He was aided by his mother, Eunice, who constantly fed him a toxic, arrogant narrative.
"She is an orphan, Lucas," Eunice would tell her son, sipping her tea. "She is a nobody. She relies on our charity to simply eat. You are the heir to this estate. You can do absolutely anything you want to her, and no one will ever care."
As they become young adults, Lucas's physical violence became more frequent and more calculated. If Delaney walked past him on the stairs, he would casually stick out his foot to trip her, sending her tumbling down the hard wooden steps. If she was carrying a heavy load of laundry, he would deliberately bump into her, forcing her to drop it all into the mud.
He would destroy some of Anne's hand-me-downs, fascinated by what move she would make next.
Delaney, however, became fiercely independent. She continued wearing her plain, dark gray dresses by choice, realizing they were much better and more dignified than Anne's frilly, worn-out hand-me-downs.
