LEAVING!
Preferably on the first thing moving on a runway with wings was Montey's thinking when he entered into his flat and secured the door old school style by sticking a chair under the door handle.
That was ten minutes ago after he'd run into Daniel coming out of Maria's place downstairs on the first floor. And as usual Daniel was his playful annoying self. Trying to get the 4-1-1 on what went down when Montey was M.I.A with the beautiful Colombian chick. Was showing Montey the text with the ass shot attached, and wanted to know if they were slapping skins and all types of juvenile pornographic gossip when Annette walked out of Maria's apartment and busted him. Thank god for wives Montey thought, and when Annette asked if he wanted to join them for sushi at Armani-Nobu he saw his out. He respectfully declined, told them they would do breakfast. But the truth is Montey had no plans of being around for that plate of green eggs and ham if his web browser on his phone would stop acting up.
"Come on. Not now," he said out loud to himself when the Wi-Fi connection was lost.
He was just about to book a British Airways flight departing at 13:10 from Milan's Linate Airport when that little circle showed up on the screen and everything froze. Montey held the phone up by the window—nothing. He tried over and over getting the same results.
"Fuckin' bullshit Wi-Fi," he spewed more than once.
Finally bummed out and tired he plugged his phone up to his charger and turned in for the night.
A tingling sensation racing through Montey Greene's body awakened him early next morning. During the course of the night his subconscious mind had been telling him to raise his right arm, but it wouldn't move. He wiggled his toes, moved the fingers on this left hand, and felt the expansion in his manhood trying to poke its hard head through his boxer briefs from whatever erotic stimuli had invaded his dreams during the night. Still, his entire right arm from the shoulder blade to the fingertips just felt heavy and lifeless, even though it was being supported by the mattress which he was sleeping on.
That feeling of paralysis is what triggered the panic that had told his eyelids to open as the sound of a shotgun blasted him out of his nightmare. For a brief second he thought the warmness his arm was wrapped around was his wife, when he opened his eyes he realized it was nothing more than the body pillow.
He pulled the pillow from under him and now his right arm didn't seem so heavy anymore. Vigorously he began rubbing it simultaneously opening and closing his right hand making a fist several times. The tingling sensation started to subside and that's when he realized that it wasn't paralysis setting in, his arm had simply just fallen asleep. He breathed an internal sigh of relief thankful that the bullets he took in the back five days past hadn't caused undetected nerve damage, which is how he saw himself in the nightmare he was just blasted awake from.
Montey Greene sat half-way up in bed, braced himself with his elbows and forearms. He tossed his neck back and then moved his head around several times until he heard that snap-crackle-sound he was feeling for.
He reached for the phone just as it rang. "Yeah," Montey said into the receiver in a non-distinctive tone of voice.
"Weren't you with that woman from the boutique last night?" was the filtered response on the other end of the line
"Annette?" he asked surprisingly. "What about her?"
"Turn on your television to the local channel," she suggested.
"What?"
"Just turn on the TV."
Montey searched for the remote control finally finding it entangled in the bed sheets. He powered it up to see footage of last night's incident in front of Armani-Nobu playing on his television screen. An onsite reporter was speaking in Italian as subtitles flashed on the screen:
—'For the second time in the span of a week an attempted kidnapping of upcoming fashion designer Alejandra Lasprilla has been foiled by an unknown good Samaritan. Though no bullets were flying across the square like five days ago, some believe the kidnapping attempts are an attempt to extort money from textile giant Juan Carlos Lasprilla. The Colombian immigrant who attained resident status over two decades ago is alleged to head the largest narcotics distribution network in eastern and central Europe with distribution pipelines reaching the shores of the United States and Mexico'—
"Let me call you back," Montey said to Annette as he jumped out the bed.
He hastily dressed in the semi-darkness of the room, the sun trying it's best to peek through the slits in the folded blinds showing it was going to be a promising day when it reached its zenith. If Montey had it his way he'd be half-way to the airport by then.
Then the house phone rang again. He grabbed it. "I said I'll call you—"
The mysterious voice on the other end momentarily froze him in his tracks with the words, "Stay away from the girl. We know who you are. Next time, we will not miss."
"What? Who is this?" Montey demanded more on autopilot as opposed to him really giving a fuck as he was already slamming the phone down again before the last word even parted his lips.
He jumped into his boots. Grabbed the gun off the table, his phone. Threw his jacket on. Slung his duffle bag across his shoulder. Headed for the door.
Montey had no plans, not by any measure of getting shot again and stretched out on the side of some road pissing blood. And he damn sure wasn't going to be rotting away in some foreign jail cell should some woman posing as a concerned citizen decide to flip on him. He also didn't know how much longer he could keep his run-in with bad luck from Maria, Annette and Daniel. The further he got away from them the better. He would explain it all later, they would understand, or at least that's what he hoped.