He grinned and nodded. “Fair enough. You remember the warehouse from earlier today?”
“Yeah, sure. Lots of boxes.”
“That’s right. I own that warehouse. And I own all those boxes. Can you guess what’s inside?”
“Spatulas. Cooking utensils. You want to start a chef’s store.”
He shook his head and laughed. “No, but that does sound fun. No, those crates are full of pills. Mostly Oxycontin, but other opiates as well. And I need to sell all those opiates.”
“Of course you do.”
“That’s where you come in, little Leigh. You see, selling drugs on the street comes with risks. My guys get caught, I have to pay their legal fees. It’s not as lucrative as you might think. But about a year ago, I came up with an idea.”
I felt dread spread through me. “How do I fit into this?”
“My idea was simple. I find retail space with a legitimate business and I sell pills out the back.” He clasped his hands behind his back and paced across the room. “You see, most fronts, they start out as fronts. They aren’t real businesses first. They don’t have a track record of sales that you can point to and say hey, look here, I am a real business. But if I found a retail spot that was growing and truly selling product, I could use them to piggy back off of, in a sense. And nobody would be the wiser.”
I sat and stared. He came to a stop and looked at me with a little half-smile. His head tilted as he studied me, eyes moving up and down my body.
“That’s where you come in,” he said.
“You want my store?” I almost laughed. I almost cried.
“I want you to keep running your business. But while you do that, I also you want you to run my business. I want you to sell my pills while you sell your shirts. Do you understand?”
“You want to use me as your front.”
“Exactly. I will launder money through your business. Not too much, not too fast, but enough to make it worth my time. You’ll pay off your debt that way, and one day, when we’re all squared up, you’ll be given the option to stay on.”
“Stay on?”
“Continue selling or walk away and I’ll find someone else. But you must understand that from here on out, your business is mine. All of it is mine, forever. You’re being given the option to work off your debt in this manner instead of fucking strange men or getting shot in the head. Do you understand?”
I shook my head and tried to process. For the last few hours I thought this man wanted to make me his whore.
When he really wanted to make me his drug dealer.
“This is crazy. If we get caught, I could go to jail for a really long time.”
“True, but doing time is better than being dead or whoring.”
I flinched and looked away. “How would it even work? We put a sign out front?”
“Of course not. I’ll find the customers and handle that end, don’t you worry. All you’ll have to do is continue to run your shirt and shoes business and sell to my customers when they show up. We’ll work out the details over the next few days.”
I shook my head and stood up. He looked at me with a curious mix of amusement and desire, and I couldn’t tell which one pissed me off more.
“I’m not a drug dealer,” I said. “I don’t know anything about this.”
“You’re a businesswoman. You know how to run a business. That’s all you need.”
“I design shirts. My store’s called Shirtadelphia. It’s not even a clever name.”
He laughed and shook his head. “I know, it’s a terrible name, but it works anyway.”
“This is really all you want?”
“This is it. You work for me, you sell my pills, and we get rich together. Or you pay off your debt and walk away a free girl.”
“You make it sound so simple.”
“It is simple. You’re being held back by fear and by some outdated sense of morality, but it’s simple. We take what we want and we make a fuck-ton of money in the process. I’m bringing you into something big, even if you don’t realize it yet.”
“I never wanted to be brought into anything.’
“Too bad. Here you are.” He stepped toward me and I had to force myself not to step back. “Think about it tonight. In the morning, you’ll have to decide.”
“What if I say yes then I run?” I asked, feeling dizzy with confusion. “What if I go to the police?”
“You go to the police, and I kill you.” He smiled and put a hand on my shoulder. “You try to run, I hunt you down, and I kill you. Or I kill your mother. Either way, someone you love dies.”
I felt a chill run down my spine. “How do you know… about my mom?”