She was still standing by her car, mascara streaking her cheeks, her cream suit dusty from where she'd sagged against the hood. She looked smaller somehow. Diminished.
"If she dies," I said, my voice so quiet she had to stop crying to hear it, "I will destroy you. Every asset. Every connection. Every shred of the Whitmore name you're so desperate to restore." I stepped closer. "And if she lives, I will still make sure you never smile again."
"Nathaniel—"
"Get out of my sight. Before I do something we'll both regret."
I didn't wait for a response. I got in my car and followed the ambulance, my hands gripping the wheel so tightly my knuckles went white.
James had told me to be careful.
I'd thought I had been. Controlled. Calculated. Strategic. I watched out for all the possible dangers.
And it hadn't mattered.
The monster I'd invited into our lives had finally struck. My daughter was broken in the back of an ambulance because I'd underestimated what Victoria was willing to do.
No more.
I was done being careful. Done playing by rules she'd never followed. Done protecting a process that had failed to protect my child.
Victoria wanted a war? She'd just started one.
And I didn't lose wars.
Not when my daughter's life was at risk.
12.Claire
Here's what they don't tell you about guilt: it's not a feeling. It's a full-time job.
I spent the hours in that hospital waiting room running the same mental footage on loop: Millie's yellow sundress, the silver blur of the car, the sound I'd hear in my nightmares for the rest of my life. My brain had become a projector I couldn't turn off, and the only film it played was "All the Ways Claire Failed Millie."
I should have been faster. I should have held her hand. I should have never let her chase that stupid ball.
The hospital had a specific smell, antiseptic and fear, with undertones of bad coffee and industrial floor cleaner. I'd been here for six hours, and I still couldn't get used to it. Couldn't get used to any of this.
Millie's room was a forest of beeping machines and too-white sheets. She looked impossibly small in the bed, her arm in a cast, her face pale beneath the bruising. The doctors said she was lucky: concussion, broken arm, universe of bruises, but no internal bleeding. The impact could have been so much worse.
"Lucky" felt like a cruel joke.
"Is she going to wake up soon?" I whispered from the doorway.
Nathaniel sat beside her bed, holding her uninjured hand, his thumb moving in small circles over her fingers. He hadn't left her side except when the doctors made him.
"The sedation should wear off in a few hours," he said. "They want to keep her calm while the swelling goes down."
"She'll be scared when she wakes up."
"Then we'll be here." He looked at me, his eyes exhausted but certain. "Both of us."
I nodded, not trusting my voice.
A nurse appeared, checking monitors and making notes. "Mr. Sterling? Your lawyer is in the family lounge. He says it's urgent."
Nathaniel's face stiffened, his expression turned serious. He pressed a kiss to Millie's forehead, murmured something I couldn't hear, and stood. He looked at me. "Would you like to come with me?"
"I shouldn't… this is legal stuff?—"
