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passion. I mean, it’s pretty cool. What’s not to love about this?” She pointed

down at her shoes, which were bright red with little bats on the front. “I

designed these bad boys myself. Freaking cool, if I do say so.”

Arabella liked them. She liked Tina too, though her high scho

ol version

of herself would have targeted her like she was a freaking bullseye.

So…back to that mistake.

It turned out that June Erickson, the girl she’d bullied in high school

unmercifully and with zero remorse because she was a teenage turdbag, was

now a CEO. Of the very company she’d had been hired at. How about them

apples? Yeah, she was seriously screwed.

After hours spent trying to figure out how to turn down the new position,

Arabella knew she was going to have to take it, at least until something else

came along. She had bills to pay and her parents were depending on her.

After they’d declared bankruptcy and her dad had barely avoided jail time

for the damn scheme he’d been involved in running, they’d turned to her.

Katrina, Arabella’s younger sister, wasn’t an option. She was still in

college. She’d had to extend her four-year plan into a six- or eight-year

plan, given that she no longer had a fund to help her pay for tuition. She had

to work part time and go to school part time. If Arabella wanted to keep the

small bungalow where she and her parents lived—her mom and dad in the

basement while she took the top floor—she needed a job and she needed

one fast.

“Okay. This is it. I hope you like it. I think they look classy, with all that

glass, but some people hate it. It makes them feel all exposed and open.”

The office building was located in downtown Cincinnati. June was an

Ohio success story, it turned out. She was making change happen all over

the world with her innovative ideas and she’d never moved to New York,

LA, London, or any other big, popular, metropolitan city where smart,

successful people usually ended up. She’d stayed right there, and her shoes