Mia just looked up at her, calm, unreadable. "I wanted to see," she said simply.
That should have been the end of it. It wasn't.
Vivian's voice cracked louder, sharper, and she bent down, finger pointed directly at a three-year-old's face. "You do not come in here when I have guests! You stay where you belong! You are not to be seen! Do you understand me?"
The two guests went stiff. One of them, a woman named Paige, looked down at her glass like she wished she could disappear into it.
And Mia, this tiny girl who had just been shouted at by a grown woman twice her size, did not cry. She did not flinch. She stood completely still, and then slowly, without a single word, she raised her small arm and pointed.
Not at Vivian. Not at the guests. Behind Vivian, at the staircase.
Vivian turned, and there was Marcus, standing perfectly still on the landing, one hand on the railing, his face carrying a calm that was far more frightening than anger. Because the acoustics in that grand entryway carried sound straight up the stairwell. He had heard every single word.
"Marcus," Vivian said, her voice instantly softening, shifting into explanation mode. "She wandered in during my lunch. I was just—"
"Mia." His voice was steady, warm, cutting straight through hers. "Come here, sweetheart."