"As always, you find it so easy to blame me for everything, don't you," retorted the angry Stavros. "Nikolas might not be in our class, but he is an honest man, and Anna loves him."
"Love, love! It makes me want to retch every time I hear the word!"
She paced across the large Baroquefurnished living room, the bottom of her goldtrimmed white satin robe trailing along the marble floor behind her. Biting nervously on a long black and gold cigarette holder she had taken out of her purse, Melpomeni placed a cigarette in and rummaged through her purse again, desperately searching for a lighter.
"She is your daughter! And she is in love. Yes, something that you never learned," shouted Stavros. "Something that you never learned!" he repeated.
"And I suppose you married me because you loved me, Mr. Bouras, didn't you?" Melpomeni said tauntingly.
Stavros did not reply. He nervously handled a heavy black marble paperweight, shifting it from one palm of his hand to the other. At times he felt like hurling it across the large room, smashing it through the arched window. He wanted to throw it into the sea, as though it was to blame for his daughter's disappearance. If only the sea could talk, it would have a story or two to tell about the legal and illegal adventures that had made Stavros a multimillionaire. And now that same sea was holding his only daughter hostage, the most precious thing in his life, his only child, his only real love.
The raging Melpomeni continued with her vicious tirade.
"You only married me because of my father's fleet of ships! You were more in love with them than me! Tell the truth for a change," she shouted.
"Shut up, Melpo!" Stavros retorted, his face reddened with rage. But his wife ignored him as she continued ranting.
"And the other women!" Melpo muttered, putting both hands on her hips, gathering momentum. "I know all about them and your expensive interludes at Maxim's and the King George Hotel. I know all about the diamonds you bought for those lowlife whores!" She lowered her head to the right and glared at him cunningly, ready to fire her coup de grâce. After she had walked around Stavros and found the right position to aim, she stopped.
"And what about that blonde? The one barely older than your own daughter! The child you were supposed to visit in Switzerland, when she was going to school in Montreux. The Hotel Genève and the suite on the top floor with the heart-shaped bed and breathtaking view ..." She took a step back and then spat on the floor. "You disgust me!" Her eyes were wide open as she threw a storm of poisoned arrows at her husband.