He Mocked My Scar, So I Left Him to His Regret Chapter 18

He Mocked My Scar, So I Left Him to His Regret Chapter 18

The materials from the education hearing were quickly forwarded

to the Mooncrest Resource Committee.

Lockwood had overseen academy subsidies, yet allowed a single comment from his daughter to strip another minor of her lunch eligibility.

The bitter irony was that the abandoned minor was also his

daughter.

Mooncrest required him to step down from his post as financial

officer, pending an investigation into improper influence.

He sent me over a dozen emails.

*Lucia, do you really have to be this ruthless?*

*If you want compensation, just name your price.*

*As long as you tell the committee this was all a family misunderstanding, I can still acknowledge you as my daughter.*

I replied only once.

*I do not need your acknowledgment.*

*Please do not contact me again.*

After that, I filed a complaint with Mooncrest’s guard department

regarding the break-in and theft from three years ago.

I had no new surveillance footage, no surprise witnesses.

What I had was the pearl necklace Bianca had worn, the restaurant staff who had heard Lockwood say she had “used a little of my money,” and the twenty-three hundred dollars Holden

had recovered.

The investigators questioned them one by one.

Lockwood insisted Bianca had entered my house on her own.

But in the interview room, Bianca burst into tears. “Dad guessed the code, and he was the one who handed me the piggy bank!”

she shouted.

“He told me Lucia was good at hiding money and that I should just

take it!”

Priscilla tried to smooth things over for her daughter, but instead confirmed that all three of them had gone to Aspen Lane together that day.

They shoved blame at one another until they had filled in every

missing piece of the story.

At the same time, I resubmitted my wage complaint against the

restaurant.

The employees who had worked in the back kitchen still

remembered the two straight weeks I’d worked, and they remembered the owner withholding my cash wages after Lockwood left.

The owner denied it at first.

But when the investigator asked why there were no payment records, he blurted out, “She hit the financial officer’s daughter! Of course the money had to go toward compensation!”

Only after he’d said it did he realize he had admitted to illegal wage withholding.

Neither complaint resulted in a major scandal.

Lockwood and Bianca were fined and ordered to pay restitution

for entering a private residence without permission and taking

property. The restaurant was ordered to pay my withheld wages,

plus a hefty penalty.

The sums weren’t especially large.

But for the first time, they couldn’t erase what they had taken from me by claiming, “It was just a joke.”

When the back pay hit my account, Mom asked what I wanted to

buy.

I looked at the short string of numbers and remembered my hands, wrinkled and white from the hot water when I was

eighteen.

“Nothing.”

“That was what I was owed. I want to keep it.”