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."