Bad Company (Seven Deadly Sins #1) ✅ Completed

Chapter Twenty-Seven: Dante Steps Up

Aunt Celeste walked into the shop in the same mood she’d left in.

Wretched.

"Eliza Rain! What in the world do you think you’re doing, girl?”

I had a rag in one hand and a rusty can of half-filled Pledge in the other. I figured I might as well look like I’d actually been working while she’d been gone.

“Dusting…” I said slowly, treating her like I would a pipe bomb. She really was a little high strung today. I figured she was too old to be going through ‘the change,’ but maybe it was something some women never quite got over or something.

“I thought…”

She didn’t even let me finish getting the second half of that sentence out before she started jumping down my throat. “I don’t pay you to think, girl! I pay you to do as I say.”

“You don’t pay me at all,” I muttered under my breath.

She glared at me. “Listen here, little Miss Thing. Don’t be thinking you can sass me in my own shop. You don’t want to be poking the bear right now, ya hear?”

I heard the warning loud and clear – she was like one gray hair away from a total atomic meltdown. And here I thought she couldn’t possibly get any worse. Good grief, I really didn’t want to find out what would happen if I unwittingly poked the bear.

"Sorry,” I mumbled, not really wishing to see her get any worse at this point. Especially when you considered I still needed to find out exactly what she’d done to Chase.

Dante had been absolutely no help there either. He flat out refused to discuss Chase, what Aunt Celeste had given him the day before, or even who this Asher guy was. When I mentioned Asher’s name, he’d gotten all bent out of shape and refused to tell me anything. He’d pretty much walked away from me at that point, so I knew I’d have to retreat and launch another attack when he was more susceptible to my special brand of persuasion. Who said being an annoying, tiresome, whiny teenager wasn’t persuasive?

I’d left for a little while to grab some food from the rundown drugstore since he’d eaten his lunch in front of me, but had refused to even give me so much as a meatball. When I came back he wasn’t anywhere downstairs. I’d even stuck my head inside the back stockroom just in case, but he wasn’t there either. His truck was still parked in the front so I figured he’d just headed upstairs to his room. I guess even Dante didn’t want to run the risk of poking the bear in case Aunt Celeste came back while he was out running around against her orders.

Aunt Celeste put her old lady purse on the counter as she walked by me. “And where exactly is that other good for nothing hiding now?”

I figured she’d meant the only other person stuck here with me in the drudgery of her employ.

“Dante’s upstairs…er…I think he went to get something.” Why was I even bothering to cover for him? He was an obstinate jerk. Granted, he was the only obstinate jerk I had, so maybe that was a good enough reason to try and keep some of his butt intact. Aunt Celeste looked like she was in another one of her butt chewing moods.   

I shuddered a little. That was a visual I really could have lived without.

"Hmph!” Aunt Celeste didn’t really look all that convinced by my lame excuse. I was really going to have to start becoming a better liar.

Suddenly, she cocked her head to one side like I’d seen some dogs do at the park. She looked like she was listening for something. Maybe someone was blowing one of those high pitched whistles only crotchety old biddies could hear.