Prologue #2
“Why you always got to make everything a damn surprise?”
By the time I caught up with him, he already had the door unlocked. The place was empty, nothing but bare walls, concrete floors, dust, and a couple old boxes somebody had left behind. I followed him inside and looked around, trying to figure out what the hell he had dragged me over there for.
“What is this?”
JB reached into his pocket and held a set of keys out to me. “Your shop.”
I laughed because I thought he was playing, but he didn’t laugh with me. He just stood there with his hand stretched out.
“JB, what you talking about?”
“You said you wanted your own spot.”
I looked at the keys again before finally taking them from his hand. “You bought this?”
“Yeah.”
My eyes went from the keys to the empty space around us. “Why?”
He looked at me like I had asked something stupid. “Cause you wanted it.”
That was JB. People could say whatever they wanted about him, but when it came to me, he had always been like that.
If I wanted something and he could get it, nine times out of ten he was gonna find a way to make it happen.
I cried right there in that empty building, then got to work turning it into the shop I’d been talking his ear off about.
JB bought the storefront, but everything that came after that was me.
I picked out what I wanted the place to look like, found my techs, bought products, built the page, promoted the shop, took clients, handled complaints, stayed late, came in early, and did whatever else needed to be done.
There were plenty of nights everybody else went home and I was still there cleaning up or figuring out appointments for the next day.
By my second year, Love-Lee was making enough money that I could’ve paid JB back for what he spent on the building. I tried more than once, but he wouldn’t take it.
“I’m serious, JB. Take the money.” I held the envelope out to him.
He looked at it but didn’t reach for it. “For what?”
“For the building.”
“What about it?”
I stared at him. “You know what the fuck I’m talking about.”
“Lee, I bought that for you.”
“And I appreciate it, but I don’t want to owe you.”
His face changed a little at that. “You don’t owe me.”
“Then take the money.”
“Nah.”
I pushed the envelope closer to him. “JB.”
He leaned back like that settled it. “I said nah.”
I went back and forth with his hardheaded ass until I finally got tired of talking. So yeah, when people said JB bought me my shop, technically they weren’t lying. He bought the building, but I was the one who turned it into Love-Lee, and five years later, every chair in the place was full.
I sprayed my table with disinfectant, wiped it down, and called my next client over.
Outside, a black SUV rolled slowly past the storefront.
I barely paid it any attention. With the shop packed the way it was, I figured somebody was looking for somewhere to park.
Then another one passed a few seconds later, followed by a third.
One of the girls looked through the front window. “Damn, what’s going on out there?”
“Probably somebody got pulled over,” another tech answered without looking up.
That was enough of an explanation for everybody, including me. We went right back to work like nothing was happening. A minute or two later, Hannah, one of my nail techs, walked over and handed me a cupcake with a sparkler sticking out of the icing.
“Happy anniversary, boss.”
I laughed as I took it from her. “You trying to make me fat?”
Before she could answer, the front doors exploded inward. Men and women in black tactical vests rushed inside with guns drawn, and the whole shop went from loud as hell to complete confusion in seconds.
“Federal task force! Nobody move!”
My brush slipped out of my fingers and splashed monomer across the towel underneath my client’s hand. Somebody screamed, one customer dropped straight to the floor, and one of my nail techs started crying before anybody had even touched her.
“What the hell is going on?” I yelled.
Agents rushed past us toward the back of the shop.
“My office back there! What are y’all doing?”
Nobody answered me. One of them slammed something heavy into the storage-room door, cracking the frame on the first hit.
He swung again, then again, until the door flew open.
I stood there watching because none of this made any damn sense.
There wasn’t anything illegal back there.
My licenses were straight, my taxes were paid, and every bottle, receipt, invoice, everything connected to Love-Lee was clean.
Then one of the agents swung straight through the sheetrock between two studs, sending pieces of drywall all over the floor.
“What the fuck are they doing?” I whispered.
He hit the wall again, knocking out enough of it for another agent to reach inside.
When his arm came back out, he was holding a vacuum-sealed brick.
For a second, I didn’t know what the hell I was looking at.
Then another brick came out, followed by another.
Somebody dragged out a duffel bag, unzipped it, and started pulling out stacks of cash bundled tight with rubber bands.
I couldn’t move. All I could do was stare at the hole in my wall and everything they kept pulling out of it.
JB had his life and I had mine. I knew what he did.
I wasn’t stupid, and I knew exactly why my mama had spent years warning me about him.
I just never thought any of that would touch Love-Lee.
He knew what this place meant to me. He knew how hard I had worked for it, and I couldn’t make myself believe he would bring that shit here and hide it inside my walls.
A rough hand closed around my arm. “Leona Davis?”
I barely heard him before my arms were pulled behind my back and cold metal snapped around my wrists.
“You’re being detained.”
“For what?” I tried to turn around. “I don’t know what that is! I don’t know where that came from!”
Nobody listened. An agent walked past carrying another brick and dropped it onto my manicure table right beside the Swarovski crystals I’d been using less than a minute ago.
Pink anniversary balloons were still floating near the ceiling while bundles of cash and bricks of cocaine covered the table underneath them.
The cuffs dug into my wrists as I stood there watching them keep pulling shit out of my walls.
Five minutes earlier, I had been taking pictures of a fresh set and celebrating five years of the business I built.
Now federal agents were tearing that same business apart while I tried to understand how any of it had gotten there.
I didn’t know it then, but the second those cuffs clicked around my wrists, five years of my life were already gone.