Three Fates

we’ve complicated her life considerably with the insurance claim and in moving those pieces from Morningside into her personal safe.”
    “She’d already committed insurance fraud,” Gideon commented. “We just upped the stakes. There’s no guarantee that she won’t slither out of it.” He laid a hand on Cleo’s thigh, felt the muscles vibrating.
    “There’s no guarantee of anything,” Malachi returned. “But we can be sure she won’t slither easily, not with those pieces tucked away in her library safe. And Jack’s put a bug in the ear of his police friend about her. There’s a good chance if we sit back, the system will work.”
    “Lew will bulldog it.” Jack forked up some pasta salad. “Security tapes will show the pieces on her claim form were still in place after the break-in. Her life won’t be a picnic while he’s on her. The insurance investigator’s going to take a really dim view of a claim in excess of two million when the client still has the merchandise.”
    “Maybe she pays a fine, does some community service. I—”
    Jack held up his fork to interrupt Cleo’s rant. “Just getting a visual of Anita in a soup kitchen. It’s not bad. Doesn’t play either, not for seven-figure fraud. Still, if we want her going all the way down, Bob has to tie her to Dubrowsky. If he can’t connect her, he can’t tie her to the murder, or to Cleo’s friend.”
    “And she’d skate,” Cleo said bitterly.
    “Yeah, but she could skate anyway. That’s where Mal’s coming from. With what we did, she gets hit with insurance fraud, does a little time, and her glossy society-widow image ends up smeared.”
    “Sometimes,” Tia said as everyone looked at her, “that sort of notoriety adds a sheen of its own.”
    “Good point,” Jack agreed. “If we follow through with the rest, we skin her financially, and maybe,” Jack said again, “we push her into making a mistake that locks it all down. There’s a lot of ifs in there. Moving forward puts it all back in the mix.”
    “Um.” Tia lifted a hand, then let it fall. “The Moerae, the Fates, prophesied when Meleager was only a week old that he would die when a brand on his mother’s hearth burned out. They sang his fate—Clotho, that he would be noble, Lachesis, that he’d be brave. And Atropus, looking at the infant, that he would live only as long as that brand was not consumed.”
    “I don’t get this,” Cleo began.
    “Let her finish,” Gideon told her.
    “Well, you see, Meleager’s mother, desperate to protect her baby, hid the brand away in a chest. If it didn’t burn out, he’d be safe. So her son grew up, and as a man, Meleager killed his mother’s brothers. In anger and grief at the slaughter, she took the brand out of the chest and burned it. So Meleager died. Avenging her brothers, she lost her son.”
    “Fine. Mikey stands for my brother, but that bitch sure as hell doesn’t stand for my kid. So what?”
    “The point is,” Tia said gently, “revenge is never free. And it never brings back what was lost. If we move forward only for revenge, the price may be too high.”
    Cleo got up. As Tia had done earlier, she walked over, circled the tables where the Fates stood. “Mikey was my friend. Gideon barely knew him, the rest of you didn’t know him at all.”
    “We know you, Cleo,” Rebecca said quietly.
    “Yeah, well. I’m not going to stand here and pretend I don’t want revenge, and I’m willing to pay the freight for it. But what I said before, the first time we all got together at Tia’s, that still holds. I want justice more. So, we’ve got these, and we’re rich. Big fucking deal.”
    She turned her back on them. “If people just step back from what’s right, don’t stand up for a friend when it gets tough, what’s the damn point? Any one of you doesn’t want to get dragged into this, that’s cool. No harm, no foul, especially after all this. But I’m not done. I’m not done till she’s sitting in a cell cursing my name.”
    Malachi looked at his brother, nodded. Then he laid a hand over Tia’s. “The story you told, darling. There’s another meaning to it.”
    “Yes. Choice determines destiny.” She rose, walked to Cleo. “Lives circle around, intersect. Touch and bounce off each other. All we can do is our best, and follow the thread to the end. I don’t suppose justice is free either. We’ll just have to make it worth the price.”
    “Okay.” Cleo’s vision blurred with