The Valente name. My mother's name. My name. Falling from this woman's painted mouth like loose change.
The other parents pressed closer, feeding on her certainty.
"If you hadn't been a mistress, Luna wouldn't have hit you. You brought this on yourself."
"You're just a filthy side piece. Instead of keeping your head down, you're out here provoking people. Getting slapped is the least of what you deserve."
"Yeah, you've got a taste for being a tramp, huh? Who are you pretending to be the innocent victim for? We're not like those men blinded by lust."
Even the bystanders joined in. Each insult landed sharper than the last, and each one emboldened Luna further. I could see it in her shoulders, the way she straightened, the way she fed on their approval like oxygen. She was performing. She had always been performing.
Her gaze locked onto my car behind me, the armored sedan with its tinted windows and reinforced chassis. Her eyes blazed.
"You filthy woman, spending my husband's money like it's nothing! How dare you drive a car like that? A cheap mistress like you doesn't deserve it!"
She stepped closer, her heels clicking against the courtyard stone.
"I hate mistresses more than anything. Every mistress on earth should die!"
She pulled a key from her purse and dragged it across the sedan's door panel with both hands, gouging deep lines into the paint. The sound was high and thin, metal screaming against metal. She carved the words large enough for anyone passing on the street to read.
Mistresses must die.
I looked at the letters. Looked at her.
"You'll soon realize how ironic those words are," I said.
Something shifted behind Luna's eyes. Not fear. Not yet. But the faintest flicker of something she couldn't name.
It passed. Rage swallowed it whole.
"You filthy woman! Living off my husband's money and acting all high and mighty!" Her voice cracked with the force of it. "Today, I'll make sure you pay back every penny you've taken from him!"
She picked up a brick from the edge of the landscaped walkway and swung it into the windshield. The glass held for a fraction of a second, then spider-webbed and caved. She hit it again. And again. The windows. The headlights. The hood. Each blow accompanied by a grunt of exertion that she seemed to mistake for power.