Which wasn’t fucking happening. Lyra was half way through a mouthful of pinot gris when Avery’s father actually said ‘the wrong sort’ and she actually choked on the wine. He was so blatant and proud and— “That is such a bastard of a thing to do to people,” she said, putting her glass down hard but staring at the senator harder. “You’re supposed to be in charge of this place and don't that mean you’re supposed to look after people, like all the people who live here—”
Xander cut her off with a derisive snort. “She doesn’t understand,” he explained to the rest of the table in a tone that seriously got Lyra’s back up, and then – worse – went on to explain the benefits of neighbourhoods that required a higher income to live in, the lower rates of unemployment and the lower rates of crime and the higher quality of living, all round, missing Lyra’s point about things that should benefit all people in the exact same way Dannielle had glazed over her question about why she applied a different set of rules to Avery. “You should know all about this,” Xander looked right at her, cutting her off before she could butt in with how wrong he was. “Don’t you live in Bushwick? Hasn’t the crime rate there dropped significantly since the big developers moved in? You should be thanking people like my dad.”
Lyra gripped her hand into a fist under the table, trying not to lose what remained of her cool. She knew looking angry and offended was just going to make her easier to dismiss but he’d touched a sensitive nerve, there. She should thank them? For making her home barely affordable to live in? For doing the same to how many hundred people in a state he was supposed to care for?
Also, did everyone in Apollo’s goddamn fraternity know where she lived? “Hailey tell you where I live, did she?” she shot the question back at Xander, whose eyes sharpened into a warning look – don’t you dare go mentioning my affairs at the dinner table, those laser eyes said just for a moment, and then he ignored the dig as easily as he’d ignored her point.
“Go on then,” he said, with a shrug, as he laced his fingers through Breanna’s. “Deny your neighbourhood’s a safer place to live. Oh, except you can’t, because the facts are against you. Carry on dad,” he said, passing the torch back to his father.
“You don’t know shit about where I live,” Lyra muttered, grabbing her glass again. Xander wasn’t hearing it though, he knew all he felt he needed to, and his smile said nothing was going to change his mind.