LMLB[6]: Lucia Bentley
"This treasure isn't ours to steal, it's ours to honor," Colt said.
Jane pulled him close, and they sealed their vow as the new guardians with a passionate kiss, while outside, Niagara Falls roared like an eternal, complicit applause.
"Good heavens, Mrs. Lucia, your family's stories never cease to amaze me. I would have sworn your father pulled out his knife to steal the diamond and the other jewels from the grotto."
"You're not wrong. My father had a very peculiar moral compass because of the way he was raised. When my grandfather Morgan asked him to kill, he drew a line and abandoned his father and the rats, but he remained a rogue, a swindler, a common thief until he met my mother aboard the Aria Amazon, and his life changed forever. He had a purpose, and my mother's love transformed him into a treasure hunter—a kind-hearted one at that!"
"Colt with all my heart, Colt with all my heart!!!" Morgan shouted, and the two women smiled again.
"Fabiana, I hope you paid close attention to how to get to the grotto." The girl nodded. "Now you inherit not only the secret of its location, but also the duty of being its guardian. I myself visited it many years after my parents, during my honeymoon with my first husband!"
The old woman paused for a few seconds, her eyes moistening slightly as she recalled the moment.
"That time we only left our hearts carved on the rock. I returned years later, alone, to leave my engagement ring and our wedding bands, after James died."
"I'm so sorry, Mrs. Lucia."
"It's alright. Let's go to sleep. We have to visit the cemetery tomorrow."
-Wait a minute, Mrs. Lucia, something's not clear to me. If your parents ended up getting married, why don't you have the last name Jones?
-My answer might surprise you, but a couple of days after returning from their honeymoon, my parents told me they were going to the town's civil registry the next day to officially change my last name, since they were now officially married.
-I congratulated them on their marriage, but I absolutely refused to change my last name. I was only five years old at the time, but I was very independent and very self-assured!
"I told my father, 'Thank you very much for his last name, but I was Lucia Bentley. That was the name I was given at birth, and all my friends at school and in the town of Adelaide knew me by that name back then.' My father wasn't too happy about my decision, but he had no choice but to accept it!" The laughter of Fabiana, Morgan, and Lucia herself echoed through the hotel for quite some time!
The next morning…
Lucia Bentley solemnly carried bouquets of white chrysanthemums to the Adelaide cemetery to place on the aged graves of her great-grandfather, Samuel Bentley, and her grandfather, Morgan Jones. After a few moments of silence, the elderly woman with white hair spoke:
"Fabiana, beneath my grandfather Morgan's grave lies the bulk of my family's fortune in heavy gold ingots that my parents obtained after selling the Amazonian jewel, and which my father buried as soon as they arrived in Adelaide."
"And if my memory serves me right—and it hasn't lately—there should be exactly 42 ingots, each weighing 12 kilograms, of 24-karat gold. What remains after my mother's donations and my own—since I also made some withdrawals throughout my life—is more than 70 million dollars at the current price of gold, a fortune you will have to manage with prudence and wisdom when I am no longer with you."
"Whew, I never imagined it would be so much money, Mrs. Lucia."
"Fabiana millionaire, Fabiana millionaire!!!" Morgan sang softly, just loud enough for the two women in his life to hear.
"Don't look so worried, Fabiana. You're a young woman, very intelligent, and you're studying and preparing yourself. With my improved health, I might be with you for a few more years than I originally thought before we started our trip to Paris!" Lucía hadn't mentioned a single word to the girl that her improved health was due to the elixir her friend Lucía Etraud had given her during their Parisian get-together.
A few hours later, back at the hotel…
Taking advantage of her travel companion taking a shower, Lucía Bentley had ordered a teapot of tea and added a couple of drops of the magical elixir to share with Fabiana and Morgan. Morgan, the parrot, watched her with intrigue.
"Don't say a word, Morgan. If this elixir has worked wonders for my health, it'll help you two even more than it's helped me. It's a secret!"
"Secret, secret!" the bird repeated.
"Secret, secret!" Fabiana steps out of the shower, and Lucía offers her a cup of hot tea to warm her up from the cold. The young woman takes it and sips it before asking:
"Mrs. Lucía, what really happened to your grandfather Morgan? I know that the beautiful story your father, Colt Jones, told your aunt Berenice was just a lie. He didn't die in the Amazon River, a good man. The last I heard of him, from his stories, was that he sailed to the city of Porto, tricked by his son Colt, who, along with Jane, stole the Amazonian jewel and sold it in Chaotic City on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean!"
-If it's true, one of my father's best cons. I'll tell you, I didn't know what had happened in Brazil, or who my grandfather really was, until many years later, when I was old enough to process everything. That's when my father told me the whole story, about the man who raised him. For my father, his grandfather was a vile, ruthless man, a bandit, a swindler, and a dangerous killer, who recruited and trained starving children in the streets of Porto Velho, promising them a plate of food in exchange for selling their souls and turning them into rats like himself!
"When I heard his whole story, I was very shocked, because the Morgan Jones I knew when I was just a little girl wasn't him. My grandfather Morgan was struggling to reconcile himself with life; he was tired of his life of crime. He just wanted to go home and die in peace! For that reason, and because he also saved my life, I was able to forgive his life of crime and remember him fondly forever. That's why I named my beloved parrot after him, Morgan! Now I'll tell you about the day I met him." Fabiana asked the old woman for a moment, finished her cup of tea, and put on her pajamas before sitting back down on the bed across from her wise travel companion, ready to listen with... Check out another one of Lucía Bentley's memoirs!
To be continued…
#OriginalStory #DigitalArt #OwndesignImage #BigVerso
"This treasure isn't ours to steal, it's ours to honor," Colt said.
Jane pulled him close, and they sealed their vow as the new guardians with a passionate kiss, while outside, Niagara Falls roared like an eternal, complicit applause.
"Good heavens, Mrs. Lucia, your family's stories never cease to amaze me. I would have sworn your father pulled out his knife to steal the diamond and the other jewels from the grotto."
"You're not wrong. My father had a very peculiar moral compass because of the way he was raised. When my grandfather Morgan asked him to kill, he drew a line and abandoned his father and the rats, but he remained a rogue, a swindler, a common thief until he met my mother aboard the Aria Amazon, and his life changed forever. He had a purpose, and my mother's love transformed him into a treasure hunter—a kind-hearted one at that!"
"Colt with all my heart, Colt with all my heart!!!" Morgan shouted, and the two women smiled again.
"Fabiana, I hope you paid close attention to how to get to the grotto." The girl nodded. "Now you inherit not only the secret of its location, but also the duty of being its guardian. I myself visited it many years after my parents, during my honeymoon with my first husband!"
The old woman paused for a few seconds, her eyes moistening slightly as she recalled the moment.
"That time we only left our hearts carved on the rock. I returned years later, alone, to leave my engagement ring and our wedding bands, after James died."
"I'm so sorry, Mrs. Lucia."
"It's alright. Let's go to sleep. We have to visit the cemetery tomorrow."
-Wait a minute, Mrs. Lucia, something's not clear to me. If your parents ended up getting married, why don't you have the last name Jones?
-My answer might surprise you, but a couple of days after returning from their honeymoon, my parents told me they were going to the town's civil registry the next day to officially change my last name, since they were now officially married.
-I congratulated them on their marriage, but I absolutely refused to change my last name. I was only five years old at the time, but I was very independent and very self-assured!
"I told my father, 'Thank you very much for his last name, but I was Lucia Bentley. That was the name I was given at birth, and all my friends at school and in the town of Adelaide knew me by that name back then.' My father wasn't too happy about my decision, but he had no choice but to accept it!" The laughter of Fabiana, Morgan, and Lucia herself echoed through the hotel for quite some time!
The next morning…
Lucia Bentley solemnly carried bouquets of white chrysanthemums to the Adelaide cemetery to place on the aged graves of her great-grandfather, Samuel Bentley, and her grandfather, Morgan Jones. After a few moments of silence, the elderly woman with white hair spoke:
"Fabiana, beneath my grandfather Morgan's grave lies the bulk of my family's fortune in heavy gold ingots that my parents obtained after selling the Amazonian jewel, and which my father buried as soon as they arrived in Adelaide."
"And if my memory serves me right—and it hasn't lately—there should be exactly 42 ingots, each weighing 12 kilograms, of 24-karat gold. What remains after my mother's donations and my own—since I also made some withdrawals throughout my life—is more than 70 million dollars at the current price of gold, a fortune you will have to manage with prudence and wisdom when I am no longer with you."
"Whew, I never imagined it would be so much money, Mrs. Lucia."
"Fabiana millionaire, Fabiana millionaire!!!" Morgan sang softly, just loud enough for the two women in his life to hear.
"Don't look so worried, Fabiana. You're a young woman, very intelligent, and you're studying and preparing yourself. With my improved health, I might be with you for a few more years than I originally thought before we started our trip to Paris!" Lucía hadn't mentioned a single word to the girl that her improved health was due to the elixir her friend Lucía Etraud had given her during their Parisian get-together.
A few hours later, back at the hotel…
Taking advantage of her travel companion taking a shower, Lucía Bentley had ordered a teapot of tea and added a couple of drops of the magical elixir to share with Fabiana and Morgan. Morgan, the parrot, watched her with intrigue.
"Don't say a word, Morgan. If this elixir has worked wonders for my health, it'll help you two even more than it's helped me. It's a secret!"
"Secret, secret!" the bird repeated.
"Secret, secret!" Fabiana steps out of the shower, and Lucía offers her a cup of hot tea to warm her up from the cold. The young woman takes it and sips it before asking:
"Mrs. Lucía, what really happened to your grandfather Morgan? I know that the beautiful story your father, Colt Jones, told your aunt Berenice was just a lie. He didn't die in the Amazon River, a good man. The last I heard of him, from his stories, was that he sailed to the city of Porto, tricked by his son Colt, who, along with Jane, stole the Amazonian jewel and sold it in Chaotic City on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean!"
-If it's true, one of my father's best cons. I'll tell you, I didn't know what had happened in Brazil, or who my grandfather really was, until many years later, when I was old enough to process everything. That's when my father told me the whole story, about the man who raised him. For my father, his grandfather was a vile, ruthless man, a bandit, a swindler, and a dangerous killer, who recruited and trained starving children in the streets of Porto Velho, promising them a plate of food in exchange for selling their souls and turning them into rats like himself!
"When I heard his whole story, I was very shocked, because the Morgan Jones I knew when I was just a little girl wasn't him. My grandfather Morgan was struggling to reconcile himself with life; he was tired of his life of crime. He just wanted to go home and die in peace! For that reason, and because he also saved my life, I was able to forgive his life of crime and remember him fondly forever. That's why I named my beloved parrot after him, Morgan! Now I'll tell you about the day I met him." Fabiana asked the old woman for a moment, finished her cup of tea, and put on her pajamas before sitting back down on the bed across from her wise travel companion, ready to listen with... Check out another one of Lucía Bentley's memoirs!
To be continued…
#OriginalStory #DigitalArt #OwndesignImage #BigVerso
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