The Shade Grows Beneath the Willow Tree

PART 2: THE SCARLET PARASITE
When the Vixen Was the Real Villain

She came in smiling.

Not the kind of smile that softens a room—no, hers was the kind that slithers in first, before the poison follows. A perfect red-lipped curl, meant to look seductive… but something always felt off. Too rehearsed. Too hungry.

They called her a manager. A leader. A “night goddess,” chosen to shepherd her sisters through the sacred darkness. But those of us who were there? Who really saw her?

We called her what she was:

A parasite in pin-up drag.

She was always too busy, she said—too slammed with calls to answer messages, to help the girls she was paid to manage. So they came to us instead. And she kept stacking her checks, whispering to the owners about her devotion, her minute count, her loyalty.

But loyalty, in her world, had a price.

She used her manager access to spy. Watched the girls. Watched who was calling them the most. And then she whispered to those same callers not to call them anymore—to call her instead. Smiling. Smiling. Always smiling.

She redirected calls. She redirected income. She blurred lines that were never hers to cross. And when we reported it? Zeus and Hera shrugged. “She brings in too much money,” they said, as if currency absolved character.

Then things got stranger.

Clients began reporting hacked calls. Messages from unknown numbers. Threats. Claims of recordings. Blackmail. We don’t know who was behind it—but when someone’s willing to reroute another woman’s paycheck to line her own? It makes you wonder how far they’re willing to go.

She once sent a disturbing, deeply inappropriate image involving a child to a client—something no one should ever send. The kind of thing that should’ve sparked immediate dismissal. But it didn’t. It was dismissed. Like everything else.

There was money, too. Not temple pay—but a side arrangement. Hera herself encouraged it, actually—said if managing wasn’t paying the bills, I could offer blog writing services to the other goddesses. And I did. One of my “clients”? The Scarlet Vixen herself. She’d pay me each month… until she didn’t. The moment she was demoted and I stepped into her place, a string of mystery disputes hit my account. My Cash App was closed. No warning. No appeal. Just gone. And with it? Five hundred dollars. A sacrifice I never got to choose.

And when we finally left—when we set fire to the temple and walked away with our crowns intact—we listened. We heard the meeting they held behind closed doors. The way they dragged our names through their soiled holy water. Blamed us for the blaze. Accused Faith’s new company of hacking them, as if we were the ones rotting the temple from the inside.

No, love. That rot had a name. And it wore red.