Dietrich
Something pulls me out of sleep with a jolt, and for a moment I lie, listening and staring, wondering if this is it and hoping it isn’t.
No sound of breathing, no sound of a gun being drawn back, no voice telling me to get the fuck out of bed. Just silence.
Deciding I must have imagined it, I reach out to the other side of the bed for her, and hit nothing but air.
She’s gone. But where? To the bathroom?
“Hannah?” I call out, but get only silence back. I raise my voice a couple of decibels. “Hannah?”
My heart starts to thunder as I push the sheets aside, standing naked in the dark. I flick on the bedside lamp and see nothing. No sign of her.
Her clothes are gone from the floor, her shoes missing from by the door.
I rush to the bathroom and throw open the door, but I already know what I’m going to see. Nothing but darkness.
It’s then that I spot the cell phone I gave her along with the necklace and a note on the writing table.
Mr. Belotti,
Thank you for making me feel special, and like a dumbass. I told myself I’d be honest so, I loved being with you. Being Jamie was fun and sexy and I don’t believe in regret so I’ll figure out the lesson in all of this someday.
I know it has to come to an end, and I understand my part in screwing things up. Note to self…don’t have sex up against windows. It’s messy in more ways than one.
So, yeah, you got a text confirming your flight to Grand Cayman. Don’t forget your sunscreen. You’re a pretty pale guy.
I’m taking your jacket because it’s cold outside and in all the stuff you bought for me there was no coat and I don’t want any of it anyway. I think it’s best if you don’t contact me.
Your pretend daughter for a minute,
Hannah
I let out a howl of rage as I cross the room, picking up my phone and looking at the text message blaring out on the lock screen. Confirming my booking on a one-way private flight to the Cayman Islands.
One. Ticket. Today.
Fuck.
I’ve never pulled my clothes on faster. I rush out of the room like a madman, thumping the elevator button for the lobby so hard it cracks the plastic.
It’s all a mess. I couldn’t explain to her what I was doing, because I would have been forced to tell her everything, all about the work I did for the Albanians, all about how I screwed up their business model when I found out they were smuggling humans like cattle.
All about the fact they’ll kill me if I don’t get this deal done.
I couldn’t put all that on her.
But now she thinks I was going to run. Without her. And I’m not sure which is worse.
“I need a car.” I slip the security guard outside the front door a hundred bucks. “Like now, man.”
He shrugs. “I’ll call for one. You want an Uber or a limo?”
“Man, I need a car,” I implore, my voice near pleading, which I wasn’t sure I knew how to do. “It’s about a girl.”
He stares at me for a beat, then nods, reaching into the inside pocket of his jacket and hands over a key on a silver chain. “Been there, man. Been there. Take mine. It’s a piece of shit, but it will get you where you’re going. Just get it back to me by six, okay? It’s all I got.”
I pull out my phone. “You got Cash App?”
He nods, snapping his tongue along his top teeth. Then gives me his Cash App ID.
I tap my screen, then shove my phone back in my pocket. “That should do it. I won’t have time to bring your car back, get yourself something nice.”
He pulls out his cell and does a double take when he looks at the screen.
“Allllright, man.” He hisses on a nod, holding out a fist for me to bump. “Go get your girl, man. It’s the burgundy Buick LaCross. You gotta stomp the gas to get it to start.” He raises his hand, pointing toward the elevator to the left. “Sub level four, section 8. Gate will open when you pull up.”
I nod a thank you and break into a run.
What feels like hours, but is only a few seconds later, I throw open the door to the old Buick with blue and black duct tape holding up the driver’s side window and slide in, stomping the gas twice then turning the key.
It’s sputters to life, coughing and testing my fucking patience but eventually, the engine smooths and thank fuck, cool A/C blows from the vents.
The sun is just peeking up over Red Rock and for a second the world stops.
I had twenty-four hours of perfection with her.
She looked at me like I meant something.
She played with me in the sweetest and most deviant ways without judgment.
There’s no fucking way I won’t bring the most important deal of my life home.
I’ve never lost anything I wanted before and I’m not going to lose the one thing I really want now.
The car heaves and lurches down Las Vegas Blvd. as I pull out my buzzing phone. It could be her, she could have gotten my number from Greg…
That bubble bursts. It’s an unknown number but I’m pretty fucking sure who it is. I’m also sure I know what he’ll be calling for. An update. I have to think fast.
“These things take time, Zeneli. You want results, you’ll leave me the fuck alone for another forty-eight hours.”
Will that be enough time to grab Hannah and get out of Vegas?
There’s a light chuckle. “Mr. Belotti… This is Bill Glover.”
I don’t have time for this. If he’s going to try to shame me over fucking my daughter against the window, fuck him. Jealous motherfucker. He can go fuck himself with a scalpel.
My fingers shake as I go to end the call and hear him say, “I want to continue our conversation. I’d like for you to arrange the meeting with your people and I’ll set it up with mine. I tried to find you this morning but apparently, you left in some haste last night.”
I bring the phone back to my ear. “Yeah? Pretty sure ole Margaret there gave you an earful.”
“Made my day,” he laughs. “Made my fucking day. Mr. Belotti, I don’t care who you fuck, family or not, this is Vegas for fuck sake, but I do love that it got Margaret Malcolm’s panties in a twist. She’s a fucking pain in the ass who happened to be married to one of my best friends and my business partner.
I’ve got her under control, she’ll come through with her part of the financing.
I made sure I got her name on the dotted line already. ”
“You want to go ahead with the deal?”
“I want my problem solved. You offer something no one else has. I don’t care where your people find their staffing, I just care that they bring it in like you said. Under budget and without the usual bullshit.”
“Done.”
“Put us all together in the same room next week. You name the place.” There’s a pause, then, “One other thing… Is Jamie really your daughter?”
That question hits me hard in the heart.
In my deviant mind, yes, she’s my daughter. She’s also going to be my wife and my fucktoy until the end of time. But, until I can get her far away from here where we can never look back and no one will ever come looking for me or mine, I need to play this out right.
“Naw. She’s nobody. Just a girl for hire. I don’t have any family. Or friends. It was all business.”
“I respect that. You played that well until you decided to nail your fake daughter up against the window.”
“Yeah, well, I live dangerously. Next week we’ll put the ink on this deal and you and my people can take it from there.”
I hang up and call Zeneli, my heart thundering with each second until he answers.
“We’re set. Next week, get your people ready. I put you guys together, what happens from there, it’s on you.”
This is it. I’ve got an ace in the hole and everything I never knew I wanted is falling into place.
Now, I just have to keep Hannah on the down low until I can get us out of here.
I hate that she’s suffering, thinking I was going to leave, but right now that’s working in my favor.
I’ll take that flight myself, get our new life set up, fly back, finalize the deal between Glover and Zeneli, shake hands, disappear with my daughter—and her sister if she wants to come—and fucking live happily ever after in paradise.
Simple. Right?
Right?
***
A crackling voice on the plane’s intercom breaks through my lusty Hannah daydream. “The seatbelt sign has been turned on,” the flight attendant announces as the small commuter plane jostles in the turbulence. “Please return to your seats.”
There’s a bump and a few concerned yelps from around me but I’m focused out the window at the gray streaks of clouds. Leaving Hannah has me twisted in a way I could have never imagined before two days ago.
Eating is impossible and I thought drinking would settle me, but it only heightened the crushing fear that she’s back in Vegas alone. Sure, this is the right play, but sometimes doing the right thing is fucking hard.
My trip to Cayman has two goals.
First, I have land and a house there. I visited once, right after I received the signed deed from a lady I semi-conned into ‘selling’ it to me in a classic old tax evasion grift.
She was a thirty something drowning in generational wealth and most of it was going up her nose or into her veins.
I never even fucking touched her, and a week after I took ownership of the property, she took a dive into her backyard pool and never came back up.
Turned out, she didn’t treat her little teacup poodle very well. I didn’t like that.
No one ever questioned her signing over the property to me and aside from one visit to put my eyes on it and set up some ongoing services, it’s just been sitting.
Same as it was when she owned the place.
It’s crumbling, it needs some work before I can move Hannah in, but the foundations are all there.
It’s a solid property on a large plot and it will be a home we can love.
There’s a flash of blue out the window, then it’s quickly enveloped again by the angry sky and the plane lurches to the left. A few carry-ons tumble out of the overheads and a woman is crying and praying in Spanish in the row behind me.
Turbulence in a small plane like this always feels like the end of the fucking world to the nervous or inexperienced.
I barely notice, my dick twitching as I think of sleeping tucked inside Hannah’s constricting canal.
She was so knocked out, she didn’t know I slow fucked her while she slept, delivering another thick round of spunk onto her cervix.
From there, I left my dick in that paradise.
Then, I must have passed out because the next thing I knew, I woke up to that fucking note and knew I had to get things straight and quit fucking around with my life.
So, besides the property and the house, I’ve got cash in a numbered lock box at the bank as well as my anonymous numbered other accounts.
I need to make sure all those funds are accessible when we arrive.
I can’t get her down here then have no way to keep us safe and living in the manner in which she deserves.
It also allows some distance between us in case anyone catches a sniff of a connection.
I play out every minute we spent together. Recounting those freckles and all the times she called me Daddy. All the times she made me laugh. I’m losing myself in this new version of me and after fifty odd years, I finally see a rainbow and she’s the pot of gold at the end.
I’ve always thought happy endings were for suckers. Turns out, there’s a little fairy tale happiness out there for us all.
I reach into my pocket and withdraw my phone. Tapping the screen and pulling up the single photo I took of her while she slept. Her lips are slightly open, and her hair is a wicked mess around her pink cheeks but she looks like a fucking doll.
I’ve never taken a picture of anyone on my phone unless it had to do with work.
This picture is personal.
I stare at it for a long moment, a softness settles in around my heart and I think of the possibility that I’ve got my spawn cooking in her hot little womb right now.
I could be a father…
Boom.
The pressure behind my eardrums pops and a loud screeching sound tears through the inside of the plane along with a chilling woosh of air.
The lady behind me screams as an ear-splitting cracking sound shakes the plane.
The flight attendant on the intercom is barely audible above the roaring wind that’s coming in from the rear of the plane: “Brace for impact! Seat belts on. Heads down. May God be with us all.”