Page 2 of Worth the Heat
“I’m scared to ask what else you have planned,” Arianna whispers.
I shrug. “Nothing too bad. Well, I guess it’s all subjective. I debated on switching out his contact solution with vinegar, but figured that would actually cause physical harm, and it probably would involve a longer time in jail. So everything I’m doing will just aggravate him. Laxatives in his protein powder, and food coloring in his laundry detergent. Gonna superglue his shoes to the floor. Honestly, he leaves them in disarray all over the place. He has that one coming to him. If I can, I’m also supergluing all of his silverware together too, and replacing his cologne with toilet water. Oh, and I raided Ben’s leftover Legos that he never plays with, and grabbed all the super tiny ones that are hard to find on carpet.” Ben is our nephew, the son ofAlex, our oldest brother. He’s smarter than everyone in our family.
“I am incredibly concerned with your imagination.”
“I can’t take full credit. I found this grandma on TikTok who did a whole series of videos about what to do if your man cheats. I just never thought I’d be using them myself.”
“And you’re sure he doesn’t have cameras in here?” Arianna asks, looking around warily.
“Nope. He doesn’t trust the cloud, and spent an hour one night ranting and raving about how ‘the government is always listening.’ He doesn’t even trust having a doorbell camera.”
“Well, let’s get going with all of these criminal activities. Stone’s meeting me with the girls for a family trip to the Denver Zoo.” Arianna’s smile is blinding. I’m low-key jealous, but also so incredibly happy for her. Arianna was dealt a crappy hand throughout childhood. A rare disease called Hemolytic Uremic Syndrome caused her kidneys to fail, and she underwent a kidney transplant at the age of eight. She outgrew that kidney in her early twenties, and had another transplant. She’d been in love with Stone, our brother Alex’s best friend, for as long as I can remember, and it was really special to witness her getting her happily ever after with him. Now my baby sister is married with two daughters, and I’m still the same train wreck I’ve always been.
I mean, almost all of my siblings are married with children, and here I am, destroying my ex-boyfriend’s apartment for sport.
“Are you absolutely sure he won’t try to get you arrested for this? I love you, Belly, but you’re not cut out for jail time,” Arianna says with an exaggerated shudder.
“I’d do better in jail than you would.”
She winks at me. “I never said I’d be better. I’d make someone my bitch pretty fast, though.”
I giggle. “Sure, Ari. You’re tiny. Someone would totally overpower you.”
“Nope. When it’s the choice of making someone my bitch or eating the taco, I’m gonna find every ounce of power in my body to win.”
“Eating the taco — Jesus, Arianna.” I look over at her to find her smiling innocently at me. “Just go deposit the shrimp so we can leave.”
Her face screws up in distaste. “I’m putting it off so I don’t have to touch them. Do you have any collateral if he figures out it’s you?”
“He’s going to know it’s me.”
“Isabella!” she shouts, horrified.
“I caught him in bed with my best friend. He can easily deduce that I’m the most likely suspect,” I point out. “But I have collateral.”
“Really?” she calls out from the bedroom. “What?”
“You know how Rick works for a bank?”
Her head pops out of the bedroom. “Please tell me he’s stealing pennies, or something completely asinine.”
“Worse,” I tell her gleefully. “He bragged to me about how he approves fake loans to improve his own sales targets. Then doubled-down to tell me he’s got a file on his computer where he keeps all the information.”
Ari’s mouth drops open. “Seriously? That sounds incredibly illegal.”
“It is.”
“Belle, you can’t just sit on this info. You need to report him.” Arianna walks toward me, her eyes wide. “This isn’t just collateral. This is fraud.”
I smile wickedly. “The bank already knows. I emailed the manager and suggested an audit of the loan department.”
She gasps. “Can’t they track the IP address?”
“I thought about that. So I drove to a public library, created a new email account from one of the computers there, and sent theemail. I researched it, and found that many email providers require a period of time before an account is deleted, except for mail dot com. Those can be deleted immediately.”
“You thought this through.”
I sigh, a sound full of aggravation and anger. “I’m just so pissed off, Ari. I’m sick of men taking advantage of me. I’m tired of men making me feel like I have to settle just becausetheythink I’m fat. Frankly, I love my body. I’m not gonna settle just because a man thinks otherwise. And I also don’t understand why an introverted woman who has her own business is apparently a bad thing to ninety percent of the male population. Everyone in this family is happy, but everyone also thinks I’m not. Well, I guess Leo isn’t all that happy, but he’s never really been super happy, so that’s nothing new. It’s not that I’m unhappy, but I see all of you finding your partners, and I can’t help but wonder why I haven’t.
