The Phoenix

As she opened the last box, Ella’s heart beat a little faster. Right at the top, tied neatly with a ribbon above some ancient teddy bears and baby blankets, was a bundle of letters. Ella recognized William’s handwriting immediately, with its distinctive looped Gs and Fs and the left slant that made it look as if all his words were hurtling too fast onto the paper and trying desperately to apply invisible brakes. Untying the bundle carefully, running her fingers over the envelopes with reverence, Ella suddenly stopped and did a double take.

The postmark.

No. That must be a mistake.

She checked the second letter, then the third and fourth. All the envelopes were dated within three months of each other, in the spring of 2003.

Ella closed her eyes and tried to steady her breathing.

That wasn’t possible. It couldn’t be. Her father was shot and her mother was drowned by Spyros and Athena Petridis in Greece in 2001.

Ella tried to think rationally. Had someone found and posted these letters after their deaths? With trembling hands, she pulled out the folded notes one by one. But no. The dates at the top of the letters bore out the ones on the envelopes: 2003. Most had been written by her father to her mother, but two – short, loving missives in a rounder, neater hand – were clearly signed ‘Rachel xox.’

Ella’s parents had both been alive in 2003. Two years after she’d been told the Petridises had murdered them.

So that was the lie! The ‘deception’ that Mark Redmayne and Katherine MacAvoy had been emailing about.

Athena Petridis didn’t stand by and watch my mother drown. Because my mother didn’t drown. It never happened!

Bile rose up in Ella’s throat and she sank to her knees. Her mind raced, terrible images and possibilities swimming before her eyes. Athena, dying and desperate, her eyes pleading for help. Poisoned for a crime she never committed. Poisoned by me.

The Group had turned Ella into a murderer, and they had done it based on a lie. A terrible lie, a lie that exploited Ella’s greatest weakness – her love and longing for her lost family – and that had utterly betrayed her trust.

Shaking, Ella tried to trace the deception back to the beginning. Where had she first heard the story of the drowning?

On the plane to Greece. The briefing files.

And who had given her those?

Not Redmayne.

Not MacAvoy.

She let out a cry that was part anguish, part raw fury as the awful truth hit home.

It was Gabriel.

Her Gabriel.

Gabriel had personally handed her those files. He had planted the lie! The fact that it was probably at Redmayne’s bidding did nothing to lessen the betrayal. He’d doubled down on it, too, the bastard. How many times had he referenced Ella’s mother’s drowning during their work together? Three? Four? More?

The pain was unbearable. The one person in The Group that Ella had come to trust implicitly. The one person she had really believed was on her side. Who she’d come to care about. Even to love. How ironic that she could admit it to herself now, thought Ella. Now that it was too late. Now that Gabriel had proved himself a liar and a manipulator and a …

She clenched her fists so tightly they ached. This wasn’t over. Gabriel would pay for what he’d done. They all would. But right now she needed to calm down. Keep her head.

With considerable effort, she picked up the letters again and began reading each of them, slowly, from beginning to end. Any one of them might contain a clue as to what had really happened to her parents. Or reveal what connection, if any, they had had with Athena Petridis.

Most of the notes were short, exchanges of news and love between the couple during times apart, presumably on separate missions for The Group. But two, the bottom two of the pile, dating to the fall of 2003, were from William to his mother Mimi. The gist of both of these was Ella’s father defending his marriage. Specifically, defending his wife to his mother, who had obviously expressed her disapproval of Rachel in previous notes.

From what Ella could make out, the letters were written after her mother had mysteriously gone missing. William was clearly concerned for her welfare and convinced of an innocent explanation. But Mimi seemed equally convinced that her daughter-in-law, far from being at risk, had simply abandoned her family.

I know she’s been troubled, William wrote. And it’s true things have been strained between us. But Rachel would never desert Ella, Mother. I know she wouldn’t. Something’s happened to her, and I can’t rest until I find out what it is.

In the last letter, he alluded to depression and even possible suicide, railing against what he saw as Mimi’s lack of compassion.

Until you’ve felt that darkness, Mother, how can you know? How can any of us know? I won’t let you be around our child if you continue to say these things. Please stop.

It was dark by the time Ella stopped reading. Dark and so cold that her fingertips and toes were completely numb. Like a tennis ball, or a bullet ricocheting off the walls, her mind flitted back and forth, trying and failing to process all that she’d learned in the last few hours: