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Ariana: 2.
Bastian: 0.
Day Three, Ariana had compiled in one of my crystal decanters—turning my sister into a thief when Tessie nabbed it from my office—all the alcohol waste from my customers.
I’d spit it out when I poured myself a glass that night, and Ariana hadn’t missed the opportunity to point out that it’d taken no more than fifteen minutes to fill the thirty-ounce container.
“Maybe if you made better drinks, there’d be no waste. You could end the water crisis.” I’d pointed out, to which Tessie—as if I’d insulted them both—argued, “Stop pretending you care about people and actually care about people.”
What. The. Fuck.
Ariana was turning Tessie into a new age hippie environmentalist under my own nose.
And Day Four—fuck Day Four—Ariana had managed to wrangle an unearned pay raise, win her pick of work hours, and secure her employment at L’Oscuritá.
All while making a fool of me.
I was down four now, and that was four times in a row she’d proven herself to be no stranger to the inner workings of Hell.
But yesterday, after four consecutive slights to me, she’d decided to swing the pendulum from evil to virtuous, confusing the hell out of me.
I couldn’t fight someone good.
Even I wasn’t that far gone.
And today, she still hadn’t swung her pendulum back to evil.
Ariana eyed the door for the third time in three minutes. Tessie sat in front of her, oblivious, but her presence alone was a signifier of mine.
After our confrontation the other day ended with her dodging my questions and the follow up ended in an unspoken truce, I figured Ariana was dreading seeing me.
She kept looking at the door like I’d enter the break room any second now.
Interesting.
I watched on the security monitor as Tessie pointed to something in her textbook. Ariana stood, grabbed a white erase marker, and began writing on the whiteboard we sometimes used for employee meetings.
It was her lunch hour, and she’d been spending it tutoring Tessie.
The Mother Teresa act baffled me, and it didn’t escape me that she not only gave my sister unsolicited help but also looked happy doing so.
Not to mention she had no way of knowing I was spying on her, taking in her good deeds with no clue how to process them.
Tessie hadn’t been born for most of my relationship with Elsa, but Dana had met Tessie plenty of times while we’d dated, and she’d never lifted a hand to help her.
My mother and father foot the bill for Tessie’s private tutoring, various extracurriculars, and so on, but that wasn’t the same as honest-to-God, hands-on helping.
I tried to help as much as I could, but I lived several states away from Tessie for most of the year. Limits bound me, and they were almost as asphyxiating as Gio’s expectations of me.
If I could, I’d be there for Tessie and Everett every day. It killed me that the two hadn’t even met since they were both too young to remember.
But Ariana held a fancy degree from a top-five university, worked a dead-end job as a bartender, and helped the eight-year-old sister of her asshole boss with the little free time she had during her breaks.
None of it made sense to me.
So, here I was, spying on Ariana when I should have been spying on Graham.
Vince had sent over a dossier a few days ago, listing supposed allegations against Graham and a proposed schedule that would make it easier for me to keep watch over him.
