Beneath the Daisies
Over the next few weeks, something changed. The mansion, once cold and sterile, began to hum with quiet life. Alejandro started asking her small things — how she liked her coffee, what music she listened to, what she missed from home.
She told him about her village — about her father’s bakery that burned down when she was fourteen, about her mother’s illness, and about how she had left everything behind to start over in Madrid.
Alejandro listened, for once not as a master but as a man.
“Why daisies?” he asked one afternoon, noticing her tucking one into a vase.
Lucía smiled faintly. “Because daisies grow anywhere — even through stone. My mother used to say they’re proof that hope doesn’t ask permission.”
Something in him softened permanently that day.
