Dietrich
As the private jet hums around me, approaching Henderson, I have no fear. How many people in the world have survived a plane crash then went down in another one?
The odds are so minuscule I’d lay my bet down on never again.
I rub the spot above my eye where the pain never seems to stop. The rough skin reminds me that not only do I have a new name, I have a new face. Which, doesn’t bother me. I never cared what I looked like.
From an aesthetic standpoint, I understand it’s less pleasing with the hard, stretched, thicker skin where the burns healed, and the jagged reminder that they basically had to staple what was left of my mangled forehead back onto my cracked skull.
It’s not without its downside though. Splitting your head open and breaking sixteen bones leaves some aches behind that no amount of Advil will soothe.
I’ll suffer. I won’t medicate with anything that would dull my senses. I need them all to make things right.
Out of the fire comes the phoenix, as they say, and somewhere in the hospital, in those months where my memories were a black hole, I rose.
When I came out of the coma, the hospital staff gave me the three things found on my person when they brought me in barely alive.
The first was a ruby ring and matching choker I had in a box in my pocket when they found me in the wreckage.
The ring was my mother’s, the one she gave me when she died, and I take it everywhere I go and the choker, well, once I remembered on whose neck that belonged, I was hell bent on putting it back there.
And the other was a folded scrap of paper with a note, from who I wasn’t sure.
I owe you, man. Whatever you need.
Then a phone number.
It took months for my rehab to have me walking again and able to hold my fucking spoon myself. But, that ring kept me going. There was something about it that told me it was the key to everything.
Then, one morning when I was strong enough, one of the staff walked with me down to the beach.
I stood there, the ocean breeze lashing around my robe as I fingered the ring in my pocket.
As I withdrew it, the sun caught in the center of the stone, flashing a streak of red across my vision, and I said her name.
Hannah.
From there, a deluge of memories overwhelmed me.
There are still some gray fuzzy areas where details are lost and times and places don’t make sense, but my focus was clear.
I dialed the phone number on the note, but it wasn’t Hannah.
It was someone else, someone I didn’t expect, but someone who it turns out owes me. Just like the note said.
I don’t like favors. Giving or receiving. But I’ll bend all my rules for Hannah. I needed a plane. Even in Grand Cayman, chartering a plane without ID proved beyond the resources I had at my disposal.
“Mr. Georgio,” the captain’s voice comes through the intercom in the bedroom. “Please retake your seat at your earliest convenience. We’ll be landing in Las Vegas in thirty minutes.”
It feels strange to be called by a different name, now that I remember my real one. Dietrich Bellotti. Or, I guess that never was my real name either. It was an alias, a fucking amazing deep fake alias, but still. Not the name on my birth certificate. The identity I left behind decades ago.
The new one I created is part of them both. My mother’s last name and my old first name. Seemed fitting.
I’m headed back to reclaim my life. Or, the only part of it that matters. I’ve got a new life set up in Cayman with a house and all the money I’ll ever need to provide for her. Only problem, that voice attached to the phone number gave me some bad news. The whole fucking thing fell through.
They can do what they like with me, if they can find me.
But if they harm a single fucking hair on Hannah’s head, hell will be a vacation compared to what I’ll do to them.
***
Two hours later, my limo pulls up outside the rundown old house, parking down the street as I watch through my binoculars.
It’s more of a shithole now than a year ago, with its cracked concrete driveway, the beat-up old Cadillac and the expanse of tan dirt for a front yard.
I hate that she’s been here without me. I hate myself.
For what, I’m not sure, but I fucked something up. I feel it in my bones.
I watch her come out of the door, making my heart seize. She’s wearing a too fucking short black skirt, a tight white sleeveless button up shirt with a black bow tie. Her blonde hair swirls around her shoulders and my dick is hard.
Hard. Hard. Hard.
It’s eleven o’clock. Third shift at the casinos.
I’m not ready to show myself so I tell the driver to follow as her Cadillac pulls out of the drive. We hang back as she takes a couple of turns, heading downtown, and I watch as she goes into a shitty old casino three blocks from the old strip.
“Wait here,” I tell the driver.
He won’t go anywhere. My benefactor told him to look after me.
Inside the casino, I see her in the bar, and I want to kiss her and tell her everything is going to be all right. I want her to ride my face and flood me with her liquid cunt candy until she remembers who her Daddy is.
But she looks through me like I’m not even there, standing behind the bar pouring cheap whiskey.
“What can I get you?” she says as though I’m the king of this shithole but the music of her voice nearly crumples me to the floor.
It’s rehearsed. She’s acting and I don’t think she even really sees me. She doesn’t meet my eyes. I’m just another sad sucker on my way out of town. “Nothing.” I answer but that’s a lie. I just don’t want a fucking drink.
I slip into a dark corner booth where I can stare at her without drawing attention. God, she’s beautiful. If she’d seen my eyes would she know it was me?
I’m in jeans and a white shirt. Lots of things have changed. Wearing five thousand dollar suits on a tropical island didn’t seem practical and turns out, casual is comfortable. I’m in a new fucking season of my life and there are benefits I didn’t expect.
One of the patrons at the counter whistles, his red beard and bloodshot eyes telling me this isn’t his first port of call. “Hey, bubble butt, another whiskey and have one for yourself, too. Then, come lean over the counter here and show me those tits.”
She smiles, it’s fucking fake but I’m gripping the edge of the table until my knuckles turn white. That smile should be for me. I watch her pour his drink, then throw him a little wink as he laughs, shifting in his seat, battling back a boner I’m sure.
Because I am.
“You’re too pretty for a place like this.” He keeps on, changing his tactic from crude to caring.
“Thank you,” she says on a teasing wink. “I’m just working here while I’m waiting for my prince charming to sweep me off my feet.”
“Well, maybe I could be him? Gimme a kiss and find out.”
She smiles again. It’s fake but I see red.
In a second, I’m out of my seat and my fist connects with his bony jaw.
He goes sideways fast, coming right off his stool as he scrabbles against the counter, managing to stay on his feet.
His fist swooshing through the air, but I swipe it aside, step forward and swing again, feeling my knuckles squish into his eye socket.
“Stop! Read the sign, no fucking fighting!” She screams, throwing a whiskey bottle at my head, but I’m too far gone to care.
I step forward again, grabbing the guy by his collar and hauling him to his feet. He’s maybe thirty, thirty-five, so twenty years or so younger than me, but some things you don’t forget. Like how to be a tough motherfucker.
He throws another punch but it’s pathetic. My fist is in his gut so fast and so hard I wait for the contents of his stomach to spew from his mouth.
“Stop fighting!” She barrels out from behind the bar with a baseball bat.
Fucking temper on my little angel.
I grunt, marching the guy forward, doubled over and groaning, and toss him out into the street. Then I turn, slamming the door behind me.
“Get out!” Hannah screams, pointing the bat at the door as I meet her eyes. “Get out before I call the police.”
I shake my head, stepping forward. “I’m never fucking letting you out of my sight again, babygirl. Never. Not for a second.”
She hesitates as I grab the bat and drop it to the floor where it rolls a few feet away as recognition flits over her features. She knows who I am. “I… told you to get out,” she says, her tone flat but her eyes alive.
“Make me.”
“I… I’m calling the police…” She reaches for the wall phone, her fingers shaking as they settle on the receiver.
“Who am I?” I ask, moving through the pass and behind the counter. The other patrons are staring. I don’t care. Hannah takes a step back, but it’s half-hearted. She wants this as much as I do, she just refuses to believe. “You know,” I tell her. “Who. Am. I?”
“No, I—”
I crowd her with my body against the sink where two glasses topple over, shattering on the floor, and my lips are on hers. The kiss is deep and meaningful, telling her everything I wanted to tell her before the plane crash, before the coma and amnesia. Before I disappeared.
Our mouths know the truth, and she sinks into the kiss, letting me hold her up as I devour her, sliding my hand down to her ass, between her legs, hearing her moan as I press my thumb against her clit.
“Daddy’s home,” I murmur as the kiss breaks, and she shakes her head.
“No. No. I don’t want you here.” Tears crest her bottom lids, and my heart skips a few beats. “You left me. You. Left. Me.” Shock has turned to hot anger, and I don’t blame her but I also don’t care.
“I’m never fucking leaving you again. Come on.” I nod toward the door, sweeping my arm around her waist like a python and squeeze.
She digs in her heels, pulling away. Her eyes flashing with that temper that only makes my dick throb more. “I said no. I’m not going anywhere with you. I’m working. I—”
“My girl doesn’t have to worry about money.”