Cold.
Difficult.
Demanding.
Sometimes he would purposely spill his drink and watch her reaction.
Sometimes he would complain about the food even when the chef had prepared the finest meals in the country.
Sometimes he would call her name in the middle of the night just to ask for something small.
A glass of water.
A blanket.
A book from the shelf.
Clara knew what he was doing.
He was testing her.
But what confused her was that behind all his cruelty, she saw something else.
Loneliness.
There were moments when Don Baste thought she wasn’t looking.
Moments when his angry expression disappeared and his eyes looked painfully empty.
One afternoon, Clara walked into the mansion’s library and found him staring at an old photograph.
It was a picture of a younger man.
A handsome man.
A man standing beside a woman who looked like his mother.
For a brief second, Clara saw sadness on his face.
Then he quickly covered it.
