“You want to put her to work?” Dad asks. “She’s seen too much already.”
“Fuck no,” Harper says. “I’m not doing this shit. This is what fucked up my mom.”
“It’s either get to work or you don’t walk out of here,” Dad says, raising the gun again. “We’re on a tight deadline here, thanks to you sticking your nose where it don’t belong.”
Harper just shakes her head slowly back and forth, staring at me with a look that slices me wide open. “I can believe Baron’s responsible, but you, Royal? Why are you doing this? You’re putting all this on the streets?”
“Somebody’s going to do it,” I say. “If it’s not us, it’s the Disciples or the Crossbones.”
“You don’t have to obey your father.”
“Family business, sweetheart,” I say, shaking the hoop on the surface of the table to kick out any extras. It’s designed to fit exactly one hundred pearls when they’re one layer thick. I slide it into a bag, depositing the pearls, then start over.
Harper swallows and looks back and forth between me and Dad. “What does he have on you?” she asks. “Is this the trade-off for not working at the Hockington?”
“Shut your mouth and move your hands,” Dad says, shoving a roll of tape into her hands. “Those boxes are ready to go. Get ‘em packed tight.”
I toss another bag into the box at my feet and kick it her way. “Add that one.”
“This is fucked up,” she says, shaking her head and staring at the stainless-steel tubes and chambers around the room, Baron’s own design, an intricate system worthy of Rube Goldberg. Usually, we’re not the ones packing our own product, but then, usually the mall’s owner isn’t hunting the halls of the abandoned mall, looking for us.
I glare at her, willing her to obey. She doesn’t know how dangerous my father is, but I do. He waves the gun at her, but she doesn’t move until he takes the safety off. Then she grabs the tape and runs a strip along the top of the first box.
“So, this is your drug empire,” she says. “Is this the real reason you wanted the mall? Was the casino even real?”
“It was going to be,” I say, not wanting her to think I’m a lying sack of shit. At least not more than she already does.
“This is more profitable, though,” Dad says, finally getting back to work. He circles the table to keep Harper in front of him, so he can watch her, and I can watch his back. “No expenses or permits needed, either.”
“Yeah, well, the Delacroixs are about to find you,” she says. “And then your little operation will be done.”
She’s silenced when I tilt the pan to let another batch roll down the chute, the sound drowning out any chance at conversation as the beads rush over the metal and onto the surface of the table.
“If the Delacroixs come this way, we’ll get rid of them,” Dad says. “That’s why I have a gun here.”
He pats the Glock on the table beside him and then goes back to packing.
Harper’s eyes go wide, and she increases her pace, quickly running three lines of tape over the boxes before pushing them against the wall. “You’re going to kill them?” she asks.
“The blood will be on your hands,” he says. “You brought them here.”
“They won’t come down here,” I assure Harper, seeing the stricken look on her face.
“If I don’t come back they will.”
“I’ll text them,” I say, pulling out my phone.
Her eyes narrow. “You have your phone?”
“Yeah,” I say. “Why wouldn’t I?”
She closes her eyes for a second. “Of course he was lying.”
Dad’s phone chimes, and he looks at it and then nods to me. “Colin’s here. Go open the door for him.”
I glance from him to Harper.
“Go,” Dad barks.