Chapter 4 - The Poison in the Crystal
Victoria Vance, the sixty-four-year-old matriarch of the Vance legacy, looked every bit the queen of high society. Her silver hair was styled into an immaculate, fortress-like updo that had not moved a single millimeter despite the summer breeze. She wore a tailored, ivory-colored crepe dress that accentuated her long, regal posture, her neck encircled by three strands of rare South Sea pearls.
In her right hand, Victoria held a delicate, long-stemmed crystal flute filled with pale, effervescent champagne. She was not looking away. She was staring directly down at Maya and the mud-covered toddler, her dark blue eyes completely devoid of warmth, empathy, or regret.
As Maya’s furious gaze locked onto hers, Victoria did not flinch. Instead, she raised the crystal glass to her crimson-painted lips with infuriating slowness, taking a delicate, deliberate sip of the expensive wine.
"Look at them," Victoria murmured softly, her voice carrying across the quiet terrace with the smooth, lethal efficiency of a silk garrote. She was speaking to the wealthy couple standing beside her, but her eyes never left Maya’s bruised, muddy figure. "A gutter rat will always find her way back to the sewer. It is simply in their nature."
A few of the surrounding guests offered quiet, polite chuckles, nodding in agreement with the formidable matriarch. To challenge Victoria Vance was to commit social and financial suicide in this town. For three years, since Maya had entered her son's life as an uneducated, working-class nurse, Victoria had waged a silent, psychological war against her. But today, the war had crossed a terrifying threshold. Victoria had targeted a defenseless three-year-old child.
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"You monster," Maya whispered, her lips barely moving as she stood up from the mud, clutching Chloe tightly against her hip. Her eyes burned with a lethal, unadulterated hatred.
Victoria simply smiled—a faint, icy curling of her red lips. She raised her glass higher in a mock toast. "That's right," Victoria sneered aloud, her voice echoing clearly over the lawn for everyone to hear. "A poor woman's child is a sin."
