Three Wishes(86)

For some reason, this made him snatch her into his arms and he buried his face in her hair as he chuckled against her neck.

And somehow, making him chuckle, Lily felt that she’d just reached the top of Mount Everest even to the point of having trouble breathing as she’d reach such altitude.

He let her go, though she felt it was somehow with reluctance, when the mobile phone on the dining room table started ringing. Nate strode back to the table and she watched him go, thinking he had such a powerful gait that it was beautiful, like the trained power of an athlete.

Then her eyes fell on Victor.

She felt funny around Victor. He’d hurt her in more ways than putting his hands on her in violence to the point of bruising her. He’d broken her trust by doing it.

She thought of him, when she first met him, as a kind of father-figure in absence of Will. Now Will was gone and both Tash and Lily were left with Victor and Lily didn’t know what to think of that.

He’d done what he’d done out of love and loyalty for Nate but it still didn’t change the fact that he’d lost his temper to the point of manhandling her.

“Lily,” Victor greeted softly as she walked toward him cautiously. Her eyes moved to Nate who had answered his phone. He was talking on the mobile but also watching her, watching them, and not missing a thing. He was not, this time, inspecting a bug under a microscope. Nate’s dark eyes were active, engaged and aware.

“Do you want some coffee?” Victor pointed to a silver service and Lily nodded.

“I’d kill for some coffee,” she answered and Victor moved to get her a cup. “Two sugars and milk,” she told him.

“I’m not surprised you like it sweet,” Victor mumbled to himself as he poured her a cup. “Laura made it, so you don’t have to worry, it tastes good. You just missed her. She left not five minutes ago.”

He offered her the cup and Lily took it.

“Please thank her for me, for what she did yesterday, for the clothes.” She put her arm out to show him her outfit. “If she gets me the receipts, I’ll pay –”

“Rubbish,” he snapped and she tensed immediately, her eyes flying to Nate who, she noted, regardless that he was on the phone, was watching her so closely she couldn’t imagine he heard a word that was said by the person on the line.

She moved her gaze back to Victor and she just stopped herself from taking a step back at the intensity she saw in his eyes.

“We owe you more than a pretty skirt,” he was saying.

“I’m sorry?”

“Jeff, Danielle… me. We owe you more than some bits of fabric.” Lily held her breath at his words and he lifted his hands in a gesture of agitated frustration then he spoke with surprising bluntness. “How do you go about paying a girl back for eight years of her life, marking her with bruises?” He was still intense but seemed, underneath it, lost and uncertain.

She was shocked at his honesty, shocked and touched.

“Victor…” She moved toward him, responding to the “lost and uncertain” bit and without taking a sip, she set her coffee back on the table.

She was only feet away from him when Victor announced, “I disowned them.”

At these words, Lily froze. Then she breathed, “What?”

“Jeff and Danielle, cut them off without a penny. The wills are already changed, Nate, you and Natasha inherit everything.”

Lily blinked. “But they’re your children,” she protested, forgetting, for that moment, how truly hideous they both had acted, taking her note, not telling Nate her parents had died, telling Lily Nate was dead. This was not the behaviour of kind, good people.

But disowning them?

Sarah had always threatened to disown Lily or Becky or Will, depending on who angered her but it was always an empty threat and she didn’t have much to give anyway, not like the Roberts did.

But to go so far as do it?

“Yes,” Victor replied firmly, “they are my children and for that reason they have whatever’s left in their trust funds and I’ve left them to their lives each with a good education to make something of themselves, finally.”

Lily took another step forward. “I hope you left the door open, just a crack, in case they’re sorry and they come back,” she said softly and hesitantly she put her hand lightly on his arm.

He looked at his arm where her hand rested and then at her. The intensity drained from his eyes and the Victor she knew replaced it.

“You have a kind heart, Lily,” he told her quietly. “I’ll take them back only if they convince you and Nathaniel to forgive them. Not before and if you don’t, not ever.”

She squeezed his arm and moved into him another several inches. “Laura?”

Victor put his hand over hers on his arm. “She agrees.”

Lily closed her eyes as the pain of another mother ran through her.

She opened them again and said, “It had to cost her.”

Then he said something strange, something that made Lily immensely curious, scared her out of her wits and, most importantly, it rocked her to her core. He said it in a low, quiet voice that was meant not to be heard outside their tête-à-tête.

“Nathaniel had suffered enough in his life. He didn’t need to suffer the last eight years. Laura knew that and I know it too. He’s our son, they hurt him, what were we meant to do?”