Chapter 2
The cash drawer held two hundred and thirty-seven dollars. Not enough to cover the electric bill, but enough to prove Second Chances had survived another Tuesday.
Reagan Sadler counted the bills twice, smoothing each one flat before adding it to the stack. Habit. When you'd started with a folding table at the Branson flea market and nothing else, you learned to treat every dollar like it mattered.
Because it did.
Outside the front windows, Main Street was emptying out as the tourist shops closed for the night.
The vintage dress forms in her display caught the streetlight, casting long shadows across racks of consignment clothes and salvage-wood shelving she'd built herself.
Four years of work surrounded her—estate sale furniture, vintage finds, the careful curation of other people's castoffs into something worth buying.
Her store. Her life. The only thing she'd ever had that was truly hers.
The door chimed.
Reagan looked up, the polite smile she wore for late customers already forming—and freezing on her face.
Three men. The first one through the door was big, ex-something physical, with the thick hands of someone who'd done manual work before discovering easier money. The other two fanned out behind him, one blocking the door, one moving toward the back.
"We're closed," Reagan said.
"Yeah." The big one smiled. It didn't reach his eyes. "We know."
He walked toward the register with the unhurried confidence of a man who'd done this before. Reagan's hand drifted toward the counter, toward the baseball bat she'd started keeping there after the third time someone tried to shoplift vintage leather.
"Don't." The word was almost gentle. "Nate Culver. You're gonna want to remember that name."
"Why would I want to do that?"
"Because I'm about to become your best customer." Culver stopped at the counter, close enough that she could smell cigarettes and engine grease. "Mr. Farris sent me. He's got a business proposition."
Reagan's fingers curled around the bat's handle beneath the counter. "I'm not interested in propositions."
"You haven't heard it yet."
"Don't need to."
Culver's smile widened, and something cold slithered down Reagan's spine. She'd seen that smile before—on her stepfather's face, on the faces of men who thought they owned whatever they looked at.
"Here's how it works," Culver said. "We bring you merchandise. Electronics, jewelry, designer goods. You put it on your shelves, sell it to tourists, give us seventy percent. Clean money out, everyone's happy."
"Stolen merchandise."
"That's an ugly word."
"It's an accurate one." Reagan pulled the bat from under the counter, held it across her body. Not swinging, not threatening—just present. "I don't fence stolen goods. Find another store."
The man by the door laughed. It wasn't a pleasant sound.
Culver tilted his head, studying her like she was a puzzle he hadn't expected.
"You know what happens to stores that don't cooperate?
We've had this conversation with two other shops on this strip.
One of them's a parking lot now. The other one...
well, the owner got smart after he spent a week in the hospital. "
"Good for them."
"You're not understanding me."
"I understand fine." Reagan's voice came out steadier than she felt. "I built this store from nothing. Every shelf, every rack, every piece of inventory. I did it legal, and I did it alone. You think I'm going to throw that away because some asshole in a leather jacket threatens me?"
Silence.
Culver's smile disappeared.
"Open the register."
"No."
He moved fast for a big man. One hand caught her wrist, twisting until her fingers spasmed open and the bat clattered to the floor. The other hand hit the register release, and the drawer popped open with a cheerful ding that felt obscene.
"The cash is a down payment," Culver said, scooping bills into his jacket pocket. "Consider it... motivation to reconsider our offer."
Reagan yanked her wrist free, skin burning where he'd gripped it. "Take the money and get out."
"We'll be back." Culver pocketed the last of the bills—her electric bill, her inventory money, three days of sales. "With merchandise. And you're going to smile and take it, or what happened to those other stores is going to look like a vacation compared to what happens here."
"I'd rather lose everything I built than help you."
The words came out before she could stop them. True words. Stupid words, maybe, but true.
Culver went still. The other two men exchanged glances, something shifting in the room's atmosphere.
"That so?"
"That's so."
He hit her.
Not a punch—worse. A two-handed shove that caught her in the chest and sent her stumbling backward into the nearest clothing rack.
Metal screamed against tile as the rack toppled, and Reagan went down with it, vintage dresses and consignment blouses raining down on her, wire hangers gouging her arms and tangling in her hair.
She lay there, gasping, staring up at the water-stained ceiling while hangers dug into her back.
Culver's face appeared above her, his smile returned.
"We'll be back for the rest," he said. "Think about your answer."
Footsteps. The door chime. Silence.
Reagan didn't move.
The ceiling had a crack she'd never noticed before, running from the light fixture to the corner where water damage had left a brown stain. She should fix that. Add it to the list of things she couldn't afford.
Her chest ached where Culver had shoved her. Her wrist throbbed. Something sharp—a hanger, probably—had cut her arm, and she could feel blood soaking into the cotton dress pinned beneath her.
Get up.
She didn't want to. For one long moment, she wanted to lie there in the wreckage of her carefully curated life and let someone else handle it.
Call the cops. Call... who? She didn't have anyone to call.
No family. No backup. Just herself and a store that had been everything until three men walked through the door.
Get up, Reagan. You've survived worse.
Had she? She'd survived her stepfather. Survived leaving home at seventeen with forty dollars and a backpack. Survived sleeping in her car, working three jobs, building a business from a folding table at a flea market.
But she'd never had someone look at everything she'd built and threaten to burn it down.
She pushed herself up.
Hangers clattered. A vintage dress—1950s, excellent condition, she'd priced it at forty dollars—had a tear now, right across the bodice. Ruined. Another thing she couldn't afford.
Reagan stood in the middle of her store, chest heaving, blood trickling down her arm, and looked at the mess Culver had made.
The rack was bent. She'd have to hammer it straight or junk it entirely. The dresses would need inspecting, cleaning, some repairs. The register gaped open, empty except for coins they hadn't bothered to take.
She had two choices.
Close the store. Walk away. Find another town, another life, another folding table to start over from.
Or pick up the goddamn clothes and open tomorrow morning.
Reagan grabbed the first dress off the floor.
It took two hours. She worked in silence, rehanging each piece, checking for damage, sorting what could be saved from what was lost. The rack needed hammering—she found the rubber mallet in the back and beat the rail until it was close enough to straight.
The torn dress went in the repair pile. The blood on her arm dried to a dark crust that she didn't bother washing off.
When the last hanger was in place, she stood back and looked at her store.
Still standing. Still hers.
The empty register mocked her from the counter. Two hundred and thirty-seven dollars, gone. Tomorrow she'd have to figure out how to make rent, how to keep the lights on, how to buy inventory with nothing.
But tomorrow, Second Chances would open.
Because the alternative was admitting that some asshole in a leather jacket had the power to take everything she'd built.
And Reagan Sadler had spent nine years proving that no one took anything from her.
Not anymore.
She locked the front door, flipped the sign to CLOSED, and walked to the back room where a narrow cot and a hot plate constituted her entire living situation. Rent money went to inventory. Real apartments were for people who had something to fall back on.
The cot creaked as she sat. Her chest still ached. Her wrist was purpling into a bruise. The cut on her arm needed bandaging, but she didn't have the energy.
We'll be back for the rest.
Reagan stared at the wall and thought about twelve-man crews and burned-out stores and owners who spent weeks in hospitals.
She thought about everything she had to lose.
She thought about the folding table in the storage closet, the one she'd started with, the one she kept because it reminded her that she could start from nothing and build something worth having.
And she set her alarm for six a.m., because Second Chances opened at eight, and the displays wouldn't arrange themselves.