Lydia’s POV
The bullying stopped almost overnight.
No more torn magazine clippings taped to my locker, no more rearranged files or whispered insults trailing behind me down the corridor. Within a week of Charles and Elena’s visit, most of Hopkins had rewritten its opinion of me entirely, suddenly eager to remember every kind thing they’d apparently always thought.
Vivienne was the only one who didn’t bother pretending. She’d simply traded her cruelty for something quieter and cooler. She stopped assigning me basement work, stopped calling me a leech in front of the other interns, but her smiles turned brittle whenever I entered a room, and every compliment came wrapped in something sharp enough to draw blood if I looked too closely.
“You must be so relieved,” she said one afternoon, wa
