“What's going on here? What kept woman? Does anyone actually know?”
“From what I heard, this woman kicked the door and busted it, then refused to pay for it! And she got all high and mighty, demanding the salesman get down on his knees and apologize to her!”
“Wow! The nerve on her. She wrecks the store's door herself and then makes someone kneel and apologize to her?”
“A woman like that's been spoiled rotten by some sugar daddy. Thinks the whole world owes her!”
“Can't even cover the cost of one door. You can tell at a glance she's all show!”
The ugly remarks bored into my ears one after another.
No wonder my right eye had been twitching when I left the house this morning.
I'd chalked it up to a bad night's sleep, but it turned out something big really was waiting for me.
Keeping my temper in check, I turned to him again.
“I already told you, your store's automatic door caught my foot. The injury's still right there! And in the shoes I'm wearing today, there's no way I could've kicked that door hard enough to break it.”
“You don't have a shred of evidence that I broke the door, and you're whipping up the crowd to dodge the issue because you don't dare check the security footage!”
“If you ask me, you're the one who broke this door. You don't want to pay for it, so you're scrambling to find a scapegoat to foot the bill for you!”
I had on a pair of strappy sandals today.
Anyone with eyes could see the spot the door had caught was already flushed red.
Hit right where it hurt, Victor's expression shifted ever so slightly.
“That's a load of crap! Melanie Fernandez and I both watched you kick our store door and break it! We saw it with our own eyes. How could that be fake?”
His voice had clearly lost the confidence it had a moment ago.
So, my guess had been right after all.
The short-haired saleswoman beside him, the one called Melanie, started inching toward me.
As she got close, she dumped the hot coffee she was holding all over me.
Then she ground her heel down hard on the top of the foot the door had crushed.
“Quit the act, you fraud! Smearing a little blush on your foot and pretending you're hurt?”
“You'll dig up any excuse to weasel out of paying! I've never met anyone as shameless as you!”
The sudden stab of pain on my foot made me shove her off on reflex.
I rubbed the top of my foot.
Thinking to myself that today was truly cursed, that I'd run into every kind of freak imaginable.
Two salespeople who were supposed to be looking after customers.
Instead, one had opened his mouth and spun filthy rumors about me, and the other had put her hands on me.
What kind of dealership was this? This was nothing short of bullying the customer outright.
Melanie let out a shriek and dropped to the floor.
“All I did was call out your sleazy little scheme, and you turn around and hit me!”
She jabbed her finger at me and screamed at the crowd around us.
“Everybody, come look! Come be the judge of this. This fraud not only refuses to pay up, she's attacking people!”
“She's just one of our manager's toys, and look how brazen she is! Breaks something, won't pay for it, and hits people on top of it! There's no justice in the world!”
Clutching my foot, I said, “Watch your mouth! You came over and stomped on my foot, that's why I pushed you off! Don't go slandering me!”
Victor rushed over in a panic and helped her up.
He asked her carefully whether she was hurt.
Seeing she was fine, he turned back around to warn me.
“You break our store door and won't pay for it, and now you've put your hands on our staff! This is going too far!”
“You're nothing but one of Manager Lawrence's kept women! You really think you're someone?”
“What's this about my kept woman?”
A man with a beer belly straining against his shirt came swaying over.
This had to be that Manager Lawrence.
Victor stammered, caught off guard.
“Manager…… Lawrence.”
He fumbled to shut off the livestream on his phone.
Jeffrey Lawrence looked around at everyone.
“What's all this, the whole crowd of you making a scene here?”
“And another thing, what happened to our store's door? That door's imported, it's expensive. Whoever broke it pays for it!”
