Strange Bedfellows
Nineteen

 

A fine watery mist generated by the launch leaving Spoon Island cooled the air.  None of its passengers uttered a word as they departed.  Instead, each entertained private thoughts.

It was not difficult to guess at the direction the thoughts of the launch’s crewmen took.  Every few seconds their eyes surreptitiously darted toward the graceful, innocuously harmless figure seated regally on a padded bench in the center of the launch.

“I must know.”  Aristide Cassadine took a seat on the bench a discreet distance from his benefactor.  His finely honed sense of self-preservation was overridden by his curiosity.  “Why did you allow Stefan’s farce of a marriage to go unchallenged?”

Helena swiveled her gaze from the rapidly approaching docks of Port Charles to the elderly lawyer she had chosen as her candidate for the trusteeship.  “It did not suit my purposes to challenge the marriage at this time,” she replied evenly.  “Although Miss Jensen has been placed before me as an obstacle by my weakling son, it is of no consequence.  Dara Jensen is a familiar obstacle and at the right moment will be removed as all other obstacles before her have been.”

“Then you no longer have need of me?”

“No.” Helena dismissed Aristide with a blithe wave.  “Not for the time being.”

The wizened old lawyer breathed an inaudible sigh of relief.  An association with Helena Cassadine held the potential for untold profit and prestige.  But it also held an equal potential for personal disaster.  Having survived a life of Cassadine intrigue thus far, Aristide preferred nothing more than to enjoy his remaining years.

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