I swallowed another bite and then looked up at her. “I don’t understand the point of me being here. What am I meant to do?”
“Luc is,” Lydia searched for a word. “Impulsive. He acts before he thinks. By the sounds of it, someone took what was valuable to him, so he took something of value to them. I doubt he thought much past that.”
I was surprised at how honest her answer was instead of skirting around the question like I assumed she would.
“Don’t you think that’s ridiculous?” I asked her tentatively, wondering if I was pushing my luck.
“Do you know the business that Lucas runs?” Lydia asked me in return.
“Sort of.”
She gave me a look that said I should know better. “Luc has a temper and he can be quite abrasive, but he’s a kind soul.”
I almost choked on the spoonful of stew. “Kind soul?” I repeated the words when I recovered. Lucas hadn’t shown himself to be kind in any capacity of the word. He’d allowed Dad to get into debt, threatened his life and then used me as leverage to ensure he received his money. A quick glance down at my wrist where a bruise had started to blossom confirmed my belief that Lydia was wrong. Kind soul? A kind soul wouldn’t possess a temper like he had.
“Did he do that to you?” Lydia asked, eyes wide as she noticed the mark on my skin.
I pulled the sleeve of my sweatshirt down to cover it and decided not to answer. Lydia was a friendly face, but I couldn’t trust myself to keep my words polite and I didn’t want to starve here. I needed to try and have at least one person in this household on my side. Instead, I finished the bowl of stew and got up to take it to the sink, but she stopped me.
“I’ll do that, dear. You need to get to bed and get some sleep.”
“Thank you, Lydia.”
“Mia, love,” she called after me as I reached the kitchen door.
“Yes?”
“Come down to breakfast tomorrow morning,” Lydia told me. “I know you may not want to, but you can’t avoid him while you’re living here.”
I hesitated for a moment.
“Just think about it.”
With a small nod, I replied, “I’ll think about it.”
∞∞∞
It took a few moments when I woke up in the morning to remember where I was. As the realization hit, I stuffed my face back into the pillow and inhaled the scent of fabric softener while contemplating if I could just spend the entire day in bed. Could I last the entire length of my sentence confined to this room in self-isolation? I’d need to leave eventually, and Lydia was right, I couldn’t avoid Lucas and needed to face him at some point, so why not at breakfast?
I was afforded a little bit of privacy thanks to the ensuite adjacent to my room. I couldn’t even begin to imagine how much this house cost. I was easily surrounded by more money in this room than I had made in my short life and was likely to ever make.
The kitchen was not so difficult to find in sunlight that streamed through all the windows, but as I reached it I could hear raised voices and hung back.
“That’s no way to treat her, Lucas,” Lydia said angrily.
“She wouldn’t listen to me!”
“So, you thought you’d make her?”
There was a pang of guilt in my chest. Whatever had happened between me and Luc was between us. I hadn’t intended for Lydia to see the bruise and pick a fight with him. I was more concerned for Lydia and what Lucas might do to her rather than his feelings.
Cautiously, I took a step into the room. “Morning, Lydia,” I greeted her and after a moment I add, “Lucas.”
“Mia, love,” Lydia smiled, all traces of anger had left her voice. “How did you sleep?”
“Well, thank you. Yourself?”
Lucas moved away from Lydia, brushed past me and sat down at the table looking unimpressed. His black shirt sleeves were rolled to his elbows, displaying the tattoos again, and he stared down at his phone in his hands.
