Greed Kills
Copyright © 2015 M.M. Bingham
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To Peter
The Myth of Persephone
The myth of Persephone is one of the oldest of all Greek myths. Her story is a personification of some of the most universal concepts about life and death. In her youth, Persephone represents the powerful bond between a mother and a daughter and the often-difficult transition from maidenhood to marriage. As the Goddess of Springtime and Rebirth, she is eternally connected to the cycles of the earth, which lies barren in her absence and bloom again each spring with her return. And her initiatory experience in the realm of the dead is such a powerful experience that it changes her life forever. It is after this transformation that we remember her most for her role as the Greek Goddess of the Underworld.
Interpretation of the Persephone myth by Laura Strong, PhD - her more detailed story can be found at https://www.mythicarts.com/writing/Persephone.html
Table of Contents
Chapter 1 – Still the Same
Chapter 2 – Craig
Chapter 3 – Reg
Chapter 4 – Persephone
Chapter 5 – Craig’s Crime
Chapter 6 – Isaac
Chapter 7 – Israel
Chapter 8 – Consultant of the Year
Chapter 9 – Retribution
Chapter 10 – Protecting Persephone
Chapter 11 – The Other Scam
Chapter 12 – Aaron
Chapter 13 – The Prentice Affair
Chapter 14 – Japan
Chapter 15 – Justice
Chapter 16 – Revenge
Chapter 17 – Getting Away with Murder
The next Persephone Stone novel
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CHAPTER ONE
Still the Same
Persephone was stiff and sore from the previous day’s 13-hour drive home from the Sunshine Coast. She dragged herself to the bathroom, stretching her cramped shoulders and legs, realising that her life had been transformed. Nothing would ever again be the same. When she looked at her face in the mirror she was surprised at how normal she appeared. Surely there should be some sort of sign that she was now a stone cold killer?
‘Nope—still looking good,’ she said to her reflection, trying out a shy smile followed by an evil grimace. ‘Still the same old bird, just another day older.’
She wandered into the kitchen and made herself a strong black espresso with her sexy new coffee machine, a recent present to herself after discovering that she now needed caffeination at all hours of the day and night and her local café wouldn’t stay open for 24 hours, even for her. This did the trick, and soon her brain started spinning up as she contemplated her new life and what had led her there.
Corporate Australia had become a consequence-free zone, she judged. Bad behaviour, ranging from bullying and harassment through to large-scale fraud was at best ignored and at worst rewarded. Even when frauds threatened to surface, boards and executives worked hard to keep the news away from outsiders, especially law enforcement agencies, scared that the publicity would hurt the company. Hidden behind this tacitly-condoned white collar crime, some perpetrators moved seamlessly into violent and even deadly action. It had become so bad that innocent whistle-blowers were routinely sacked and then publicly vilified by the PR departments of these immoral corporations in an attempt to protect executive bonuses.
If these crimes had been committed outside the corporate veil, society would demand that the criminals be vigorously pursued and prosecuted. But in today’s world, it almost never happened.
Sadly Persephone contemplated her previously successful corporate career in her adopted country of Australia. She had become totally disillusioned by the lowering of ethical and personal standards and the rise of self-serving behaviour that was now being rewarded in an increasingly greedy and heartless corporate world. She was determined to strike a blow for all victims of fraud and corporate wrong-doing. She reckoned she had already started to balance the ledger with Craig’s death; and accepted that her new career as a corporate avenger had begun.
With the reckless bravado that had marked many of the decisions which had changed the course of her life, she had leapt into action. Now here she was delivering on her promise to herself, just like Gilbert and Sullivan’s Mikado, to make the punishment fit the crime. The trouble was that she didn’t feel as if she were a player in a comic opera. Craig, the man she had murdered, was well and truly dead and nobody was going to applaud as the final curtain came down. In fact Persephone would find out over the next few days if she had managed to carry out the perfect assassination.
But in the meantime, she had another job to do. This one was personal—but just as deadly.
‘Time for some fresh air,’ she thought, ‘and some sugar wouldn’t go astray.’
Her local café was round the corner. The owner, Vinh, was a small man whose parents had brought him to Australia in a boat with dozens of other refugees at the end of the Vietnam War. Although his outward appearance was Vietnamese, he was Aussie through and through, with the broadest of dinkum Aussie accents and mannerisms. He could, however, feign a complete lack of English whenever some patronising customer treated him as if his café were some sort of Asian marketplace and tried to get discounts for coffee and cake. Most of his clientele were local, however, and knew him and his wife Mai well. He especially liked Persephone, who not only always treated him well but spent hundreds of dollars every week in his establishment.
Mai had recently started to bake ‘authentic’ Middle Eastern pastries and to Persephone’s taste they were indistinguishable from the ones you could buy at the Lebanese patisserie a bit further down the road. She hurried in, her mouth watering in anticipation of the sweet treats waiting for her.