It was my luck to land the job without issue, and I got even luckier when I met Adrienne. Out of all the women, she was the only one to see me as more than a working drone who was too beneath her to socialize with. I’d used the fact that we both had young daughters to get close. That, and the fact that I was starting over miles away from home after losing my husband. Another lie, but it was part of my new identity.
After leaving NYC, I’d gone back to my maiden name, changed my looks, which had cost a mint just to get my hair dyed and looking halfway decent, got myself in shape and studied up on the ways of the rich and famous, and how best to fit in. I’m not sure what my complete plan was, beyond landing myself a rich husband, that is.
I didn’t set out to steal Adrienne’s life, but it was just so perfect. Everything about her life, from her background to her handsome husband and perfect home, the home she’d invited me into. It was watching Victoria with Gia that had first planted the seed of usurpation in my head.
Gia never fought back when Victoria took her stuff, never even complained. She’d just move on to something else, no fuss. I watched for weeks, months, as my little girl totally dominated this kid and realized that we were different people, the Fontane mother and child, and my daughter and I.
Then Victoria started comparing and complaining. She’d taken very well to our new lifestyle. As part of my stipend, the school had given us a new apartment just off campus that was worlds better than the one we left, and Victoria was allowed to attend classes there as well, where she got to rub elbows with the children of the wealthy.
My kid is just like me; she wanted more. She didn’t want to keep returning to our little apartment while her new friends went home to castles. She especially envied Gia, and it was all Adrienne’s fault. Why did she have to be so hands-on with her kid? Why did she have to make their lives seem so picture perfect? She should’ve known what that would do to a child.
So, it’s not my fault; no one can blame me for wanting more for my daughter and me. But this is not the way I’d seen things playing out, though. We’d been cruising along smoothly for so long, everything going my way, and it was almost time for the girls to be out of the house. I figured in a year, or so when the girls went off to college, it would be time for me to really start living. I’d find a way to make these women accept me and get to enjoy the life I’d envisioned. They can’t hold the fact that I married my friend’s husband just months after her death against me forever.
That ass Jimmy would still have a decade or more left to go behind bars, and besides, I’d covered my tracks well enough that he’d never find me. With Victoria rubbing elbows with the sons of the richest and most influential people in the world, our futures would’ve been set whether I decided to stay with Felix or upgrade my status somewhere down the line. But now it’s all falling apart. Why now when I was so close?
It’s all that little bitch’s fault, the lies she must be telling. I didn’t do enough to suppress her, it seems. How else would she have been able to get away from me this easily? The little bitch is just like her mother, I could never break Adrienne either, so I never tried, but the daughter was a mere child. I should’ve been able to squash her like a bug beneath my feet by now.
Maybe I went about things the wrong way. Maybe I should’ve embraced her, pretended more, but she always seemed to see right through me when I tried. How could I live like that in my own home? If I’d relented even a little bit, she’d have ruled over my daughter and me. I couldn’t let that happen.
For a while, things were going well; if she wasn’t exactly under my thumb, she still cowered before Victoria and me, still showed the right amount of fear. Was it all an act? Had she just been biding her time? No, it can’t be. She didn’t have any strength until the Russo boy came along.
How did she get his attention anyway? When Victoria had been trying for years without any luck. And why is he acting so out of character for Gia? From what I know, that boy has always been aloof, detached. All the mothers around here would bend over backward to get him to notice their daughters without prevail. So how did he come to be the champion of that little mouse?