The humming.
Mia calming.
And then Brenda firing Karen while the little girl still held onto her sleeve.
The video ended.
Lorenzo said nothing.
Brenda tried to fill the silence.
“As you can see, she directly violated several instructions.”
Lorenzo slowly turned his head.
“That is what you saw?”
Brenda blinked.
“Excuse me?”
“You watched my daughter on that floor, terrified, and what concerned you was an instruction.”
“Mr.
Rossi, with respect—”
“Do not use that word yet.”
His voice remained quiet.
Mia pressed herself against his side.
Lorenzo immediately lowered his tone further.
“You called her a disruption.”
Brenda’s eyes moved toward the customers.
She knew now that they had heard everything.
“I was trying to protect the experience of every client in the store.”
A woman near the handbags shifted uncomfortably.
Lorenzo looked around the boutique.
“And did any of those clients require protection from an eight-year-old child?”
Nobody answered.
Brenda’s face flushed.
“You are reframing the situation.”
“No.
The camera framed it quite clearly.”
Karen felt a pulse of disbelief.
Brenda had spent eight months controlling every inch of Maison Delacour.
She corrected posture.
Policed tone.
Inspected fingernails.
Once sent an employee home because her shoes were not polished enough.
Karen had never seen anyone make her look uncertain.
Now Brenda seemed smaller with every sentence.
But she was not finished.
“Karen still disobeyed me.
Whether her intentions were good is irrelevant.
A business cannot operate if staff decide which directions they feel like following.”
Karen closed her eyes for half a second.
There it was.
The part she could not argue with.
She had disobeyed.
She had known exactly what it might cost her.
Lorenzo surprised her by turning toward her instead.
“Why didn’t you leave when she fired you?”
Karen looked at Mia.
“Because nobody had come for her yet.”
“You knew you had lost your job.”
“Yes.”
“And she threatened to call the police.”
“Yes.”
“But you stayed.”
