Eva's Sins.

XII

                                                    "Never awake a demon. He can completely swallow you in its gloom".

  Christine Bircham was born into a wealthy family and so she also wanted to die. Money for her was something that simply was completing her sophisticated style of living, but if it would have ever completely evaporated from her money bag, then she would have felt that she had been destroyed.

  She never wondered about what she would have done if she hadn't had money. Such a thing was something completely out of her way of thinking and she didn't even want to know the meaning of such a useless word. It was completely out of her vocabulary.

  Dane Bircham, Christine's father, had been an honest merchant all his life. He entered any business that could bring money and in a somewhat strange way, he always succeeded. Being this tobacco trading, importing French Mobilier, or giving money on loan to those addicted to any kind of addiction, it was something that Dane managed to do always.

  But people always wondered why nobody is trying to kneel him, to cheat on him, or to steal from him. He hadn't anybody in charge to protect or control his business, but he always had a very big income. He was everywhere and he always managed to do everything by himself. It was something weird enough, so people started to check, to ask, to whisper behind his back, but everything was a mystery. And that mystery's name was Audrey Bircham.

  Dane's wife was that kind of woman that loves to do everything in silence. She was in a good relationship with everybody, but nobody knew anything about her. Her thoughts were something that one could only guess and her manner of doing things, from time to time, was raising doubts. And that mystery, in great secret, was discovered one day, when Sir William Haris Wilson was found dead in the Misses Audrey's boudoir.

  A woman that till now was apparently an impeccable and faithful woman resulted to be the secret lover of one of the richest and important people of those times. And what was even more surprising was the fact that Dane did nothing to wash his stained reputation. That meant only one thing: he was aware of his wife's affair or maybe he was the one who encouraged her to enter such a relationship.

  And from that precise moment, Dane Bircham had become the person who one shouldn't ever deceive him. Step by step, the High Society found out about a Secret Group that is pulling the strings of power in their country, but nobody knew who is ruling all this. They could only guess, they could only whisper, but none of them had enough courage to stand and to ask openly about it.

  Christine instead always knew who the puppet master was. Dane, greedy for power and money, tried to manage it by himself, in great secret from his wife, whom he considered to be too innocent to be involved in such things, but when he faced the first main problem and he didn't know how to solve it, then he decided to talk to his wife.

  Audry simply smiled while watching her husband. She had a special way of doing things, something that was attracting people like a magnet, and that something was her power over others. She never seemed to be a fragile person, but others, especially men, were losing their heads when she was smiling at them, and right away they were available to fulfill any of her caprices. Far away from being a beauty, Audry learned to use her instinct and her charisma to succeed. While other women were calling on hysteria and open seduction to enter men's beds, Audry was using her brain. She forced herself not to gain weight, even when she was pregnant with Christine, and her tasty body was always her best weapon to use if necessary.

  Thus she married Dane. She knew who he was only by looking at him. Even if he apparently was an important man, Audry knew that she could manage him at her will, but being a wise person, she never did it openly. She preferred to wait, giving him the space he needed, and in the end, he was the one who kneeled in front of her and asked for her help. Of course, this was far away from being random.