The image was so absurd, so grotesque amidst the opulence of the estate, that Lucas felt a mixture of nausea and fury.
“I’m talking to you!” he barked, towering over her. “You’re soaked to the bone. Have you lost your mind? Why are you swallowing this out here in this weather?”
Maya shrank back. The movement was instinctive, primal, like that of a stray dog expecting a kick. Her hands, red from the cold, tried to close the lid of the Tupperware container, but her fingers slipped through the water.
“Mr. Lucas,” he stammered. His teeth chattered so loudly he could barely be understood. “I… I didn’t mean to… forgive me.”
“Pardon?” Lucas ran a hand through his soaking hair, wiping the water from his eyes. “Don’t apologize, give me a damn explanation! Get up and go inside the house right now! You look like an animal lying there!”
The girl tried to stand, but her legs were numb from the cold and her position. Before she could manage it, a third voice cut through the air. A voice Lucas had known since he was a child, a voice that always signified order, control, and discipline.
—You shouldn’t be here, sir.
Lucas turned around. Elena was standing a few feet away, under a huge black umbrella. Unlike Maya and himself, Elena was immaculate. Her gray senior housekeeper’s uniform wasn’t wrinkled at all.
Her posture was rigid, almost military. She seemed immune to the storm, as if the weather didn’t dare touch her.
“Elena,” Lucas said, exhaling in frustration. “What’s going on? Why do I have my staff eating dinner in the rain?”
Elena took two steps forward. The sound of her heels on the wet stone was rhythmic, precise. She looked at Lucas with that rehearsed expression of deference she had perfected over decades, and then her eyes fell on Maya.
The look wasn’t one of hatred, it was worse: it was one of utter contempt, like someone looking at a grease stain on a silk tablecloth.
“I was about to report her, Don Lucas,” Elena said, her voice soft but with a steely edge. “I kicked her out of the house because she’s no longer welcome here. At least not until you decide what to do with her.”
“What are you talking about?” Lucas frowned, water dripping from his nose.
—He broke the vase, sir.
The world seemed to stop for a second. The thunder fell silent. The wind seemed to hold its breath.
“What did you say?” Lucas asked, his voice dropping to a dangerous whisper.
“The Baccarat crystal vase. The one from her grandmother’s collection, the one that was on the pedestal in the east hallway.” Elena sighed, a theatrical sound of disappointment.
“I found it smashed this afternoon, just before it started to rain. She was there, alone, with the broom in her hand.”
Lucas felt a pang in his chest. That vase wasn’t just an object. It was one of the few things left intact from his mother’s golden years, before cancer took her. His mother loved that vase; she always put fresh tuberoses in it. She said it caught the morning light better than any diamond.