Author: Sidney Sheldon
Category: Thriller
Go to read content：https://readnovelfree.com/p/38519_92
Sofia went on: “In the beginning, he was different. I mean, he was so beautiful and smart and charismatic. But he also treated me differently.”
“In what way?”
“He talked to me. He listened. And he respected me. He never tried to touch me.”
“Sexually, you mean?”
Sofia nodded. “The other boys at the home, and the men there, the staff…they all forced themselves on me.” Matt Daley bit his lower lip so hard it bled. “But not Frankie. He was different and he kept them away from me.”
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Ellen Watts paused to allow the impact of Sofia’s testimony to sink in, especially among the female jurors. “You’re saying that you suffered sexual abuse while at this children’s home?”
Sofia nodded, hanging her head. “I didn’t know that’s what it was at the time. I thought that was just…what happened. But Frankie made me see things differently. He told me I was beautiful, that I was special. I had a book, it was about a princess, from Morocco. We used to read it together. He told me that the princess was my grandmother, he’d found it out somehow. He knew things about my past, like what had happened to my mother and my sister. I had a twin, you see. We were separated.”
As she went back into the past, something strange began to happen to Sofia’s face. Her eyes took on a distant, glazed expression, almost as if she were under hypnosis.
“The others didn’t believe I came from an important family. They were jealous. But Frankie understood. He knew. He loved me.”
Very gently, Ellen Watts said, “Sofia. You understand now that that isn’t true, don’t you? That the story about the princess wasn’t really your history. That it was just a story. And the letter from the lawyer, about you and your ‘twin sister,’ Ella, that was just something that you made up, you and Frankie, right?”
For a moment a look of sheer panic passed over Sofia’s features. Then, like someone waking from a trance, she said quietly, “Yes. I know that now. It wasn’t real.”
“But at the time you believed it was. That was when you changed your name legally to Sofia Basta, wasn’t it? Basta was the name of the Moroccan family from the story.”
“They told me that later. Yes. I think so.”
She looked so confused and forlorn, Matt Daley couldn’t bear it. Even Danny McGuire found it hard to believe that this degree of mental confusion could be an act.
“So once you became Sofia, how did things develop with you and Frankie? When did the relationship become physical?”
“Not until after we married. And even then it was rare that we…he didn’t really want to.”
“He didn’t want to have intercourse?”
“No.”
“Did you suspect that he might be homosexual?”
“No, never. He loved me, he was passionate in other ways. You have to understand, I…I had no life and Frankie gave me one. He saved me. I didn’t question that. I embraced it.”
“So the two of you married and moved to California.”
“Yes
. Frankie was brilliant, he could have gone anywhere, done anything. But he was offered a job at a law firm in L.A., so that’s where we went. It was a new life for us, so he gave us new names. He became Lyle. And I was Angela. We were very happy…at first.”
“It was as Angela that you met Andrew Jakes?”
Sofia twisted her hands together, as if kneading an invisible ball of dough. “Yes. Angela met Andrew. Lyle set it up.” She’d slipped into the third person so naturally, at first people barely noticed. But as the depths of her schizophrenia were laid bare, scattered gasps could be heard around the court as, for one spectator after another, the other shoe dropped. “Poor Angela. She didn’t want to marry him. She didn’t want him anywhere near her…he was so old.” Sofia shivered. “She felt sick every time he touched her.”
“She?” Ellen Watts asked the question that was on everyone’s lips. “Don’t you mean you, Sofia?”
“No! It was Angela. I’m telling you about Angela, remember? Please, don’t confuse me. It’s so hard to remember.” She pressed her hands to her temples. “Angela didn’t want to marry Andrew Jakes. She was a lovely girl, Angela. But Frankie made her do it. He said Andrew needed to be punished for what he’d done and Angela had been created to punish him. There was no way out.”
“And what had Andrew Jakes done?” Ellen Watts asked. “Why did he have to be punished? Was he a bad man?”
“Andrew…bad…? Not to Angela, no. He was quite sweet actually. Thoughtful…She was fond of him in the end. But he’d done the same thing as all the others, you see. He’d abandoned his family. His children…That was why he had to die.”
Danny McGuire saw his life flash before his eyes. Could it really have been that simple all along, the link between Azrael’s victims? That they’d all walked out on their children, the way that Frankie Mancini’s father walked out on him?