Faye switched on the Nespresso machine. While it made her an espresso, she looked out of the tall window in the kitchen. As always, the view blew her away.
The house in Ravi had become her paradise on earth. The village itself wasn’t all that large—it was home to just two hundred permanent inhabitants. It took all of five minutes or so to walk around the entire village, if you dragged your heels a bit. But in the center of the small piazza there was a restaurant that served the best pizza and pasta she had ever eaten. And it was packed to the rafters every night. Sometimes a few tourists would trickle in, and now that the end of May was approaching their number was increasing. Enthusiastic French cyclists or American retirees who had rented a motorhome and were now fulfilling their dream of seeing Italy, while their grown-up children wondered despairingly why their parents insisted on having their own lives instead of being on call as babysitters for the grandkids.
But no Swedes.
Faye hadn’t seen a single Swede here since she had bought the house. That had been a deciding factor in the choice of location. In Sweden, she was famous the length and breadth of the country. In Italy, she wanted and needed to be anonymous.
The beautiful old house she had bought wasn’t actually in the village—it was some twenty minutes’ walk beyond it. It was high on a hill with vines climbing the slope toward the house. Faye loved to stroll up and down the steep village streets buying bread, cheese, and air-dried prosciutto. It was the ultimate cliché of life in the Italian countryside, and she was enjoying it to the full. Over the last two years, while her ex-husband languished in a Swedish prison, she’d made a safe haven here for the two people she cared about most in the world: her daughter, Julienne, and her mother, Ingrid. This week they’d been joined by Faye’s closest friend and business associate, Kerstin, who doted on Julienne as if she were her own and had spent her visit competing with Ingrid to spoil the child.
The espresso was ready. Faye picked up her cup and went into the living room at the rear of the house, where the sound of splashing and happy childish cries divulged that there was a pool before it came into view. She loved the living room. It had taken time to decorate the house, but her own patience and one of Italy’s most talented interior designers meant it was exactly the way she wanted it. The house had thick stone walls that kept the heat out and made it cool even in the hottest summer months, but it was consequently rather dark indoors. They had remedied that with large, light furniture and plenty of discreet lighting. The large windows at the back also helped to let in the light. She loved how almost imperceptibly the living room faded into the terrace.
The white drape caressed her as she stepped outside. She tasted the espresso and watched her daughter and her mother without them noticing her at first.
Julienne had grown so big, while her hair—bleached by the sun—was almost white. She got new freckles pretty much every day. She was beautiful, healthy, and happy. Everything that Faye wanted for her. Everything that had been made possible by life without Jack.
“Mommy, Mommy, look! I can swim without armbands!”
Faye smiled and made an expression of amazement to show her daughter how impressed she was. Julienne was swimming in the deep end of the pool, doing a tortuous doggy paddle but completely independent of her Bamse the bear armbands, which were lying on the edge. Ingrid was watching her grandchild nervously, half sitting, half standing, ready to throw herself into the pool if need be.
“Relax, Mom. She’s got this.”
Faye took another sip of the espresso, which was almost all gone, and wandered farther out onto the terrace. She regretted not having made a cappuccino instead.
“She’s insisting on staying in the deep end,” said Faye’s mother, looking despairingly at her.
“I think she takes after her mother.”
“Thank you very much, I can see that!”
Ingrid laughed and Faye was struck—as she had been on so many occasions over these past two years—by how beautiful her mother was. Despite everything life had put her through.
The only people who knew that Ingrid and Julienne were alive were Faye and Kerstin. As far as the rest of the world was concerned, both were dead, Julienne murdered by her father—a crime for which Jack was now serving a life sentence in Sweden. He had come so close to crushing Faye. Her love for him had made her a victim, but in the end she’d seen to it that he paid the price.
Faye went to her mother and sat down next to her in a rattan armchair. Ingrid continued to watch Julienne, her body tense.
“Do you have to go away again?” she asked, without shifting her gaze from her granddaughter.
“This is a busy time for us. Expanding the Revenge brand into the American market means negotiating our way through a lot of red tape. And then there’s the Italian acquisition, which will give us a foothold in Rome. Giovanni, the owner, wants to sell, but, like all men, he seriously overestimates his own value. It’s just a case of making him realize that my price is the best offer he’ll get.”
Her mother looked anxiously from Faye to Julienne.
“I don’t understand why you’re still working so much. You’ve only got a ten percent stake in Revenge now, and you’ll never have to lift a finger again given the fortune you made selling your shares.”
Faye shrugged, drained the last drops of espresso and then placed the cup on the rattan table.
“Sure, there’s part of me that would really like to hang out here with you two. But you know me. I’d die of boredom after a week. And no matter how many shares I have, Revenge is my baby. And I’m still chairman. What’s more, I feel a tremendous responsibility for all those women who came on board and invested and are now shareholders in Revenge. They took a chance on me and the company, and I want to carry on repaying that. In fact, I’ve been thinking about buying a bigger stake, if there’s anyone willing to sell. It would be a good exit for them, at any rate.”
Ingrid sat up slightly as Julienne turned at the far side of the pool.
“The sisterhood,” she huffed, then caught herself and apologized. “I’m afraid I don’t have quite the same perspective on women’s loyalty that you do.”
“We’re in new times, Mom. Women stick together. Anyway, Julienne is okay with me taking a quick jaunt to Rome—we talked about it yesterday.”
“You know I think you’re incredibly smart? You know that I’m proud of you?”
Faye took Ingrid’s hand.
“Yes, Mom, I know. You take care of the kid and make sure she doesn’t drown, and I’ll be home again soon.”
Faye went to the edge of the pool. Julienne was snorting, switching between strokes and swallowing mouthfuls of cold water.
“Bye, sweetheart, I’m off now!”
“Bye, b—”
The rest was drowned out by another gulp of water as Julienne tried to wave while swimming. From the corner of her eye, Faye saw Ingrid hurrying toward the pool.
In the living room, her stylish Louis Vuitton case was packed and ready to go. The limousine to take her to Rome had probably already arrived. She lifted the case to make sure the wheels didn’t scratch the dark wood floors and headed toward the front door. As she passed Kerstin’s study, she spotted Kerstin absorbed in something on the computer screen, her glasses on the tip of her nose as always.
“Knock knock—I’m off now . . .”
Kerstin didn’t look up—there was a deep worry line between her eyes.
“Is everything okay?”
Faye took a step into the room and put down the bag.
“I don’t know . . .” Kerstin said slowly, without looking up.
“Now you’re making me worried—is it something to do with the stock issue? Or America?”
Kerstin shook her head.
“I don’t know yet.”
“Do I need to worry?”
Kerstin took her time to reply.
“No . . . not yet.”
A car honked outside and Kerstin nodded toward the front door.
“Off you go. Seal the deal in Rome. Then we’ll talk.”
“But . . .”
“It’s probably nothing.”
Kerstin smiled reassuringly at her, but as Faye went toward the heavy wooden door, she couldn’t shake the feeling that something was going on. Something threatening. But she would deal with it. She would have to. That was the person she was.
She got into the backseat, waved at the chauffeur to drive and opened the mini bottle awaiting her. As the car purred off toward Rome, she sipped the champagne thoughtfully.
Faye examined her face in the elevator mirror. Three men in suits were eyeing her appreciatively. She opened her Chanel bag, puckered her lips and carefully applied Revenge’s own lipstick to them. She tucked a strand of blond hair behind her ear, and replaced the cap with the engraved R just as the elevator reached the lobby. The men stepped aside to let her exit first. Her footsteps echoed on the white marble floor, the night air making her red dress flutter as the doorman held open the glass doors.
“Taxi, signora?” he asked.
She shook her head, smiling without slowing down, and turned right when she reached the pavement. The traffic beside her was at a standstill. Cars were honking and drivers were swearing through wound-down windows.
She reveled in the freedom of being a solo visitor to a city where she knew almost nobody and where no one could demand anything from her. Free from responsibility, free from guilt. The meeting with Giovanni, the owner of the small family-owned cosmetics firm that was going to supplement Revenge’s existing line of products, had gone splendidly. As soon as Giovanni had realized he couldn’t use mastery and male dominance to convince her to agree to his terms, the meeting had been turned to her advantage.
Faye loved the game of negotiation. The opposing players were usually men, and they always made the mistake of underestimating her expertise simply because she was a woman. Later, when they had to admit defeat, there were two types of men. There were the ones who left the meeting boiling with rage, their hatred of women even more firmly entrenched. And then there were the ones who loved it, who were turned on by her commanding presence and know-how, who left the meeting with a hard-on in their trousers and an inquiry about whether she was free for dinner.
As Faye walked through the balmy evening, the city buzzed around her and she felt it drawing her in with everything she had longed for. Her walk had no objective. Some opportunity would arise, all she had to do was let the pulse of the city take over her body.
It wouldn’t be long before she had to put the mask back on again—play the role that had become hers in her home country. But tonight, she could be who she wanted to be. She continued to walk until she came to a beautiful cobbled square. She wandered deeper into the labyrinth of winding lanes.
You have to lose yourself to rise again, she thought to herself.
A man disengaged himself from the shadows and offered her his wares in a hoarse whisper. Faye merely shook her head. A large door bathed in the yellow hue of the streetlights opened softly and two people—a man and a woman—who had been waiting outside stepped through it.
Faye stopped and looked around before changing tack and heading for the door, which had closed again. There was a small doorbell. A camera above her. She pressed the button, listening for the sound but hearing nothing. Eventually, the lock clicked and the door slipped open. An enormous room filled with beautiful people and the sound of clinking glasses opened up before her. Directly ahead of her there was a glass wall and beyond it a magnificent terrace. The illuminated ruins of the Colosseum shone like the wreckage of a spaceship in the distance.
A large mirror with a gilded frame allowed her to see well-dressed, faceless shadows chatting in groups behind her. The women were young, beautiful, and tastefully made up, wearing elegant short dresses. The men were generally somewhat older, but also looked good—radiating the calm and self-confidence that wealth so often gave. The small fragments of conversation that reached her were in Italian. Glasses were being refilled, drained, refilled.
Not far from her, a young couple was kissing. Faye scrutinized them with fascination, unable to tear her gaze away from them. They were young—perhaps twenty-five or so. He was tall and handsome in that Italian way with stylish stubble, a powerful nose, and dark hair combed into a side part. She was wearing an expensive bone-white dress that fit tightly around her hips and emphasized her slender waist. She was wearing her dark brown hair up in a simple arrangement.
They were clearly so infatuated that they couldn’t keep their hands off each other. Again and again, his long fingers would slip up the inside of her tanned thigh. Faye smiled. When her eyes met those of the woman, she didn’t lower her own gaze—instead, she calmly contemplated the couple. She raised her drink—a whiskey sour—to her mouth. Once upon a time, she had been in love like that. But that love had suffocated her, turning her into an inert thing with no will of its own, contained within a gilded cage.
Faye’s train of thought was interrupted by the young woman, who suddenly came over to her.
“My fiancé and I wonder whether you’d like to have a drink with us,” she said in English.
“You don’t look like you want company,” Faye said with amusement.
“We’d like yours. You’re very beautiful.”
She was called Francesca and had been born in the city of Porto Alegre, near the Atlantic coast in Brazil. She worked as a model and was also a painter. He was called Matteo and his family owned a hotel and restaurant empire. He painted too, although he wasn’t as good as Francesca, he explained with a slight smile. They were friendly, polite, and made her laugh. Their zest for life and unconcernedness were infectious. Faye became caught up with them and had another two drinks. She was dazzled by their beauty, youth, and love for each other without feeling any envy. She didn’t miss having a man. She wanted to control her own life without thinking about someone else all the time. But she loved seeing these two together.
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