Page 51 of Merciless Daddy

I moved through, sleep-addled, to see coffee running over the pale carpet. A silver pot rolled under a chair. White porcelain scattered around the maid’s shoes.

She froze.

The guard who had entered too quickly looked down at the stain. He had come through the door with one hand beneath his jacket, reacting to a noise in the corridor. The maid had startled, turned, and lost the tray.

“Look what you did,” he snapped. “Do you know what that carpet costs?”

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” She dropped to her knees among the shards. “Please, I’ll clean it. Please don’t tell the housekeeper. I can pay—”

“Stop.”

Yelena reached her before I did.

She crossed the room in three fast steps and crouched beside the girl, the oversized jumper replaced now by black trousers and a fitted cream sweater. Her hair was tied back. No jewelry. Still, every person in the room looked at her.

She took Lucia’s hands before the girl could grab broken porcelain.

“Did you cut yourself?”

“No, miss. I’m sorry—”

“Hands.”

Lucia showed them.

Yelena turned them palm up, then checked her wrists. Calm. Thorough. The same woman who had tried to put a brooch through my eye now inspected a frightened maid’s fingers as if nothing else in the room mattered.

“She dropped it,” the guard said.

“No,” Yelena replied. “I knocked it while reaching for my coffee.”

That was a clean lie. Effortless.

The guard frowned. “I saw—”

“You saw the end of an accident.” She looked up at him from the floor. “Go get towels. Cold water, not hot, unless you’d like to set coffee permanently into wool.”

He went.

He did not appear to realize he had obeyed her until he reached the door.

Yelena turned back to Lucia. “Are they deducting breakage from your wages?”

The girl glanced toward the housekeeper.

Yelena followed the glance. “Are they?”

“Sometimes,” Lucia whispered. “It’s all right. I need the job.”

“For yourself?”

“My younger sister. She’s still in school.”

Something changed in Yelena’s face. It was small. A softening around the mouth, gone almost before I caught it.

“How old?”

“Sixteen.”