Darleen herself was the worst culprit of them all, managing to spoil the girl even more than her own parents did. To Darleen, Tempest shone like the brightest star in the sky, she was the perfect little pixie who could do no wrong. She doted on her beautiful little name-sake, treating her like a pampered princess. Since the stone family was the epitome of wealth, Darleen was able to take her mission to spoil her only goddaughter to an obscene level.
Tempest had her own wing at the Stone mansion, an enormous bedroom with a big canopy bed covered in a pale pink satin bed spread, and heaping with a dozen frothy and frilly, pink pillows. She had every doll ever made, a doll house that could quite possibly house a small family, a playhouse in the garden that could house a large family, and a tea set that the queen of England herself would envy. Darleen had mastered the art of spoiling Tempest so well, she was actually able to predict what the girl wanted before she even asked for it.
Darleen was well aware that she went over board but she honestly could not help it- she adored the child, she absolutely loved her. What she was unaware of, was the fact that the apple of her eye was growing more and more rotten by the year, and she was unable to see Tempest for the monster she was becoming.
It was an odd situation to say the least, even though Tempest was very close to the Stone family, she was not close to Dante, Darleen's eldest son, in any way, shape or form. They had never bonded and had never considered themselves family. Dante was rarely around, having left home for college at 17, and only returning home to visit on important holidays and the occasional summer. When he was home, he spent most of his time working with his father, and the rest of his time avoiding Tempest like the plague. He just seemed to genuinely dislike her and she never really understood why.
Tempest preferred to believe it was the age difference that made him not care for her so much or the fact that he was never around and he just didn't know her very well, but Davis always argued that Dante hadn't liked her since the day of her baptism when she had peed on his lap. She never knew if that was the real reason that he had come to dislike her, but it was plausible, considering Dante was the type who decided if he liked someone within the first fifteen minutes of meeting them, and he also held a grudge like a functioning heart holds a beat.
Tempest acted like she didn't care but it really bothered her. Even though his demeanor was cold to everyone and he avoided his own brothers, she still took it personally. As was typical for Tempest, this meant she would do something particularly nasty to him to make him mad and force him to pay attention to her. That was to be the only form of communication Tempest could rely on from Dante- his anger. She knew in her heart if she was not irritating him enough to despise her, then she would be invisible and nonexistent to him. She would never allow that, not in a million years; she would do whatever she had to do to prevent that from happening.
That was how it began, one little nuisance after the other. Somewhere along the way it had escalated from accidents to deliberate, albeit semi-harmless pranks- then eventually, it had turned into all-out war. With Tempest being so intelligent, her pranks seemed way too complicated for a girl so young and usually managed to catch Dante off guard. However, one could expect no less from an obsessive child who rarely slept and spent most of her nights devising blue prints for pranks.
