The question came from somewhere in the crowd. I didn't stop.
"The tutor! That's the tutor!"
Cameras swung toward me. The pack shifted, sensing new prey. Questions started firing like bullets.
"Miss Cross, do you have a comment on the custody hearing?"
"Are you here to see Millie Sterling?"
"What's your relationship with Nathaniel Sterling?"
I kept walking. Ten feet. Five.
"Miss Cross! Claire!"
And then Victoria's voice, cutting through everything else, sharp and brittle and stripped of all performance: "Of course.Her."
I stopped. I shouldn't have. Every instinct screamed at me to keep moving. But something in her tone, the raw hatred beneath the polish, made me turn.
Victoria stepped toward me, the lilies forgotten, her careful mask cracking in real-time. The reporters fell silent, cameras rolling, sensing something better than prepared statements.
"You just can't stay away, can you?" She was louder now, pitched for the microphones but vibrating with genuine fury. "Every single time. Every moment that should be about this family, you insert yourself."
"I'm here to see Millie," I said, keeping my voice steady. "That's all."
"Millie." She laughed, an ugly sound, nothing like her practiced courtroom chuckle. "You mean your meal ticket? Your access pass to my husband's bank account?"
"Mrs. Sterling?—"
"Don't." She stepped closer, and I could see it now, the fractures spreading across her composure, the monster beneathfinally clawing its way to the surface. "Don't you dare play innocent. I know what you are. Everyone knows what you are now. Anxious attachment. Codependency. A pattern of latching onto unavailable men."
The words were designed to hurt, and they did. But they also felt different out here, in the daylight, than they had in that courtroom. Smaller somehow. More desperate.
"You had your lawyer say all of that already," I said quietly. "It didn't make it true then. It doesn't make it true now."
Her eyes widened in surprise. I wasn't crumbling.
"You're pathetic," she spat. "A broke nobody who saw her chance and took it. You think he actually cares about you? You think you mean anything to him? He paid you off! He literally paid you to disappear! And here you are, crawling back like a dog that doesn't know when it's been kicked out."
The cameras were eating this up. I could feel them capturing every word, every contortion of Victoria's face as the elegant mask disintegrated into something ugly and raw.
Good,I thought.Let them see.
"I'm not here for Nathaniel," I said, and my voice came out steadier than I felt. "I'm here for a seven-year-old girl who's scared and hurt and wondering why the adults in her life keep letting her down."
"Oh, please." Victoria's voice climbed higher, losing its careful modulation entirely. "Spare me the maternal act. You want what everyone wants: the money, the name, the lifestyle. You saw a crack in my marriage, and you slithered in like the opportunistic little?—"
"Ma'am." A hospital security guard materialized beside us, his expression professionally neutral. "I'm going to need you to lower your voice. This is a medical facility."
Victoria whirled on him, and for a moment, I thought she might actually start screaming. Her face was flushed, herperfectly styled hair slightly disheveled, her grip on the lilies so tight the stems were bending.
Then she seemed to remember the cameras. The microphones. The dozen phones that recorded every second.
Too late.
The damage was done.
"This isn't over," she hissed at me, quiet enough that only I could hear. "I will destroy you. I will make sure you never work again. I will?—"
