The Devil You Don't

"What?"

Mercy said as she snapped her head forward and looked at Emily. She stared harshly at the girl and dug her fingers into the calendar that sat on top of her desk, curling her lip in a sneer at the British girl.

"She's a friend." She said plainly. "I don't know why she dressed like that but it probably had something to do with your psychotic aunt fucking with her head. Maybe something else too!" Mercy huffed, blushing a bit. "She should be put in jail. She's a criminal... at best. So... if you want to follow in her skanky little footsteps, then you can just go right ahead. You suck anyway. It really wouldn't matter if I wrestled you." Mercy said, waving her hand dismissively at Emily.

"Considering you've probably spent your whole life wrestling and you don't even have a win. I've never wrestled at all and I'm undefeated." She said, lifting her nose up smugly.

"I'm eighteen years old," Emily said reasonably. "Exactly how long do you think my career could be?"

She directed her gaze across the room with a look of annoyance on her cold features. Mercy was incredibly annoying. She probably just didn't have anyone smart around her, so she thought she was the smartest ever. And she probably didn't get beat up, so she just assumed she was bad.

"Is this really the way you're supposed to speak to the talent? This seems rather unprofessional," she said, without going out of her way to needle the paralegal. "If you're trying to pick a fight, you should know that I'm better at that than you. And I'm smarter that you as well. You feel threatened by me, yeah?"

Mercy raised an eyebrow at Emily's words> She then laughed sharply and derisively at Emily. "Having a career in professional wrestling might mean you can beat me up if we got into a fight." Mercy said simply. "But you are not smarter than me. If you were, you'd be here instead of there." She said, pointing to herself then to where Emily was standing.

"The only thing I've seen of you that's any good is your ability to skulk around and attack people when they aren't looking. And I'M the unprofessional? Please." She said. "Maybe I should have you fired just so you don't make a fool out of yourself in public." Mercy shook her head. "But this isn't about what's professional and what isn't. We both know that. You want to get into our business? Well, you're in it, now. If you want to go beg Lukretia or Rally for a match, then be my guest but otherwise, you deal with me." Mercy said.

She leaned over and peered at Emily. "I would say that when you present yourself to be anything aside from a backstabbing crybaby, then maybe, maybe I would consider putting you in some matches more suitable to your skill set but you've already proven yourself to be just that. Hiding behind your aunts... that's just disgusting." Mercy said and leaned back in her chair, crossing her arms under her chest.

"Your whole family is nothing but torturous, sadistic bullies who wantonly hurt my friends and the people I care about. I have no sympathy for someone like you."

Emily's eye twitched. She felt the tell-tale pin pricks in the corners of her eyes, but she fought them back. She already knew she was rubbish as a wrestler, and she didn't need everybody telling her as much. But...

Aunt Dinah could go to hell. She didn't care about Emily at all. She was only here because everyone else told her to go protect the family's image by dragging the confused little girl back from Japan, and because she and Aunt Sarah had whatever kind of feud leftover from their school days. It was stupid. She was stupid.

Aunt Sarah had always been everything that Emily wanted to be. Strong, beautiful, confident, self reliant, artistic, sophisticated, glamorous, so separate from all of the bourgeois nonsense that consumed the rest of her family. But now, despite Emily's instincts to refute every nasty word Mercy said, she was having a hard time coming up with any evidence to the contrary, and she had not the slightest idea what to do about it.

Her breath froze in her chest as she looked at the pompous bitch behind the desk. She must feel so powerful, hiding behind her title and her desk and saying whatever she wanted.

"I don't need your sympathy," she said quietly, and then turned and walked out the door, her pace picking up as soon as she was out of sight.

Mercy watched Emily leave and narrowed her eyes. She cleaned her glasses purposefully and stared at the empty door frame. "Good. Because you weren't getting it." She growled to no one. She then turned to face her monitor and looked for some work to do.