A/N:Pay attention and tap into when you see this; [1]
Melissa Maxton stood in the corridor behind the VIP section, spine flat to the wall, both fists buried knuckle-deep in her own hair like she could physically yank the thoughts out.
The plan was fucking dead.
Whatever slow, surgical strategy she'd spent weeks stitching together—millimetre by millimetre trust, the emotional equivalent of defusing a Claymore one wire at a time—that plan was now a corpse, and her eldest daughter had gutted in under five minutes by a cropped hoodie, a hand placed on the wrong chest, and Victoria's signature cocktail of arrogance and catastrophic timing.
She couldn't proceed tonight. Couldn't proceed this week. Maybe not this month. Maybe never, if the frost kept spreading.
Stupid. Stupid, stupid, beautiful, impossible girl.
The situation had taught her things, though.
