Doin' a Dime - Vale, Lynn (epub read online books .TXT) 📗

She narrowed her eyes. “I’m allowed to say whatever the hell I want, because I’m the elder here. You’re just a little pissy girl who doesn’t like when she doesn’t get her way.”

I tilted my head to the side. “Is that what you think?”

“That’s what I know,” Stella countered.

I was already shaking my head.

“Here’s what I’m really mad about,” I said, leaning forward on the couch that Stella had purchased with my parents’ life insurance policies. “I know that you wouldn’t have anything in this house if it wasn’t for my parents.”

Stella’s eyes narrowed dangerously.

It was true, too.

My parents’ will stated that in the event of their death, I was supposed to go to my uncle Deighton. Only, they hadn’t planned on my uncle being with them when they died. They also never expected my aunt Stella to crawl out of the hidey hole she’d been brooding in for ten years because of some ‘slight’ my dad had made against her and petition my mom’s best friend for custody of me.

Because, if they had, they would’ve gone above and beyond to name my mom’s best friend, Andromeda, as custodian of me in the event that my uncle Deighton died.

Except, they hadn’t expected Stella to give a shit.

Only, watching over me and taking me into her care also meant that I came with a shit ton of money, money which Stella did want.

Needless to say, Stella’s lavish lifestyle was something in which she relished.

Something in which I’d had no choice but to allow because I didn’t have control over my trust funds until the age of twenty-five.

But, as of this morning at twelve, I was now not only twenty-five years old, but I was also kicking her ass to the curb.

At least, I was trying to, anyway.

She wasn’t taking too kindly to the change.

She stared at the lawyer’s papers that I’d had drafted up at the age of twenty-two and had perfected over the last three years.

It was, I hoped, iron clad.

“I don’t have anywhere to go,” she said.

I didn’t fucking care.

“I know,” I said. “That’s why I’ve so graciously given you six months to find a place to live.”

Her eyes narrowed.

“I don’t have a job,” she countered.

This is probably the part where I should feel really sorry about the fact that I’m kicking my jobless aunt out of my house. But I didn’t feel sorry, not one single bit.

When she took me in at the age of fifteen, I’d done my level best to be the ‘good girl’ that she wanted me to be.

Only, she’d hated me on sight.

Why? Because I was the spitting image of my mother, whom she hated with all her heart.

Why did she hate my mother so much? I had no clue. But I knew the hate my mother experienced every time that she was around Stella, because I had experienced the same damn thing every time I came close to her.

At sixteen, I’d stopped coming home from boarding school during the holidays—something in which she was none too happy about paying for because, and I quote, I was ‘too damn expensive to keep alive.’

I’d always held my tongue instead of telling her that she was lucking out on me being in boarding school, because if I was home with her I’d cost her more money.

At least that way, I’d been in a school uniform all day, she didn’t have to buy me food, and she could pretend that I didn’t exist.

That had all changed when I’d graduated high school and had moved back home with Six, my childhood friend.

Then, not only had my life gotten harder, but my aunt had gotten wayyyy meaner.

So the animosity present this day had been compiling for years.

The last straw had been when she’d informed me that my father’s estate wasn’t meant to pay for petty things like advanced educations. Yet, it could pay for her to get her nails done, and her hair highlighted.

Needless to say, I was really fucking excited about presenting her with this paperwork.

“You may live here until six months after my birthday, which is when it’ll be going on the market to sell,” I said. “And, though this is all in the paperwork, I’ll give you the highlights version. If you wish to buy it, that’s fine, but not a penny of my parents’ estate will be touched. You have been removed from all accounts except one, in which a monthly stipend of a thousand dollars will be transferred. After six months, you will no longer get that. All furniture, knick-knacks, and every item down to every single spoon, has been accounted for. It is listed, item by item. Even the belongings in your room. You may take everything that is yours that my parents didn’t buy. And I’ll be generous and allow you to have your clothes. At six months, you’re either out of here on your own, or I call the cops and you’re out of here not on your own. Your choice.”

My aunt’s face was purple.

Literally purple.

She was so fucking mad.

I stood up and walked to the door. “I’ll be seeing you around. Don’t do anything stupid.”

With that, I left the house that I hated almost as much as my aunt and headed to my beat-up car.

A car that I’d had to purchase on my own.

A car that, sadly, needed a new… something. Probably everything.

However, instead of buying something new, I’d left it the way it was. Maybe I should have bought a newer car, because I knew that shit was about to get ugly.

My aunt was about to use all the money that she’d squirreled away from me, anticipating this day, and she was going to go at me with everything she had.

My accounts would be frozen, and anything that I’d bought with my parents’ accounts would be red-flagged as well.

Meaning that anything that wasn’t mine before this mess started likely would be put in limbo as well—at least that was what my lawyer had explained to me.

Something crinkled under my