“No, no. Listen, he told me last night that he didn’t want you working here anymore. I laughed and told him to fuck off, but he wasn’t kidding. I’ve never heard of the guy before, but I guess he’s a big deal. There’s some tough-looking dude and a chick sitting in my office waiting to take you to him.”
“So what, this guy wants me fired, and that’s that?”
“He’s not just some guy, Abby. He’s connected. There’s nothing I can do.”
“Well, if he’s connected, then he can get me my job back.” She pushed past him and threw open the door of Manny’s office to face her chaperons.
The woman could tell Abby was unhappy the moment she walked in the room and did her best to calm her. “My employer just wants to speak with you. If you don’t like what he has to say, then you can be on your way.” She smiled, though she knew her employer didn’t just ‘speak’ to anyone. He commanded and got what he wanted, especially from women.
“Fine,” Abby sighed. “Let’s just get this over with.”
On the way to the meeting, they offered to stop off at Abby’s poor excuse for an apartment so she could grab anything she might need.
Abby laughed. “There’s nothing there I need, honey.”
“My name is Elyse, not honey. My employer plans to bring you to G’s tonight. Do you have a nice dress you could wear?”
Abby raised her eyebrows and used her hands to indicate the skintight, sequined, black miniskirt and tube top she had on. “This isn’t good enough?”
She shook her head. “Never mind. We’ll do a little shopping first.”
Two hours later, Abby sat at a candlelit table for two in the back of a very exclusive restaurant wearing a short, black, designer dress that cost more than she had brought home in the last month. She was actually a bit nervous. Elyse gave her a quick bump of the white powder to help take the edge off, though her foot still tapped anxiously on the floor as she waited.
“Can you at least tell me his name?” Abby asked.
“His name is Bryce, and he is very fond of you. You don’t have anything to be nervous about.”
When her date arrived, she didn’t recognize him at all. His handsome face and neat, cropped blond hair looked vaguely familiar from the night before, though she wouldn’t have recognized him if they had passed on the street.
She had originally agreed to meet him so she could give him a piece of her mind and get back to the club before the end of her shift. As long as I’m here, I should at least enjoy a nice meal, I guess. Abby thought and thought, and determined that it had been years since anyone had taken her out to a nice dinner, despite the fact that she had more male companionship over the past twelve months than any self-respecting woman should see in a lifetime.
He ordered a very nice, and very expensive, bottle of red wine. It was a smooth pinot noir that easily glided over her lips and down her throat, and gave her a warm comfortable feeling. They talked and laughed. For the first time since coming to Sin City, Abby actually felt connected to someone. He asked her about where she was from, how she had found her way to Vegas, and where she was going from here?
Abby found herself half drunk, craving another bump of the white powder, and without a real answer to his question. Where am I going from here? It caught her by surprise. It had been so long since she had given any thought past the next score that when she honestly asked herself the question, she was terrified by the answer: My life is going nowhere.
Bryce interrupted her thoughts. “I don’t know if you remember what I asked you about last night, but I meant it. Come stay with me, keep me company, and I’ll take care of you.”
Abby scoffed. “Why me? You don’t know me at all.”
“You’re different. I knew it the second I saw you a few weeks back. I don’t know what you’re doing on that stage, but you don’t belong there. There’s more to you than that. I don’t know... you looked... lost. I don’t mean that as an insult. You just looked like a child that wanders off at the store and can’t figure out how you got where you are.” He placed his hand on hers and gave it a little squeeze. “I want to help you find your way back.”
Abby looked into his blue eyes and smiled. Something inside told her that her life would never be the same again.
* * *
Dr. Chang Lee was a brilliant mind in the relatively new field of bio-digital engineering. He had originally worked in government research until Robert convinced him that the private sector could pay much more and offer him more opportunity to direct his own research. He had been the one who locked away ten years of Abby’s memories and spent the last couple of hours going about the task of unlocking those memories. He went through the process slowly and methodically while Abby slept peacefully on her back on the bed in front of him.
The room was set up for maximum comfort, as well as sensory deprivation. The patient, for lack of a better term, lay in a delicate balance of natural sleep and medically induced anesthesia. The anesthetics brought the patient to a natural state of sleep, but administered very lightly, or not at all, depending on the state of sleep the patient was in.
As Dr. Lee unlocked her memories, the brain processed them as a dream. Before they started, he tried to explain it to Abby, who had a difficult time wrapping her mind around the process.
“So ten years of memories are going to suddenly flood my head? Isn’t that going to be confusing? I mean, that’s a lot of information at once. How does that work? I mean, I’m not going to sleep for ten years and experience them all over again, right?”
“Think of it this way – what did you do yesterday?”
“What do you mean?”
“Yesterday, what did you do?”
Abby thought a moment. “Well, I had breakfast with Eric, then spent a few hours at a coffee house on the computer trying to figure out how to get here. I met Captain Frank last night at the bar, and then had dinner with Eric on the boat. That’s about it.”
“Alright,” said Dr. Lee with a smile. “You just told me what you did yesterday. You summed up twenty-four hours in about fifteen seconds. If I asked you what you did last week, you might take a minute or two to explain it to me. If I asked you to tell me what you did last year, maybe you would sum it up in fifteen minutes or so. Your memories are the same way. You don’t remember every second of every moment of every day – you remember the highlights. I’m going to unlock what we’ve hidden away for you, but you’re not suddenly going to recall every conversation you had, every meal, or every moment. You’re going to recall the important ones. Does that make sense?”
Abby thought about it. “I guess so.”
“Because you’re going to be asleep when the procedure is done, those scenes are going to play out in your head like a dream. I’m sure you’ve had the experience of waking up from a vivid dream and asking yourself ‘Was that real or a dream,’ right?”
“Of course. Who hasn’t?”
“Well, that’s what it’s going to feel like when you wake up. You will have just had a remarkable dream, so vivid you’re going to say, ‘That had to be real’, and you’ll be right – it was real. It just happened in the past.”
Abby took a deep breath. “Well, what are we waiting for?”
* * *
Abby never returned to her apartment after dinner with Bryce that night. They left Vegas the next morning to go to Chicago, where he lived, and she never went back to the City of Sin.
Life was very exciting with Bryce. He was in the business. The syndicate, the mob, organized crime, whatever you called it. She didn’t know the details of what he did, but he made boatloads of money and saw to it that she was taken care of. They went to dinners, to clubs, and he was always the main attraction at any party – and the parties were endless. She was constantly meeting new people and going to new places, and there was always an element of danger.
She found that the rush of all of the constant excitement in her life made her almost forget about drugs. Biologically, she couldn’t fo
rget about them, but Bryce had sent her through rehab. It was rough, but she came out the other side and replaced her addiction to nose candy with an addiction to an exciting and dangerous life.
She eventually started using again, as it was impossible to avoid traveling in the circles they did, especially at parties. However, gone were the times when she would do a few rails a night and not remember one day to the next. A bump now and then socially kept her balanced just fine.
After just a few months, a Justice of the Peace married them, and Abby committed to spending her days fawning over Bryce. She was at his beck and call for whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted it. Bryce was quickly moving up in the ranks. To the outsider looking in, it seemed he had been extraordinarily fortunate to be in the right place at the right time.
She didn’t know a great deal about the organizational structure of the “business,” but she knew that there was one man at the top: Gaetano Rosso. She had never met him. All she knew was what she heard through Bryce or read in the papers.
Mr. Rosso, as Bryce usually referred to him, had suffered a personal tragedy not long after Bryce and Abby wed. His son, Nick, had been brutally murdered. Nick was someone whom Abby was more familiar with. She met him often, as Bryce was part of his crew.
One night, not long after they married, Bryce came home a complete mess in the middle of the night. His clothes were soaked in blood, and he was mumbling to himself. Abby had been sitting up waiting for him, as she often did, and panicked when she saw him. “Oh, my God! Are you OK?”
He looked up, almost shocked to see her, but also relieved. “Abby, I... I need help.”
She grabbed a kitchen towel and soaked it to dab away the blood from his face, “Don’t worry, I’ll take care of you. Are you hurt?”
“No, it’s more than that...”
They stared at each other a moment while she waited for him to continue.
“I... I killed him.”
She was confused. “Who?”
Bryce stared down at his shaking, blood-soaked hands and whispered, “Nick”.
“What?” Abby gasped.
“I had to Abby. He knew. He was going to ruin me, ruin us.”
Abby stared in shock, unable to formulate words or ask a question. They had just had dinner with Nick and his wife, Angelina, three days ago. They shared appetizers, ate to their hearts’ content, and went through four bottles of wine. It was a great night spent with friends, laughing and joking. What could have possibly happened? Finally, she spoke, “What did he know?”
“Abby, you’re my wife. I need you to know I did this for us. I need you to cover for me.”
“What did he know, Bryce?”
He sighed. “I’ve been skimming money off the top. A lot of money. He knew about it and called me out. He said he wanted to give me a chance to come clean to his old man.” He looked up at her. “I can’t do that. You don’t get a second chance with these people. They’d let me pay them back, then kill me. That’s how it works. I had to make a decision, and... I killed him.”
Abby’s mind was racing. Her entire life was tied to Bryce. If he went down, so would she. Morally, she was conflicted. Nick, despite his line of work, was a good man. Abby had a knot in her stomach thinking about his wife and two daughters. But if Bryce goes down, what would she do? Go back to stripping? Never. I can’t go back to that life.
She touched her hand to his chin and lifted his head so they were looking eye to eye. Her voice shook with indecision as she spoke, but it was the only choice she had. “Tell me what I have to do.”
They left all the lights off in the apartment so no one would wonder why the place was lit up at three in the morning. It was a huge apartment building with two hundred units, but it was safe to assume that anyone connected with Bryce would know which windows were his and take note that the lights were on at an odd time of night.
While Bryce scrubbed himself clean in the shower, Abby brought his clothes in a paper bag into the basement and burned them in the incinerator. They met in bed and rehearsed every detail of the evening many times over. The story was that Bryce came home around nine, they had dinner, and he was with Abby all night. They went over every excruciating detail until they both knew the story inside and out.
What really had happened was that Nick had called Bryce and asked him to meet. They were friends, and Nick trusted him, which was his first mistake. Bryce may have been a friend, but first and foremost he was a sociopath and held his own interests above everything else. They met at a bar way outside of town so no one would recognize them. Despite his position in life, Nick was there by default as the boss’s son. He was still young and naïve, and thought Bryce would do the right thing. He never told anyone he was going to meet Bryce, and never brought any back-up. He didn’t want to ruin Bryce’s reputation; he was a friend. He just didn’t count on Bryce murdering him in his car and ditching it behind an old, abandoned school building.
Mr. Rosso was furious and heartbroken. He launched an investigation when his son was found dead, and Bryce thought for sure it would lead back to him. His top guys shook down everyone in the city and got nowhere. Bryce figured Nick must have mentioned what he knew to someone, but apparently he hadn’t. Mr. Rosso quickly assumed that a rival family, the Patrizios, who had been infringing on the Rosso’s turf, had murdered his son. An all-out war broke out in the organized crime world in the Midwest.
Bryce had, in fact, been in the right place at the right time. He took over Nick’s crew, and over the next several months laid waste to the Patrizio family and anyone associated with them. He endeared himself to Mr. Rosso, having avenged his son and proven his loyalty. Bryce soon filled the power vacuum left by Nick’s absence.
Only he and Abby knew the truth. That fact didn’t scare Abby at the time. She saw herself as Bryce’s only true ally. In her naivety, it never occurred to her that she had actually become his biggest liability.
Bryce went from a glorified thug, the number two man in Nick’s crew, to a position of prominence and power within the organization in a matter of just a few short months. In her heart, Abby still mourned Nick, especially whenever they saw his family. However, she still enjoyed the life that Bryce’s newfound position afforded them. They moved to an expensive condo that overlooked Lake Michigan and got a much nicer car. Well, Bryce got a much nicer car. Abby had no car at all.
When she asked him about getting one for her, he laughed. “What do you need a car for? I’ll bring you wherever you need to go, and if I’m not around, just call one of the guys.”
By one of the guys, he meant one of his associates. One of the criminals who did what he told them to do when he told them to do it.
Abby forgot about it. She told herself that Bryce just wanted to take care of her himself. But really, he didn’t just want to take care of her, he wanted to control her. She had no skills, no job, no friends, and no money. In fact without Bryce, she literally had nothing. She knew his secret, but buried it deep down inside. She made the mistake of bringing it up to him exactly once; pointing out that she could destroy him so he had better respect her. He beat her within an inch of her life, and swore that if she ever spoke of it again, even to him in private, he would end her life.
With nothing of her own, and everything to lose, she cowed to him and did her best to play the part of the perfect wife. She doubled down on submitting to his every whim and lived her life to serve him.
Abby was on his arm at every party and in his bed every night. She did anything he asked, and everything else she could think of to stay in his good graces. Their lives went on like this for the better part of a year before they hit the next road bump in their relationship.
Bryce crawled into bed and was ready to get on top of her and prove to them both what kind of man he was. She hated to say no and almost never did, but that night in bed she had to. “I’m sorry, babe. This heartburn is killing me, and I think I’m going to throw up. You definitely don’t want to bounce me around tonight. I
’m sorry.”
He was pissed. “It’s been a week now with the fucking heartburn? Take something for it.”
“I did. It doesn’t help.”
He got out of bed and started to get dressed.
“Where are you going?”
As he walked out the bedroom door, he just said, “Out,” over his shoulder.
The next morning, she woke from a sound sleep and, on a sprint, barely made it to the bathroom before she vomited.
After a week of this, she went to see a doctor.
Abby submitted to some tests, answered a battery of questions, and the doctor went over her vitals, after which he said, “Well, the good news is that you’ll be feeling better soon. For a lot of women, the heartburn and vomiting let up after the first trimester. Worst case, you’ll feel better in nine months. Congratulations.” The doctor smiled. “I’d say your about eight weeks.”
“What?”
That night Abby was over the moon with excitement. “We’re going to have a baby!”
Bryce was less than thrilled. “Now’s not really a good time for that. I mean, it’s just not a good time.” He thought a moment, then said very matter of fact, “I’ve got a doc that owes me. I’ll make an appointment for you to get it taken care of.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Abby, come on. We can’t keep this thing. We’ll have a kid someday maybe, but not now.”
“I don’t get a say in this?”
They went back and forth for at least an hour. Bryce liked their life how it was, but his job was getting very demanding, and he needed her to be there for him, not taking care of a baby. Abby assured him that she would be a great mother and wife. “Besides, I should clean up anyway. I barely use anymore. Don’t you want me to stop?”
He shook his head, “I just want you to be happy. If this is what you want, I guess we’ll live with it.”
She squealed with excitement and jumped up on him, wrapping her legs around him. It was one of the happiest moments of her life, and she would never forget it.
Escape, the Complete Trilogy Page 37