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The door closed and the water turned on.
Katia had known Lila couldn’t eat without exposing her face. She’d cooked an entire breakfast that she’d eat cold, all for her lover’s ex.
Just to make Lila feel better.
Lila let her laptop work and trudged to the kitchen. She put a pancake on her plate and a piece of bacon, avoiding the syrup and eggs and anything else that might start her stomach flopping again. Then she sat on the empty barstool between Dixon and Tristan.
“I didn’t ask her to do this,” Tristan mumbled, biting into his pancakes. “I had to tell her why you were here. I told her as much of the truth as I could without revealing your identity. She made me go buy all this stuff.”
“What exactly did you tell her?”
“That you’re an ex, and that you needed a place to stay for a few days. I told her Bullstow is involved. Her father has just served his fourth year of a slave’s term with the LeBeau family, so she knows what that is like.”
The LeBeaus.
They would have sent Katia’s father to either a meat-packing plant or a mine.
“It was a mine, in case you’re wondering. The militia got a bit aggressive with her father during an arrest, and roughed him up. One of them caught his own partner in the chin during the scuffle. To cover their own clumsiness, they claimed that her father had been resisting. They tacked on one count of assault against the militia. Her father’s actual crime? He’d been selling a bit of beer from his home brewery to friends.”
“That’s a misdemeanor. A fine. Why would Bullstow even care?”
“The LeBeaus had a restaurant at the end of the block. A few patrons had gotten hold of his beer and asked the management to stock it. When the family realized he didn’t have a business license and wasn’t lowborn, they sent out a patrol, just because they could. The arrest was a training exercise for a couple of rookies.”
“That makes no sense.”
Tristan stabbed at his eggs. “Of course it doesn’t make sense for a fine to turn into a five-year slave’s term in the damn mines. Luckily, he’ll be out soon.”
“Does she know what you do?”
“Fry’s her brother. Of course she knows.”
“So that’s why he joined you?”
For the first time all morning, he looked her dead in the eye. “That’s why they all join me, Ms. Randolph. All that eye rolling you used to do when I tried to talk about this? The workborn live it every day, and we are sick of your shit.”
Lila traced a grain on the counter. “Not my shit. My militia would never do—”
“That’s what they all say.”
“Change takes time.”
“How much time? How much longer does my kind have to suffer while we wait? Until the next sales quarter? Until the next legislative session? Until the next highborn escapes from trial with her life? I suppose we should sit in the corner like good little workborn, until the highborn see fit to give us our rights.”
Lila didn’t answer. Instead, she nibbled at her pancake. It was quite good, though the flavor differed from Chef’s. The thought struck her all at once that no matter what happened that morning, she’d never eat have anything that Chef cooked again.
The lonely feeling rose once more in her chest.
Tristan cleared his throat. “How is the investigation going?”
“It’s early yet.”
“Dixon told me about your approach with the missing children. I didn’t think of that.”
Neither of them said another word.
Lila squirmed on her stool as she ate. She finished quickly and put her plate in the sink. The pots and pans from breakfast stared back at her, and she grabbed a sponge to clean them. She might as well start scrubbing dishes. Despite what her father said about the Massons, she might not end up like Ms. Poole. Some eager chairwoman would most likely snap her up, just to put her in the family’s great house as someone to mock, as someone to humiliate on a daily basis. Or perhaps no one would bid on her at all. Everyone had always suspected that she could bring down a family’s network with a few minutes of lazy effort. She’d be a liability to anyone that bid, and if no one bid, she’d be hanged.
Just like Ms. Poole.
