“She ruined my life,” Tiffany sobbed into the camera. “Preston told me they were separated. He told me his wife was controlling and emotionally abusive. He showed me divorce papers. Now I’m pregnant and in jail and everybody hates me because some billionaire wanted revenge. She played God for five years. She manipulated everybody. What about my baby? Does my baby not matter?”
The mood online flipped so fast it made Vivien dizzy.
Headlines changed.
Billionaire Justice or Billionaire Bully?
Did Vivien Sinclair Go Too Far?
When Power Performs Pain
People who had cheered forty-eight hours earlier began asking whether Vivien had enticed Preston into criminality by hiding her identity. Whether her wealth made every act of surveillance suspect. Whether staying in the marriage while documenting abuse transformed her from victim into strategist, which many people seemed to think was the same thing as villain.
It is one of the ugliest habits of modern spectatorship that it often grants women exactly two acceptable forms of suffering: silent and dead. Too articulate, and you are manipulative. Too prepared, and you are calculating. Too composed, and your wounds cannot have been real.