They Gave My Cousin a Car, I Built an Empire novel · Chapter 21 of 24

Chapter 21: Twelve Signs

By Saturday morning, I owned twelve more stores.

The chain that had offered to buy me had closed its Ohio region in the spring.

Its lender sold the leases to the one bidder who promised to keep the staff, and that was me.

The credit union loan officer had signed the last page herself, with the plant on her desk and a very large pen.

Now twelve sign crews stood in twelve parking lots across the state, waiting for one text from me.

I was in the lot of the Kettering store, on the corner of Wilmington Pike.

It was the first of the twelve, and the only one with a camera crew.

A white van with a Channel 7 dish was parked at the curb.

Ben stood on an overturned crate with the same megaphone from the move, and a crowd of about two hundred people had gathered around him.

"Twelve signs go up at noon!" he said. "If you're holding a ladder, hold it like you love it!"

Two hundred people laughed.

I saw the retired teacher in the front, the man from the treat aisle, and the rescue coordinator with the whole van of volunteers in matching sweatshirts.

The loan officer was in a folding chair at the back, wearing a hat.

The man in the gray suit stood at the edge of the crowd with his hands in his pockets.

I went over to him.

"I thought you worked for them," I said.

"I used to," he said. "They let me go on Tuesday. They let everyone go on Tuesday."

"I'm sorry."

"No, you aren't."

"A little."

"Everybody sells," he said. "That's what I told you. I'm still trying to work out why you didn't."

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