01
My parents felt for me and put up the money to open a high-end medical spa for me.
But my sister-in-law came in every single day with her clique to freeload on the treatments.
In just one month, she'd run up a tab of three hundred thousand dollars.
Today I finally opened my mouth to ask her to settle up, and she threw a full cup of hot tea straight in my face.
"Family gets a facial, so what? My brother hasn't said a word about it, so it's not your place to squawk."
That spineless husband of mine stood off to the side with his neck pulled in, mumbling over and over that I should just let it go.
I was so furious I was about to raise my hand, when a strange video suddenly popped up on my phone.
The person in the video was me, ten years from now.
Her face was tight with urgency as she sent her warning.
"Whatever you do, don't hit her. She's waiting for you to hit her so she can shake you down for money."
"Listen to me. Sign the shop over to Carly Fox, one of your regulars, right now. She knows the right people and can push the transfer through fast."
"Tomorrow this little brat is going to cause a disaster. Let her walk right into it."
The next day, the moment Carly Fox and I finished the transfer paperwork, my sister-in-law Deborah Dickerson showed up just as predicted, marching in with a dozen wealthy socialites to take over the whole place.
She swept in and slammed a bag worth tens of thousands right down on the front desk.
"Everything's on me today. Bring out your most expensive equipment and injectables."
Looking at the transfer payment that had just landed in my account, even my tone softened quite a bit.
"No problem. Use whatever you like. Don't hold back."
...
The dozen or so women trailing behind Deborah all reeked of alcohol.
"Yvonne, get me every one of your best technicians out here."
Yvonne, the store manager, stood behind the front desk, her face visibly pale.
"Miss Dickerson, several of our VIPs booked their appointments ahead of time today, so the technicians are fully scheduled for now."
Deborah walked around the desk in a few strides and slapped Yvonne across the face twice.
"You don't understand plain speech, is that it?"
"The people I brought with me are somebodies in this city."
She turned and saw me standing off to the side, and her voice shot up.
"Astrid James, are you going to just stand there and play dead?"
"Go. Pour tea for these ladies."
The woman in the leopard-print dress looked me up and down and curled her lip.
"Deborah, this is your sister-in-law?"
"Doesn't look like much. Kind of a frumpy little thing."
Deborah laughed out loud, her face full of smugness.
"My brother's just soft-hearted. That's the only reason she gets to run a place this big."
"Otherwise, someone like her couldn't afford a shop like this in her next life either."
I said nothing, picked up the teapot, and poured cup after cup onto the table.
My phone buzzed just then.
That strange video popped up again.
The me on the screen was sitting in a huge office, a gold nameplate on the desk.
"Don't argue with her."
"This money today, they won't be able to weasel out of a cent of it."
"Leave the cold-storage access card on the front desk. Whatever they want to take, don't stop them."
After I finished watching, I walked straight to the safe and took out the cold-storage access card.
Before I could even set it on the desk, Deborah snatched it right out of my hand.
"Now that's more like it."
"If you'd been this smart earlier, we could've saved all this trouble."
She spun the access card around on her fingertip and turned to show off to the crowd of socialites.
"That batch of imported freeze-dried powder inside, I had my eye on it last time."
"Today we're taking it all out and splitting it."
The moment Yvonne heard that, she panicked and hurried out from behind the desk.
"Miss Dickerson, that batch is reserved for our diamond-card members."
"And some of those products haven't been mixed to the physician's formula yet. You really can't just use them."
Deborah rolled her eyes hard and paid her no mind at all.
"You're hired help. Who are you to tell me anything?"
"This is my brother's shop. I'll use whatever I want."
02
I was about to speak when Patrick Dickerson shoved in through the back door carrying two boxes of seafood.
He was drenched in sweat, and the second he stepped inside he pasted on a fawning smile.
"Deborah, big brother brought you all a late-night snack."
"Ladies, you've all worked so hard today. Have something to eat, treat yourselves."
Deborah slid her arm through his.
"Big brother, you're the only one who knows how much I've given up for you."
Patrick nodded eagerly, then pulled me over to the hallway by the restroom and dropped his voice.
"Babe, don't give me attitude today."
"Some of those women Deborah brought have husbands who pull strings over at city hall."
"That landscaping contract of mine is down to one last signature."
"Keep them happy today, and we'll be living large from here on out."
The same speech again.
Three years of marriage, and it was always this line.
Before the wedding, he gave me everything I wanted.
Then I found out something was wrong with my body, that I couldn't get pregnant, and his whole face toward me changed.
Deborah walked off with the bag I'd just bought.
He said she was still just a kid.
Molly forced me to quit my job and come home to be a housewife.
He said family shouldn't nitpick over every little thing.
He quietly siphoned hundreds of thousands out of the store's cash flow.
He said the contract needed the cash to keep moving, and he'd pay it back soon.
Every single time, he made me back down like it was the most reasonable thing in the world.
I backed down so many times that his whole family started treating me as the Dickersons' personal ATM.
My phone screen lit up.
The future me had sent only one line.
"They're going to make their move soon."
I looked at the seafood dangling from Patrick's hand.
"That batch of product they took cost hundreds of thousands just at wholesale."
Patrick's face fell at once.
"Why are you so petty?"
"We're all family. What's the point of drawing lines like that?"
"Besides, they run their own businesses. Doesn't the store make money off them too?"
"Stop fixating on a little pocket change right in front of you and ruining the big picture for me!"
With that, he yanked the service tablet right out of my hands and turned to press it into Deborah's arms.
"Sis, pick whatever you want."
"Everything's on the house today. Big brother's paying!"
Deborah turned her head, smug, and shot me a taunting look.
"Hear that?"
"Take some notes for the future. Stop making my brother teach you every little thing."
She raised the access card and swaggered off toward the cold storage.
"Ladies, nobody hold back on me today."
"Pick the most expensive of everything!"
03
The cold storage door had barely swung open before they poured in like bandits sacking a village.
Deborah hauled out a whole case of the imported freeze-dried powder and tossed it straight at the woman in the leopard-print dress.
"Take it."
"A single box of this goes for over twenty grand out there. Today's on me. Anyone who doesn't use it is disrespecting me."
Every one of the women lit up and swarmed in at once.
Some stuffed product into their designer bags as fast as their hands could move.
Others tore the packaging open on the spot and smeared big dollops across the backs of their hands.
Then a woman in a camisole came out carrying a box of injectables.
"Deborah, can I get this one shot into me?"
Deborah glanced at the box and nodded like she owned the place.
"Of course you can!"
"How could the most expensive stuff be wrong?"
The blood drained from Yvonne's face. She rushed over to block them.
"Miss Dickerson, that one you really can't touch!"
"That's the Siren's Tears that just came in. The formula has to be mixed by a licensed attending physician."
"If someone opens it and injects it on their own, it can kill!"
Deborah's face darkened. She jabbed a finger at Yvonne's nose.
"Here you come again, ruining the fun."
"My brother's standing right here and he hasn't said a word. Who are you to tell me what to do?"
Yvonne was so upset she was near tears, and she reached out to grab it back.
Deborah's hand came up and struck her across the face.
Crack.
The sound rang out, sharp, and the whole lobby went silent in an instant.
Yvonne clutched her cheek and went down to the floor, half her face swelling before my eyes.
I hurried over and pulled her up.
Deborah folded her arms and looked at me, brazen.
"What?"
"You're going to stick up for the hired help?"
My phone buzzed twice in a row.
The future me had sent a very long voice message.
"The crazier she gets, the worse she'll go down."
"Three years of give-an-inch, take-a-mile. Do not clean up her mess today, whatever you do."
"Just remember one thing. Every camera in the store is running fine right now."
I swallowed the anger and helped Yvonne into a chair at the front desk.
"Go find some ice for it."
Her eyes were red-rimmed, her voice shaking.
"Astrid, we really can't let them mess around with that stuff. Something's going to happen."
I patted her shoulder.
"I know. Leave it to me."
Deborah snorted from across the room.
"What's the act for?"
"I'm taking things from my own family's place, and now I need your permission?"
I pointed at the big screen behind the front desk.
"The system's tallying it up."
"Use whatever you want."
"But we're all adults here. Whatever you take, whatever you use, in the end everyone pays for what they do."
Deborah looked like she'd just heard the funniest thing in the world.
"You hear that?"
"She really thinks she's the boss!"
The woman in the leopard-print dress leaned in and stirred the pot in that snide tone.
"Deborah, your sister-in-law's not actually going to make you pay, is she?"
Deborah tossed an injectable worth tens of thousands onto the couch.
"She wouldn't dare."
"My brother's right here. She takes one cent from me, and I'll have him throw her out of the Dickerson family."
Patrick came hurrying over with a plate of sliced fruit to smooth things over.
"No, no, of course we're not charging anyone. Everyone just enjoy yourselves."
Under cover of setting down the fruit plate, he shot me a vicious glare.
"Astrid, put today's tab on the back end for now. I'll settle it later."
"Don't stand here making everyone look bad."
I didn't even glance at him. I walked straight to the register.
A few quick taps in the system, and I put the running total up on the lobby screen.
The number jumped from a hundred and eighty thousand to four hundred and thirty thousand in an instant.
Deborah shot a look at the screen. Instead of reining herself in, she only got more worked up.
"Fire up the premium ultrasound-lift device for me!"
"And that gold radiofrequency treatment. Power it all on!"
"Anyone who hasn't spent five hundred thousand here today isn't allowed to leave!"
