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."
