Betrayal of the Dove - By Capri Montgomery Page 0,1

walked in with his perfectly tailored suit on she thought he was a customer, but he wasn’t just a customer. She couldn’t afford him then, and she couldn’t afford him now—no matter how right he had been with his assessment.

“Wow,” she said. “I don’t know if I should be scared or impressed.”

“Both,” he said. “Impressed that I noticed all of this right off, but scared that your security isn’t enough to keep a rabbit safe. I come in here and I’m fixing everything, starting with that camera system,” he pointed to the little ceiling mounted camera. It was a small, standard black box with a lens; it came with the store when she bought the place. She had done some things cosmetically to the place in order to make it go from baby store décor to a grownup jewelry store. She had a hard time scraping the painted baby giraffes off the wall, and all of the baby bears, but fortunately the décor was one of the reasons she managed to get six thousand knocked off the asking price. She was, after all, the McGregor with the best bargaining skills.

She went to work on the décor the same day she signed the papers. She scraped, she primed, and then she painted, and painted some more. The walls were now a soft spring faux marble yellow. She had hung deep burgundy drapes over the windows and she kept them drawn back during the day. She put in tile floor because tile fit better with the look she was going for, and then she had the glass jewelry cases installed. She liked the natural lighting coming in through the French doors and the two front windows on either side of the door, but she also still needed a good lighting system on the inside. Fortunately, the store came with recessed lighting and not the standard florescent lighting setup so the only thing she had to do was swap out the bulbs for something that would bring a softer ambiance to her store while still providing enough light to show the beauty of her products.

She had sunk every penny she had saved into this place. Eve had helped her out considerably with finances. Just when Alyssa thought she was in over her head; that she had made a big mistake because she couldn’t see her way clear, Eve had dipped into her own bank account to help her. She wished she had known at the time that her sister was using up her savings, but Eve had never told her that. She would never be able to fully repay her for helping her get through the first few months of slow sales and high bill payments. A smarter woman would have opened a store off the Row, but Alyssa had thought this was the best spot. It was one of the safest areas in town. It was the most high traffic shopping area, with an upscale theme where the people who came to shop would drop five grand on a little handbag they only planned to use once. This was the smartest location for what she wanted to do—although maybe not the most cost effective. She had just been so sure it would work out, and it was getting there, a little slower than she wanted. She was still at that point where she didn’t have a lot of extra money to play with. She did have a rainy day savings fund and a three month cushion fund; if something happened and she didn’t sale enough to pay the rent then she would be covered, financially, for a short time. She wanted that three month fund to become a twelve month fund and she was slowly working on it. Some things in life came easy, other things took work. She was a McGregor to the core and she wouldn’t back down. She was going to make this work. That was her promise to herself.

Things were getting there. There had been smooth sailing for a little while, but then a string of break-ins had hit the Row. With the first couple incidents, everybody was on alert, but not scared. It was the third robbery that changed the dynamics on the Row. Store owners who usually walked around with their nose stuck up in the air started speaking to their neighboring store owner. Even if they were competitors they agreed to watch out for each other. And for the first time since she moved in