Half our revenue streams had withered under his watch. Legitimate fronts hemorrhaging money. Protection rackets mismanaged. Arrangements with allied families neglected until they soured.
If he weren't my husband, I would have had him exiled years ago. Or worse.
But Luna and these parents actually saw him as some powerful Don. Every single one of them looked up to him with admiration, desperate to kiss the ring of a man who had no right to wear one.
Led by Luna, the other parents followed suit. They pulled the remaining paintings from the trunk and tore them apart with their hands. Canvases ripped. Frames snapped. Collectibles I'd acquired at auction just that morning, pieces I hadn't even had the chance to place in the estate's vault, were smashed against the pavement one by one.
I watched these people destroy a fortune in minutes. Watched them laugh while they did it.
Then, calmly, I pulled out my phone.
"Why aren't you here yet?" My voice was low, controlled. The voice my mother had taught me. The voice of a Donna who does not repeat herself. "You need to be in front of me within five minutes."
Before I could hear the response, one of the parents lunged forward and slapped the phone from my hand. It hit the pavement and the screen shattered, fragments of glass skittering across the stone.
"Trying to call for help? Where do you get the nerve?"
"Are you pretending to be someone important?"
"She's probably calling one of her clients to put on a show for us!" The woman who said it threw her head back laughing. "Hahaha!"
The laughter spread. Open, mocking, fearless. They had no idea what they were laughing at. No idea whose phone lay broken on the ground.
I stared at the shattered screen. My reflection looked back at me in fragments.
"I hope you'll still be laughing this hard in a few minutes," I said.
The laughter didn't stop. But something in the courtyard shifted. A change in pressure, like the air before a storm, that only I seemed to feel.
I turned to the teacher. She stood by the academy doors with her arms crossed, watching the destruction of my car and my belongings with the satisfied expression of someone who'd chosen the winning side.
"You knew my daughter was being bullied at school, didn't you?"
The teacher looked at me. Not with guilt. Not with shame. With disdain, open and absolute, the kind reserved for people she considered beneath the effort of pretending.
"So what if I did?"
She said it loudly enough for everyone to hear. Loudly enough for Luna to smile.
"A bastard daughter of a worthless mistress is nothing but trash." The teacher's lip curled. "Massimo was just taking out the trash. What's the issue?"
The words settled over the courtyard like ash.
I looked at this woman. This teacher who had been entrusted with my daughter's safety. Who had watched a five-year-old child be brutalized and called it housekeeping.
My thumb found my mother's signet ring. The heavy gold band with the Valente crest. I turned it slowly against my finger, feeling the engraved edges press into my skin.
I had already decided.
They just didn't know it yet.
The applause came like a verdict.
Parents clapped in unison, the sound sharp and rhythmic against the courtyard walls, bouncing off stone and iron until it felt less like approval and more like a sentencing.
"That's why you're the teacher. Fair. Direct. No games."
"This is an elite academy. You don't just let anyone through the gates."
"Why does a mistress's daughter need an education? Teach her what you know best. How to spread her legs and trap a man with money. Maybe she'll outdo you. Maybe she'll land someone even richer."
Luna Caruso fed on it. Every word made her taller. She stood in the center of the courtyard like a woman who had rehearsed this moment in the mirror a thousand times, and now, finally, the audience had arrived.
She flicked her hair behind her right ear with that sharp, practiced motion. The cruelty was already loaded.
"See that?" Luna said, turning to face me. "This is what happens when you're a mistress. You and your daughter are destined to live at the bottom. Hated by everyone. Claimed by no one."
The insults came from every direction. The parents who had smashed the car, who had torn priceless canvases to shreds minutes ago, now turned their mouths into weapons. They hurled words like stones, each one aimed at the same bruise. And the bystanders leaned in, feeding on the spectacle, their laughter a low, ugly chorus.
The more they cursed at me, the wider Luna smiled.
