Chapter Nine #3
Kristo was still trying process what I’d told him as the car pulled up to a busy curb.
After I paid for the ride and thanked the driver, I stepped out of the car with Kristo’s help.
By now, the storm had caught up with us, and a light drizzle had started to fall.
We hurried toward the awning of the rundown launderette with bad lighting and foggy windows.
“This is it?” I asked skeptically.
“It’s a secret club.”
“What? Like a speakeasy?” I asked with a nervous laugh.
“Sort of,” Kristo said.
“It’s not illegal, right?”
“Not exactly.”
“Oh, well, in that case,” I said a bit sarcastically. The last thing I needed was to get into legal trouble in China of all places.
“It will be fine,” Kristo insisted. “Relax.”
Kristo took my arm and guided me into the laundromat.
Bells jangled and chimed as we entered the muggy, hot space, and a few older women in aprons glanced up at us before returning to their phone screens.
Kristo led the way across the laundromat to a hallway with overhead lights that flickered like something out of a horror movie.
When he pushed open the door to the men’s bathroom, I wasn’t very keen on following. Considering how sticky the floors had been in the laundry area, I shuddered to imagine what state the tile in the bathroom was in. I held my breath as we entered, terrified of inhaling anything gross.
He opened a stall door at the end and stepped into the space.
I followed reluctantly, and to my surprise, there was no toilet or urinal.
There was another door that Kristo knocked on before holding up his phone to a small and barely visible camera mounted in the corner of the stall.
I noticed the QR code on his phone screen. A secret access key?
The door opened, revealing a bored looking man in a dark track suit. He waved us through, but he gave me an approving once-over that made my heart flutter a bit. He was cute in a bad boy accountant sort of way.
The secret club had the most unexpected preppy 80’s vibes. It was very yacht rock, and I wasn’t at all surprised by the Breakfast Club cosplayers on the LED dance floor.
“What do you think?” Kristo called out over a man who was a dead ringer for James Spader in Pretty in Pink belting out a Kenny Loggins cover.
“I think I’ve stepped into a Brat Pack fever dream.”
Kristo laughed and guided me toward the bar that was serving all sorts of 80’s themed cocktails. I settled on a fruity Blue Lagoon and then spun around on the bar stool to take in the decor and enjoy the karaoke performance. “Cheyenne would love it here.”
“Oh?”
“She’s obsessed with the eighties. The hair, the fashion, the music, the movie stars.
She’s a walking encyclopedia when it comes to that decade’s films. She threw the best themed movie nights at our sorority, and not just the usual Molly Ringwald fare.
I’m talking Top Gun, Predator, Caddyshack. Mad Max.”
I smiled at the memory of her wildly popular Beauty and the Beat nights where she paired skincare and beauty treatments with cop movies like Die Hard and Robo Cop.
“I think Rina is in a sorority now.” He scrunched up his forehead as he wracked his memory. “Or maybe it’s some other kind of girl group. Something feminist that Marley dragged her to...”
I had looked up Marley online after that disastrous dinner at my mother’s house. To say that I had been shocked by her CV was an understatement. I couldn’t quite make sense of how she had ended up with Besian Beciraj of all people. I was certain it was a damn good story.
Our drinks arrived, and I took a small sip to test the electric blue concoction. It was so good, and after that horrible business dinner, I craved a little alcohol to take the edge off.
But as I enjoyed my drink, I noticed how tired Kristo seemed and decided to throw him a bone.
“Did you try the Philippines or Vietnam or Malaysia or Indonesia?”
“I went to Manila, Hanoi and Dong Nai. I couldn’t get any interest.”
“Because of the money involved? I meant the amount, not where it comes from,” I clarified. I doubted anyone really cared to do much digging into where the funds actually came from for the shell company Kristo was undoubtedly using.
“I couldn’t even get meetings,” he admitted glumly.
“Ouch.” I grimaced in sympathy. “What about Turkey?” I asked over the electric guitar and synthesizer riffs. “Or Italy,” I added, thinking of the countries that held the largest import shares to Albania.
He made a face. “We have trouble with Italy. Old family disputes, you understand?”
The Raffaelli family? The ones who held my brother hostage for the Beciraj family and held all that money our families had put into a trust? “What sort of dispute?”
Kristo shot me a withering look, making it clear he was not going to answer that question. Instead, he said, “Everyone works with Italy or Turkey or Greece. I wanted something different.”
“Everyone works with them because it’s easy. Everyone knows the rules, the percentages, the parameters.” But, seeing that Kristo was stuck on the idea of doing something different, I offered, “Bangladesh? India?”
Kristo looked up from his Long Island Iced Tea. “What’s there?”
“Fast fashion.” I wrinkled my nose. “It’s terrible for the environment and even worse for the workers—but it can be profitable.
Can,” I emphasized, “and, frankly, you’re not really looking for that much money in profit from the product you’re selling anyway.
” I took another drink of the dangerously delicious cocktail. “Plus, you have Rina.”
“What about her?”
“She has great taste. I doubt she’s wearing fast fashion, but she has a good eye. Get some meetings set up and take her with you. She’ll know which factories are making things you can sell quickly. You don’t want products sitting in the warehouses. Maybe investigate home goods.”
“Home goods?”
“Do you ever get on TikTok?”
“No. Never.” Kristo looked like he’d rather swallow broken glass. “Why?”
“You should check out home organization or restock videos. It’s like an addiction for some people.
Make it easy to click and buy. You could set up some sort of drop shipping scheme from your warehouses.
Run some social media accounts targeting young women with fashion and home goods.
Hire young people. Don’t try to do it yourself. You need to be authentic.”
“And then what?”
“And then you get the business off the ground.” I sucked more of the syrupy sweet blue drink through my straw.
“You can keep the prices stupidly low because you’re basically using the sales of the products as a cover.
Then, once the business is off the ground, you can start using the warehouses the way you intended all along. ”
Kristo made eye contact, silently daring me to say it.
I rolled my eyes. “You know exactly what I mean. You need a legit business to launder money and also to serve as a cover for the imports and exports from the warehouses.”
“Just like that, huh?”
I shrugged. “It’s not the business I would get into, but if it’s what you’re wanting to do, that’s how I would do it.”
“What business would you get into?”
“With tariffs and global political uncertainties, I would stay far away from anything that requires me to buy, store and sell an actual physical product.” I considered the puzzle before me.
“Do you have the specs for your property? Warehouse size, infrastructure, power, access to and from the port, stevedore contracts, unions, what cargo can and can’t be stored there? ”
Kristo grinned. “Now, I see why Luka is so obsessed with you.”
I rolled my eyes and tried not to think about why my heart was beating faster suddenly. “He’s obsessed with hating me.”
Kristo laughed. “They should have arranged for you two to marry instead.” He scratched at his jaw. “I can’t understand why they didn’t. You’re the oldest. He’s the oldest. It makes sense.”
“Nothing that happened back then made sense,” I argued. “And, anyway, Luka is a prize, and my mother was never going to let me win anything. Luka is a king. Dafina is her princess, and she’s the one meant to be a queen. Not me. Never me.”
“Well, I think it would have been more interesting if it had been you. I would have loved watching those fireworks.”
“Luka and I would kill each other before the honeymoon ended,” I grumbled.
“From all the wild sex? Yeah. Probably.”
I scowled at Kristo. “You’re gross.”
“And you’re in the wrong business.”
“Hardly!”
“Trafficking is in your blood. The black market is where you belong.”
“Not a chance in hell,” I shot back with disdain. “I left all of that behind when I was exiled from my home by your family.”
“But you’re coming home for the wedding.”
“I’m visiting Albania for a few days to support my sister,” I corrected.
“I didn’t think you two were very close. Not after you left to live in Dallas with your stepfather,” he clarified.
“We’re getting closer again.” Ever since the horrible engagement dinner, we had spoken every single day. It was usually just a few lines of text, but it was a nice change in our normally cold relationship.
“You nearly drove our family lawyer to a heart attack with all the back and forth on that marriage contract,” Kristo teased.
“It was downright rotten and dirty of Luka to give that garbage contract to Dafina,” I snapped.
“To be fair, he never looked at it before it was sent out to your sister.”
“Are you serious?”
Kristo shrugged. “It wasn’t a priority for him.”
“So who approved it?”
“Might have been me.”
I scowled at him. “Y’all should be embarrassed at the way you run things.”
“Y’all?” he repeated with amusement. “My god, you really did go native in Texas.”
“I’m as Texas as bluebonnets and chicken fried steak.”
“You’re shquiptare. You always will be.” Kristo took another drink and then turned to me with an unsettling expression. “You’ll remember what it means to be one of us at your sister’s wedding.”
I nervously sipped my drink as an icy chill rolled down my spine. Was he trying to reassure me?
Or was that a threat?