many of my men that bitch gets away from. I’ll have a hundred more coming after her.”
“Well, you certainly do pay them cheaply, so I guess you can afford it.”
“You’re cold, Frannie.”
He used to call that self-possessed. Both she and his stepdaughter were calm and cool. And it drove Freddie wild in a way that was not good.
When Freddie first began to beat her, on their honeymoon as a matter of fact though they had been lovers for long before that, Frannie had been stunned, not only at the savage fury but also at the calculated almost professionalism of it. He could have her writhing in pain without leaving a single mark on her. She thought that made it better, because no one would know, but in fact it made it so very much worse.
Because while he was busy not marking her, he was also not marking Athena. Frannie had thought the girl was safe away at a Swiss boarding school, but she hadn’t realized that Freddie on his so-called business trips had been visiting Athena—and meting out the same “appropriate” disciplinary measures he was meting out to his new wife. He started by taking her out of school for weekend trips and then worked up to taking her out of school for a whole semester, keeping her on one of his private Greek estates on the sea, under lock and key with armed guards. For him. For his sick pleasure. It was then that Athena supposedly committed suicide. Walked into the water and didn’t come out. And it was then that Frannie realized her husband was an even bigger monster than she had imagined.
She grieved at the time. For Athena. For herself. But some small part of her had always suspected the girl wasn’t dead. Athena was a survivor and smarter than her mother or Frannie herself had ever hoped to be. When an email came one day, years ago, informing her that a set amount had been deposited in a Swiss bank account for her and that she should leave Freddie, she knew then that Athena was alive.
It was sweet of the girl. Really it was. But she’d made her bed and she would lie in it.
The fury that rose up in Frannie now at that thought put the portrait of Fredrico’s mother—the old bitch who thought her son could do no wrong—very much in jeopardy, not to mention Fredrico himself. For the hundredth time, she thought of how fine it would feel to bury his own letter opener in his neck.
“So, what shall it be, Freddie? More tantrums or a nice night out?”
“You inconceivable bitch. I don’t know why I don’t just divorce you.”
Frannie shrugged. She had long since made her deal with the devil.
“So, the opera then, dear?” she asked.
* * * * *
She dreamt about it now, whenever she fell asleep. The dark, empty, dreamless sleep of her first days here had faded away and now she dreamt about it. Not about her years back with Uncle Freddie. No, that life was locked far, far away. But her more recent nightmares, not sufficiently under wraps in her psyche as yet, came out to play when she fell asleep. She saw the small apartment she’d hidden in for those few months, with its linoleum floors and tiny windows, where she had come to think herself safe after a while. And she heard the creaking of the floor that one evening signaled how wrong she had been. And then the sharp knife she used to cut a loaf of fresh bread every morning became something else…