Page 4 of Betraying Family Vows

Darkness starts to overtake my vision. I fight it, even as my body fails.

Athena looks down at me. "Don't worry," she says. "This is just the beginning."

I stare at her. The eyes watching me hold no mercy at all.

And then, the world goes black.

2

ATHENA

"You are your face. Your body. Nothing else matters."

I hear her voice even now, clear as crystal through the years.

"God blessed you with height, with beauty. With that waist, that chest, those eyes. You'll let all women down if you don't use it."

I stare into the mirror and see her ghost in my features. Same high cheekbones. Same full lips. Same eyes.

The mascara wand trembles in my hand. I steady it against the vanity edge, inhale, and try again.

I sweep the mascara across my lashes, watching them thicken to impossible length. I've been perfecting this routine since the first time my mother caught a man looking at me and decided it was time for lessons.

"Make them want you before they forget you, Athena. Be unforgettable or be discarded."

My mother's voice, not mine. Always hers. Even now, after she's gone.

The hotel lights overhead cast a soft glow on my skin. The red dress hugs every curve, sinfully. It's the kind of dress that makes promises I have no intention of keeping. A dress my mother would've adored.

I see her in my own reflection again.

I squeeze my eyes shut.

Not tonight.

I sigh and lean back, closing my eyes.

It was late. A Wednesday.

The phone rang. Private number.

I almost didn't answer.

It was the manager of the building my mother lived in. His voice was brittle and cold.

"I'm so sorry for your loss, Athena."

I remember how time seemed to stop when he said the words"passed away"instead of what he really meant: that my mother had swallowed enough pills to drop a horse.

I'd been in Florence. A small modeling job, nothing like her glory days, but it was something. I was trying. For her.

I close my eyes tighter, and I'm there again, standing in that tiny dressing room as the cell phone slipped from my fingers.

"Miss Lianou? Are you still there?"

I wasn't. I was running. Out of the studio, into a taxi, to the airport, back to Athens. Back to her. But of course, I was too late.

It's funny. When someone dies at a distance and you have to travel. You're up in the air, and you feel as if time's frozen. That maybe, just maybe, when you land and regain access to your phone, it will have been a mistake. Or maybe the call never came at all.