Once, I’d thought so too, but now I’d changed my mind.
“Nah, she’s just smart. If I was a dog, I’d try to rip the seat out of your pants too.”
“You little?—”
“What’s going on?” Nolan asked from the top of the stairs. They were carpeted, and he’d climbed them without making a sound. Or perhaps our raised voices had covered the noise?
“Your little friend is throwing her weight around.” Marielle’s voice had risen an octave and turned from whiny to saccharine, the way it always did when she was speaking to Nolan.
“She’s a two-faced psycho,” I muttered.
“Huh?” Nolan said.
For Pete’s sake. “She’s all sweetness and pleasantries when you’re around, but when you’re not, she insults your girlfriend and kicks your dog.”
“She kicked Juno?”
“Of course I didn’t,” Marielle snapped. “Are you going to let her speak to me that way?” A hint of the whine had returned.
“He’s not my dad. I don’t have to ask permission.”
“Well, he looks as if he could be. Scammers are starting young these days.”
“Scammers? What in the chicken-fried fuck?”
“Oh, don’t tell me a sob story. You showed up out of the blue and finagled yourself a place to stay, and I know you’re not paying rent,” Marielle said. Nolan had told her that? How else would she know? “What exactly are you contributing toward this ‘relationship’?”
She used little finger quotes around the word, and I was glad I’d left my gun in the bedroom because bloodstains were a pain to get out of carpet.
“So far? My cyber skills and a five-figure security system to stop you from tampering with stuff around here.”
“What? How dare you accuse me of something so heinous?”
For a moment, I was transported back to my childhood, watching Mom’s emphatic denials of whatever shitty thing she’d definitely just done. Like the time she’d snuck into the laundry room with Dad’s car key and come back empty-handed, right before he was meant to go on a golf weekend with his work buddies. The key got washed, the housekeeper got the blame, and Dad stayed home because somehow, the spare key had also gone missing.
Anyhow, that was the moment I knew for sure Marielle was guilty of at least some of the “accidents” around here. Her sabotage skills surpassed her acting ones. When she glanced toward the other end of the house, to the empty master suite, another thought hit me—how did Nolan’s shower start leaking?
“You’re telling me it’s just all a big coincidence that these ‘distractions’ started happening after I arrived and interrupted your plan to play happy families with Nolan?”
“You have an overactive imagination, young lady. And you enjoy stirring up trouble.”
Okay, the second part was true, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t a conniving shrew.
“Alexa isn’t a scammer,” Nolan tried.
“Oh, please. Once she’s bled you dry, she’ll disappear into the sunset with her other boyfriend, and you’ll be left licking your wounds. Where did he go, huh? Where’s Chase?”
“He’s on vacation,” I growled. My voice had gone weirdly low, possibly because I was thirsty, but probably because I was really, really pissed off. I kind of liked it. I needed to use this voice in work meetings.
“It’s all part of their little game,” Marielle told Nolan. “Did you pay for dinner tonight?”
“Yes, but it was my choice.”
“That’s what she wants you to think. Consider this objectively—she doesn’t even have a proper job. Most of the time, she’s just messing around on her computer.”
A part of me wanted to blurt out that I was a closet billionaire, but the bigger part needed to hold my secrets close. My finances were nobody’s business but my own and my accountant’s. Making my net worth public knowledge would bring too much unwanted attention, possibly even danger. Jay was Astela’s frontperson; we’d agreed on that from the start. And Jay got incessant letters begging for money, plus he had to travel with security if he went farther than the grocery store, and even in the grocery store, he’d gotten followed a couple of times.
I was ready to snap back when Nolan got in first.
