November
Lucy's Age: 6
Mrs. Agosti has been taken care of. Her memories from the last three or so years have all been purged. The memories that had Lucy in them were the hardest to destroy, but once they were gone Mrs. Agosti seemed to lose some of her fight.
Once that happened, things moved along at a reasonable clip. I can't be absolutely sure that I got everything, but I do know that I got everything featuring Lucy and then everything featuring our apartment and everything that included me.
I used a rather broad brush, figuratively speaking, so my efforts should have tended to destroy most of the memories even tangentially associated with those three things, which meant that I felt safe releasing Mrs. Agosti.
I sedated her for a couple of days while I did one last check of her mind to make sure I got everything related to the last few months of captivity as well, and then dropped her off in front of the Presbyterian University Hospital.
With all of the rummaging around inside of her head that I'd done, I was able to get all of her banking information and it turned out that she had saved the bulk of what I'd paid her over the last three years, so I made sure to sew her account information into one corner of her shirt along with her ID's.
I hired a very high-end private investigator to keep an eye on her for the next few months and then expected that I'd be able to forget about her. Instead I found my thoughts returning to her several times over the subsequent few days.
I don't regret what I did, not exactly. Mrs. Agosti knew that she was going against my orders, but time is the only resource humans really have. That's true of vampires as well, but we have a potentially unlimited store of it while humans do not. My wiping away more than three years of Mrs. Agosti's life represented a very real loss for her.
I debated for nearly two days before I finally gave into the nagging voice inside of my head and arranged for several hundred thousand dollars in cash to be deposited into Mrs. Agosti's bank account. Ultimately, that amount of money means very little given the size of my current holdings, and if giving it to her will allow me to return my focus back to other more pressing issues, then I'll make it back several times over in short order.
Lucy has asked to talk to me twice recently. The first time was simply to tell me that she's very lonely. I wouldn't have thought that someone so young would be able to inject so much guilt into a simple statement.
I refuse to take the blame for all of this. I'm merely trying to keep her safe from all of the people out there who would hurt her without a second thought, and if she'd simply followed my wishes then the three of us would still be living in the apartment together.
We're past the point where Lucy's education should have started, so I've gone ahead and finalized the arrangements for her tutors to begin daily sessions with her. Not surprisingly, it's taken an incredible amount of work to provide even the most rudimentary security where the tutors are concerned. I've engaged additional private investigators to monitor each of the tutors, but that is more a matter of making sure my due diligence is taken care of. The real guarantees will be implemented over the next few months as I continue the weekly conditioning sessions that I've already implemented. I've rented out apartments adjacent to each of the tutors and thereby have been able to position myself physically close enough to them to work on them while they sleep.
Once Lucy has learned what she can from each of them, I'll sanitize their minds much like I did with Mrs. Agosti. I'm not looking forward to the ongoing level of work involved in replacing an entire set of tutors every couple of years, but although I don't feel like it right now, I know that Lucy is worth the investment. Hopefully the tutors will help somewhat with her loneliness.
The second call was just to ask me if I would be going home for Thanksgiving. I'm beginning to wonder if the bond between Lucy and I is even weaker than I thought. She hasn't asked about resuming our training sessions and her inquiry about Thanksgiving was said with such casual indifference that I'm not convinced that she really wants me there.
It's probably for the best. Maybe I should let some time pass, let things calm down a little before trying to reestablish my bond with Lucy. It seemed to work reasonably well that way the first time around with Mrs. Agosti, I just need to make sure that Renworst continues to be obedient so that we avoid another round of upsets.
I suspect that Venice will need even more time in the near term, so possibly it's smartest to concentrate my efforts on the investment that has the quickest payback.