Cruel Love

by Kate Brian

  Maria grinned and raised her eyebrows. “Sounds delish.”

  Ariana’s blush deepened. “You have no idea.”

  “Okay. Now I’m intrigued,” Tahira said, tossing her dark hair over her shoulder. “And starved. I say you spill all the delish details over tapas.”

  “I could be in for that,” Maria said.

  “Me too. But you have to eat more than one thing,” Ariana said, raising a warning finger at Maria.

  “Who said you get to mother me?” Maria said good-naturedly. “You’re the one we’ve got to keep an eye on around here, Miss Panic Attack.”

  Ariana’s skin prickled. If she could take back anything from the past few days it would be having that minor breakdown in front of her friends. She didn’t want them to worry about her. But even more importantly, she didn’t want them to lose confidence in her, especially with Palmer talking crap about her behind her back. Maybe Tahira hadn’t cared, but that didn’t mean everyone would be so open-minded. She needed to project a self-assured, in-charge, sane image, not that of a weakling who could crumble at any second.

  “That was a fluke,” she told Maria, looping her arm around her friend’s. “It won’t happen again, I promise. I’m fine.”

  “Ready?” Tahira asked, joining them with two massive bags dangling from either hand.

  “Ready.”

  As the girls walked out of the department store and onto the dark, frigid street, Ariana fished her car keys from her bag. She hit the UNLOCK button and the headlights on her sleek, silver sports car flashed. With another click, she popped the trunk for Tahira’s bags. She and Maria waited on the sidewalk while Tahira loaded her things inside and slammed the door.

  “So, Ana, how long did you think you were going to be able to hold out on us?” she asked, leaning one red-gloved hand against the trunk.

  Ariana blinked. “Hold out on you? About what? Jasper?”

  “No.” Tahira brushed her leather gloves off as she rejoined them on the sidewalk. “I was on the APH student site today and they had a list of all the upcoming birthdays. Someone we know was on it!” she said, singing the last few words.

  Ariana’s brow knit, and then suddenly her heart thumped extra hard against her rib cage. Briana Leigh’s birthday! It was December 12. How could she have possibly forgotten?

  “Ana! It’s your birthday?” Maria asked, her eyes widening with delight. “When?”

  Ariana finally forced herself to blush and looked down at her feet.

  “Next week. I guess I don’t really feel much like celebrating,” she improvised, drawing an arc on the silty concrete with the toe of her suede boot. “Besides, wouldn’t it be a little selfish right now? Making myself the center of attention?”

  “Gimme a break,” Tahira said, rolling her eyes as she headed for the passenger side door. “I am totally throwing you a party.”

  Ariana’s heart fluttered in excitement. She hadn’t been able to celebrate her election as Stone and Grave president, but this would more than make up for that.

  “You don’t have to do that,” she said.

  “Just try to stop me,” Tahira said, narrowing her eyes.

  “Yeah, I wouldn’t try to stop her,” Maria joked. “You know what? Maybe I’ll help. It’ll give me something to distract me from Lexa and the Soomie situation.”

  “Cool. Just as long as we’re clear that all final decisions are mine,” Tahira said.

  Maria smirked. “Ma’am, yes, ma’am.”

  Ariana gave them a small, modest smile. “Okay. Thanks, guys. Just … don’t go overboard.”

  Tahira shot Maria a look that clearly said “Yeah, right.” As they all piled into Ariana’s car, Ariana bit down on her lip to keep from giggling out loud. She had a feeling Tahira was going to throw the party to end all parties, all for her.

  Ariana dropped into the bucket seat behind the wheel and her phone let out a loud beep. She fished it from the bottom of her bag.

  “Hang on a sec. I have a voice mail,” she said.

  “Make it quick. I’m starting to feel faint,” Tahira said, flipping the visor down to check her eye makeup in the mirror.

  Ariana dialed into voice mail and held the phone to her ear. The voice that greeted her stopped her blood cold.

  “Hello, Miss Covington, this is Dr. Victor Meloni, calling to inform you that your mandatory session has been scheduled for tomorrow, Monday the eighth, at ten a.m. in my office on the third floor of the administration building. Looking forward to seeing you then. Have a good night.”

  The message ended with a loud beep, and Ariana flinched, but found she otherwise couldn’t move. She sat there for a long moment, staring at the streetlights outside the windshield, the phone stuck to her ear.

  “Ana? Ana, hello? Are you in there?” Tahira asked, waving a mascara wand in front of her face.

  “You look sickly again. Was that bad news? Was it Soomie?” Maria asked, leaning in from the miniscule backseat.

  “No. No, it was nothing. Sorry. I just spaced for a second there,” Ariana said. She pushed down on the DELETE button so hard she was surprised the phone didn’t shatter, then tossed the phone in the well between her seat and Tahira’s. “So. Tapas?”

  She revved the engine, threw the car into gear, and lurched out onto the street. Her fingers gripped the wheel as her jaw clenched so tightly she felt a pain in her temple. Hearing Meloni’s insipid voice on the phone, the authoritative tone he took while demanding her presence in his office, had brought home the urgency of the situation. She could not allow him within six feet of her or all would be lost. But she couldn’t avoid him, either. As he’d so helpfully mentioned, all student sessions with the grief counselor were mandatory.

  As Ariana took a corner at top speed, eliciting a squeak of fear from Tahira’s throat, she knew with a cold certainty that the plan was going to have to change. She had wanted to do away with Reed first and then deal with Meloni, but obviously Reed’s death was going to be put on the backburner for now.

  As of this moment, her number-one priority was ridding the world of Dr. Victor Meloni.

  TOO EASY

  Late Monday afternoon, Ariana begged out of her lit magazine meeting early, telling April she was late for a chemistry study group. She had, in fact, moved her car to the faculty lot behind the Administration Building that afternoon and planned to wait in it until Dr. Meloni left work for the night. She needed to follow him, needed to find out where he was living, needed to start formulating her plan. Once Meloni was gone, she could get back to Reed. And she was very much looking forward to getting back to Reed.

  Quickly, she scurried across the frost-covered campus, hoping against hope that Dr. Meloni had yet to leave for the night. She finally got into her car just as the sun was disappearing behind the trees, and started the engine, relishing in the warmth from the heaters and keeping an eye on the back door of the Administration Building. Luckily, she wasn’t too late. Within minutes, Dr. Meloni emerged. Blowing into his hands, he unhooked Rambo from his running line and opened the passenger side door of a gold Lincoln Tahoe for the dog. Moments later, he was behind the wheel, and they were off.

  “Let’s see what kind of place you’ve bought for yourself on my tuition’s dime,” Ariana muttered under her breath as she followed from a discreet distance.

  She had skipped their mandatory meeting that morning without so much as a phone call to make an excuse and had kept her phone off all day, dreading his reaction. Now she wondered if he’d called her yet, or if he was going to leave it to the headmaster to deal with her scolding and punishment.

  Ariana laughed bitterly to herself. No. No way. Meloni would certainly make sure he got to do all the scolding and belittling on his own. It was probably written into his contract.

  Meloni headed away from the city and into the hills on the Virginia side of the capital. The move didn’t surprise Ariana in the slightest. Back at the Brenda T., Dr. Meloni had resided in a small cabin set back on a dirt road. She was c
ertain he made a ton of money and could have lived anywhere he wished, but instead he’d chosen a spartan existence, living like a colonial mountain man. No doubt he did it to make some kind of point—that he was a man’s man, or above the trappings of modern society, or some crap like that.

  Ariana squinted against the dark as Meloni turned onto a slim, two-lane road, lined with towering, bare trees. When he suddenly pulled off into a circular driveway, Ariana’s heart hit her throat. She couldn’t exactly turn in after him. Thinking fast, she kept right on

  driving, but she cursed under her breath, realizing she hadn’t gotten a good look at the house.

  “Okay, it’s okay,” she told herself, adjusting her sweaty palms on the wheel. “Just turn around and go back.”

  She pulled into a small clearing at the side of the road, counted slowly to one hundred, then flipped a U-turn and drove back to Meloni’s. She made sure to drive at a snail’s pace so that she could take it all in. The Tahoe was dark in the driveway—the only car parked there. A light glowed in one of the front windows of a long, low ranch house. It was bigger than the place he’d called home back at the Brenda T., but still unassuming. Ariana killed the Porsche’s lights and pulled off the side of the road. There didn’t appear to be a security system, and the closest streetlight was half a mile away. She sat for a long time, staring at that light in the window, but seeing no movement. An hour passed, then another. And in all that time, Ariana saw but one car go by.

  Finally, the light went out, and a moment later another went on upstairs. Clearly, Meloni still lived alone. And on a street that hardly a soul ever passed through. Satisfied, Ariana slowly rolled out onto the road and drove a few yards before turning on her headlights again. Then she opened up the engine and floored it, headed back toward town with a huge, happy grin.

  Good old Dr. Meloni. He really couldn’t have made this much easier on her.

  MENTAL HEALTH

  Thanks to her jaunt through the Virginia woodlands, Ariana was so late to dinner on Monday evening, her friends were already packing up to leave when she arrived.

  “We were just on our way over to the Hill,” Maria said, slinging her scarf over her forearm and her messenger bag onto her shoulder. Behind her, Tahira shoved her cell phone and some books into her bag. “Want us to wait? We can sit with you if you want.”

  “No, that’s okay,” Ariana replied. After the excitement of her recon mission, she relished the idea of sitting quietly and organizing her thoughts. “I’ll meet you there when I’m done.”

  “Cool. We’ll save you a seat,” Tahira said.

  The girls walked off together to the junior/senior lounge, which was through a set of heavy double doors at the far end of the dining hall. Ariana sat down, placing her last-minute order with the waiter. She saw several people eye her curiously as they left, including Palmer and his little pack of followers, but she ignored them. Couldn’t a girl be late for dinner anymore without becoming the subject of gossip?

  Once her meal arrived, Ariana ate it slowly, meticulously reviewing the route she’d taken to Meloni’s house over and over again so that she wouldn’t forget a thing. She was definitely going to have to go back there again soon, at a time when he wasn’t home, to survey the perimeter, see if there were any good points of entry, and make absolutely sure he didn’t have a girlfriend—gag—or someone who might show up unexpectedly. Once she’d decided on this course of action, she pulled up her schedule on her phone. This was something she was going to need to accomplish quickly, before another “mandatory” meeting was set up for her. As she eyed her class schedule, she realized that she was going to have to skip class no matter what. The middle of the workday was the only time she could ensure Meloni wouldn’t be around. But she’d already missed so much thanks to Reed, and finals were coming up…. Ariana let out a frustrated sigh. She really was juggling a lot these days.

  Finally, she decided to just skip out on Spanish the next day and get it over with. She was carrying an A average in that course as it was. Missing one more class couldn’t do much harm. Satisfied, Ariana slipped her phone back into her bag, finished her meal, and thanked the waiter. Then she gathered her coat, scarf, hat, and bag up in her arms and headed across the room to join her friends at the Hill.

  She had just walked through the door when Headmaster Jansen stepped up next to her. It was as if the woman had been lying in wait.

  “Miss Covington?”

  Ariana closed her eyes for a moment, steeling herself, then turned with a big smile.

  “Hi, Headmaster. How are you?” she asked.

  “I’m fine, thank you. I’m more interested in how you’re doing.” She reached out and grasped Ariana’s forearm quickly, her expression the picture of concern. “I heard you missed a few days of classes and skipped your mandatory meeting with your grief counselor this morning.”

  “Yes, I was planning to reschedule that.”

  “Were you?” the headmaster said sternly.

  Ariana felt her skin redden. How dare this woman doubt her? What had she ever done to earn that?

  “Of course,” she replied. “It was just a rough week for me. I did lose my best friend in the most horrific way possible.”

  “All the more reason to see the counselor,” the headmaster said.

  A few senior girls hovered behind Ariana, angling to get through the door. She clucked her tongue and stepped away from the entrance, letting them through. She knew there was a way to spin this. She just had to think of it. Now. She tucked her new and insanely expensive angora scarf into her bag, and just like that, it hit her.

  Money. It all came back to money. And Ariana, thanks to the recent death of Briana Leigh’s grandmother, had tons of it at her disposal.

  “Headmaster, to be honest … I was hoping to hire my own counselor, if that would be at all possible,” Ariana said. “I’d be more than willing to have him or her sign some sort of document confirming I’d completed a session.”

  The headmaster’s perfectly groomed brows creased. She crossed her slim arms over her stylishly cut suit. “Why?”

  Ariana bit her lip. “It’s just … I’ve heard some not-so-pleasant things about this Doctor Meloni,” she lied, bile burning the back of her throat as she uttered the name. “My friends who have seen him … they don’t get anything out of their sessions. And one of them mentioned feeling condescended to. Now, I don’t know about you, but that doesn’t sound like the role of a grief counselor to me.”

  “That’s odd. I’ve had only positive feedback from the students on Dr. Meloni,” the headmaster said.

  Ariana gritted her teeth. “Well, maybe they just haven’t wanted to upset you.”

  The headmaster’s eyes narrowed. “I see. The problem is, Miss Covington, that Doctor Meloni is very interested in meeting you.”

  The entire room tilted so suddenly before Ariana’s eyes, she was forced to reach out and grab the back of the nearest sofa. She brought her fingertips to her forehead for a moment and closed her eyes. “I’m sorry. What? Why?”

  “He said he knows something of your family history,” the headmaster replied. “To be quite honest, from the way he spoke about you, I got the impression the two of you already knew each other.”

  “What?” Ariana’s eyes popped open, but her vision had already prickled over. She could barely make out the headmaster’s face.

  “Have you ever been a patient of his before?” the headmaster asked.

  “No! No, of course not,” Ariana replied, shaking her head, trying to clear her eyes, her mind. Had Dr. Meloni seen her that night on campus with Maria and Tahira? Did he know she was here? Was he just licking his chops, waiting for her to walk into his office like some kind of injured lamb?

  But no. It wasn’t possible. He’d looked up for half a second that night and it had been pitch-black out. All he would have seen were Ariana’s black hat, her auburn hair, her dark sunglasses. He never would have recognized her under those conditions.

  �
��There’s no shame in it, Briana Leigh,” the headmaster said. “Everyone needs someone to talk to at some point in their lives.”

  “I’m telling you I don’t know him,” Ariana said, her voice strained.

  “All I know is that when he saw the name Briana Leigh Covington on the list of students, he said he thought he’d be uniquely suited to help you,” Headmaster Jansen said, raising a palm.

  Suddenly, Ariana felt a cool whoosh of air down her back. Briana Leigh Covington. Of course. Dr. Meloni had treated Kaitlynn Nottingham inside the Brenda T., and Kaitlynn had been arrested for murdering Briana Leigh’s father in cold blood. Dr. Meloni knew something about Briana Leigh’s family history because of his association with Kaitlynn. He had no idea Ariana was masquerading as the girl whose name he’d recognized.

  Taking in a deep, cleansing breath, Ariana pulled herself up straight and focused on the headmaster’s eyes.

  “I’ve never heard of this person in my life, yet he claims some prior connection and interest in me? That didn’t raise any red flags for you?” Ariana said.

  The headmaster blinked, clearly taken aback. “I didn’t think—”

  “And if it’s so important to you that I see someone—if it’s so important to my mental health—shouldn’t you allow me to see someone with whom I feel comfortable, rather than some random man who might turn out to be a stalker?” Ariana asked through her teeth.

  “I hardly think—”

  “When I enrolled at this school, my grandmother made a very generous donation to the general education fund, a donation which I intended to duplicate upon my graduation,” Ariana continued, “but if I start to feel that my needs aren’t being met here, I might have to rethink the whole thing.”

  Suddenly the headmaster’s jaw set. She wiped her palms on the skirt of her suit and cleared her throat. It was clear from the irritation in her eyes that she knew she was being played and didn’t like it.