The eighteen-year-old girl fell through her door in exhaustion. She'd been down in the basement training with the mercenaries her father currently had hired for a couple of hours and her mind and body were exhausted. She threw herself down into her armchair, feeling too dirty for the bed as she let her head rest back. A quiet knock interrupted her brief moment of peace.
"Come in," she grumbled, eyes shut, as the woman entered her room. Michelle, who was the most understanding person in the house, had put the most effort into the day-to-day efforts of raising her and keeping her alive. It often felt like a wolf's den. Lucia couldn't understand why Michelle worked for her father. Despite this, Lucia admired Michelle's strictness, fairness, and lack of motivation by fear or threat, unlike most of the household staff. She often wondered whether some of them knew the full extent of what he did.
"Miss, your father wants to see you in his office." Lucia groaned from her chair, opening her eyes to see the impeccably dressed woman in front of her, whose eyes held a hint of sympathy. Lucia couldn't be angry at the woman obeying orders, but she didn't have to make her look so dishevelled.
"Thanks, Michelle, I'll go see what his majesty needs" Michelle was too professional to laugh, but a smile was on her face as she turned and left the room. Lucia flung herself out of bed, checking herself over in the mirror and realising she was filthy. Her clothes were a mess, and her hair was tangled and matted from a cut behind her ear that had bled and clotted. She didn't have time to shower, but she washed the cut and quickly tied her hair into a bun. Not wanting to appear drained from the afternoon activities, she changed into different leggings and a jumper, giving the impression that she planned to exercise later that evening. She might even be tempted to actually do some.
Having made herself presentable, Luci hopped downstairs to her father's office. She knocked on the doors but entered without waiting for permission. He'd lock it to keep her out, but that wouldn't stop her if she truly wanted to enter. She was greeted by familiar cream-coloured walls, which she skirted around so she could have a few seconds closer to the fireplace. Different from the one she first saw years ago, and not the same office. Still, he insisted on having one in every house they owned. Lucia never complained. He always had an eye for an old building, none of which ever came with effective heating. Even the apartment they had held in New York for a bit had so much glass the fireplace had become her haven in the winter months.
When she heard her father laugh, she spun around in shock to stare at him. It wasn't his usual tone or even his usual accent. He had put on a polite chuckle you give when you are trying to sidle up to a politician or flirt. She shuddered at the thought. He was seated as usual behind his dark mahogany desk, which seemed to follow them across Europe and went into storage whenever they went further. She knew the hidden compartments and adjustments he'd had built into it made it a keeper, but Lucia wondered if he'd just become sentimental in his old age. As she watched him sit, laid back in the chair behind his desk, light and cheerful on the phone, she could almost imagine him as normal, how boring.
"Yes, thank you so much for being so considerate." When he caught her eye, he laughed quietly and Lucia could imagine the look of confusion on her face. She took the seat opposite him, turning his laptop around to face her as she did. She began tracing his call.
"I completely understand you really are marvellously accommodating." Lucia rolled her eyes at him as a mischievous smile crossed his own face. The call traced itself to an Oxford cell tower, and it took all of Lucia's self-restraint not to groan in irritation. She sat still, watching her father as he flirtatiously finished the call he was on and she ensured her face showed her complete disapproval.
She turned the laptop around to face him as he hung up the phone. He closed it and met her eyes. Neither of them spoke. He always used it as an intimidation tactic. Lucia felt tempted to let the silence string out endlessly, but she clenched her fists at her side and spoke. "I don't understand why you insist I get a degree."
She had said the wrong thing. Her father's eyes darkened and his fingers splayed on the table with a sudden bang.
"There will be no more arguments over this. You move in on Sunday. You have the rest of the week to buy supplies and clothes you think you will need. I will introduce you to your driver, who will drive you to and from Oxford. Michelle has insisted on seeing you to your dorm room." He rattled off a list of boring objectives and Lucia held back from rolling her eyes. She thought through all the ways she could get out of this and wondered if any would be believable enough to her father.
He waited for her response, only one of which would be acceptable.
She gave a curt nod and Moriarty opened his laptop, his eyes back to whatever documents or requests he was currently working on. It was an obvious dismissal and Luci left quickly, only letting her annoyance show when she was out of the room. Any tiredness from earlier had left her as she fumed over her current predicament.
She went straight out the front door, barely acknowledging the men who stood guard as she started to run around their grounds. She could get a couple of miles in this way. It was far from the Italian villa they had been in for the last few summer months but for a property in London. She wondered whether her father had wasted the money or if he had "convinced" someone to lend it to them. They seemed to spend the least amount of time in London of all the cities they had lived in, Lucia understood why, no other city held such a world-famous detective and she knew that rivalry wouldn't ever settle but it had never been the right time for it to resurface. But they were, she reminded herself, going to be stuck here for at least three years now as she was forced into an educational pursuit. She forced herself to run faster.
She'd been homeschooled since she had first moved in. The housekeeper, Michelle, had made sure all her basics were up to scratch. With the amount of time they had spent abroad, she could speak at least three languages fluently. When she surpassed Michelle, her father got her private tutors to cover whatever she showed an interest in and whatever her father deemed necessary for her to learn. Alongside that, she gained invaluable lessons by simply working alongside her father and the hobbies she'd initially been forced to pursue. Her only thought as she ran until she was dripping with sweat and exhaustion was that university would be a waste of her time and she wondered whether he was doing it to have her out of the house for long periods of time. She trudged back into the house and towards her room. Sure, she would be grateful to have a bit of life outside of the one with her father. But she enjoyed her time now. She was smart, she could pursue her interests, and the work her father did was entertaining, to say the least.
Her eyes drifted over her desk, currently tidy. Her sketchbook sat open in the middle and a case file her father had given her lay next to it. She'd always enjoyed the case files, mostly cold cases, some unsolved, some solved, but a puzzle, nonetheless. She wasn't sure if her father was responsible for all the ones he gave her, but she definitely suspected he was responsible for the majority. He said trying to solve them was useful as both a tool of learning how to think like a detective to better deceive them, but also as an activity of what could have been done better. She always enjoyed the live cases, the queries or requests clients made for things yet to be done, people or objects that needed to disappear, and money that needed to be smuggled, it was rare he let her have one to herself but she'd never turned down an offer to help with one, look it over and come up with her own suggestions. Either way, it provided a fun thought experiment, one she was sure she would now have less time to enjoy if she was going to be filling her time in pursuing a degree.
Lucia wrote up a quick shopping list for a week she was sure would be lost to errands and then buried herself in the closest file. She might as well have some fun while she has the time left.
The week passed too quickly. Lucia had been introduced to her driver, a relatively boring middle-aged man who her father obviously held something terrible over. She'd tried to ask, and Moriarty had refused to answer. He'd been disappointed she hadn't figured it out herself. It didn't matter; he was being paid a ridiculous salary, and it was on pain of death should anything happen to her. Much to her displeasure, she had been driven around to grab supplies. As well as the essentials, she managed to get her sketchbook rebound, adding a few more blank pages she was sure she was going to need when her mind wandered during the lectures she was going to suffer through. She'd toned down her wardrobe, most of it could be classed as smart or smart casual but she didn't need the expensive tailored items drawing any unwanted attention towards herself. She tried to aim for a mix of expensive enough to seem like someone worth being friends with but not unapproachable and pretentious.
She was irritable Saturday night and when she walked into her father's office offering him dinner, she fully expected him to say no, so she was caught off guard when he agreed. She cooked for them both; he continued to surprise her as he moved himself to the dining room table as she cooked; he continued to work, but now, while she cooked a pasta dish she'd picked up while they were in Italy, he talked through the work in front of him; he listened when she made suggestions and didn't seem too disappointed by whatever she responded with.
He'd brought out a bottle of red wine to match the dish she was cooking and she drank it alongside him. It felt like a near repeat of their evenings spent in the Italian countryside when they had discussed his work with the Italian mafia. She missed it. Things had been simpler when her father hadn't been trying to ship her off to university, and the Tuscan weather hadn't been as miserable as the rain that never seemed to lift from the British skies.
From the work they discussed now, she got the impression he was working on a lot of foreign clients and was almost certain it would take him out of the country in the next few weeks. She knew if she wasn't going to be occupied by university, she would have found herself alongside him; her knuckles were white as she gripped the kitchen knife and her father looked up with an amused smile as she chopped vegetables with rage.
He commended her on the few cases she had burned through in the past few days and promised her a live case too. Her grip relaxed as she realised at least the work she did for her father wouldn't come to a stop, even when she was busy. She still thought it would be funny if she threw a knife towards him. Michelle would probably scold her for damaging the wall.
Eating didn't stop the work chat, but it lulled as Moriarty closed his laptop, clearly reaching the end of whatever he'd brought with him from his office. He looked her over and Lucia, as she had many times before, stopped herself from fidgeting under his gaze.
"What do I say if they ask about you?" She wasn't particularly interested in the answer. She'd just assumed he'd created himself a persona and she would have to stick to whatever story he'd come up with. Better to know if she was playing the spoilt child of a businessman or the stuck-up daughter of a politician.
"I am a foreign businessman and you cannot disclose my identity because of that. You were born and raised here before you came into my care." He waved her question away, taking their plates as he spoke, "For all intents and purposes, your surname is White, but anyone who digs too far will come up with nothing."
"Well, that's an awfully dull name."
He didn't look at her as he chuckled and she wondered what the world would think of Jim Moriarty, consulting criminal, stacking a dishwasher.
She sat at the table in silence after he left. She thought over how much effort he had put into getting her into this university. The records that had been forged and planted, the exams he had made her do. Jim Moriarty had been planning this move for a while and Lucia couldn't help but wonder what exactly was worth it.