The Jade Garden (The Barrington Patch Book 2) by Emmy Ellis (latest novels to read .TXT) 📕

They would manage.

During their recent tour of the place, Lenny had shown them into an office off the kitchen and opened a tall fridge with the cord and plug draped over the top. Inside, so many drugs, and they’d scared Li Jun, sending him weak-kneed and wanting to run for the door. Would they always scare him? Or would he get used to them being there, telling himself it was just flour in those bags and dried grass from Lenny’s mowed garden. So much revenue on those glass shelves, so much of a burden on Li Jun’s shoulders.

Still, he’d promised his family he’d bring them over here, and if this meant they’d arrive faster, then he’d do it. He’d promised Zhang Wei he’d make their dreams possible, and he wasn’t about to renege on that. He wouldn’t like what they did, would always feel guilty for selling stuff that could harm another person, but he’d signed on the imaginary dotted line, the one Lenny had casually flung out in the air between them, saying, “Your word is as good as a signature, remember that.”

How could Li Jun forget?

The flat was furnished, everything so new and beautiful, things they’d only dreamt of owning in a spot so far in the future they’d be much older by the time they could afford them if Lenny hadn’t approached them in The Donny. This was pure luxury compared to their previous home. No mould here, no bad elements in the other bedsits, just pristine white walls, the air still scented with paint, a pot of it beneath the kitchen sink for any scuffs later on. There was even new bedding, spares in the airing cupboard freshly washed, and they smelt like they’d been dried outside in the wind. Towels, too, everything a tenant could need. Their meagre belongings found a home in the chests of drawers, the wardrobe. Li Jun planned to fill Nuwa’s with all the nice clothes she’d ever wished for, and he’d buy perfume, many bottles, to place on the dressing table.

She deserved the best.

The three bedrooms were enough so they could finally have children. They’d held off so far—poverty had stopped them. Now, Nuwa wanted to try for them right away. He’d phoned Zhang Wei earlier, explaining he’d secured a takeaway, and his brother, his wife, his son Jiang, and his beautiful daughter, Yenay, could apply to live in the UK as soon as possible.

It was happening. His family were on the way to a better life.

* * * *

He’d been working in the Jade for two days now. His feet ached, his eyes were gritty, and he was surprised at the amount of customers he had to cater for. There hadn’t been a Chinese takeaway on the estate for over a year, so someone had said, and everyone wanted what one person had called ‘a good nosh-up’. He was run ragged, what with Nuwa’s limited ability to cook, but between them they managed it, and it was better than cleaning the office blocks in town until gone midnight.

The dried skin on their hands was already healing.

In a lull between orders, Li Jun glanced through the square opening in the wall at the sound of the bell above the door jingling. Lenny had come in and, far from lifting the hatch and entering the kitchen, he stood on the other side of the counter and spoke to Nuwa, who was folding all the new menus that had arrived this morning. A respectful man, Lenny was, treating the Jade as if he didn’t own it, allowing Li Jun and Nuwa the illusion that they did.

“I need a word,” he said. “All right if I flip the closed sign for a bit?”

Nuwa nodded. Lenny locked the door and turned the sign over, and Li Jun lowered the heat on the boiling rice and joined his wife behind the counter. He picked up a packet of chopsticks they sold and gripped them tight.

Lenny stepped up. “More gear’s being brought here in ten minutes, round the back—we don’t need people in the street or the houses opposite being nosy, do we. I want the other three shelves filled, then you’ll get people coming in and asking for it. Word’s been spread, if you catch my drift, rules laid down. There are code words you need to remember that the punters will tell you.” He smiled. “’Extra salt’ for the coke, ‘extra herbs’ for the weed, got it?”

Li Jun bobbed his head, chanting extra salt, extra weed inside his mind.

“If we start dealing heroin—not sure about that lark at the minute—people will ask for ‘extra brown sauce’.” Lenny propped his elbows on the counter, and they pointed to crispy duck and a portion of chips on the menu beneath the glass. He cupped his face. “I’ll stay here this first time, you know, when the bloke comes with the stash, then you’ll take in the deliveries once a month after that—if you run low, get on the blower to me, texting: More. I want you to deliver the takings to me once a week—in The Donny, Friday evenings, nine o’clock. You’ll hand me a takeaway bag, the dough inside the tubs, a packet of prawn crackers on top.”

“Right.” Li Jun’s legs wobbled—this was too much information at once. Thank goodness there was a safe in the office, otherwise he’d have worried about having so much cash on the premises. They took the food takings to the security box in the wall outside the bank in the evenings, and he panicked every time that someone followed him, ready to steal it.

“Here’s your first grand.” Lenny took a brown paper package out of his inside jacket pocket and, keeping his body facing them, placed it down so no one outside could