“Suit yourself,” she says. I grab the phone from the nightstand and call down to the front desk, frantically begging them to send help soon. They patch me over to the ambulance company who talk me through chest compressions and mouth to mouth, and Janka walks around the room and takes what she wants.
Serafin was right. As much as I didn’t want to believe him, I knew in my heart Janka was trouble. I just never was on the receiving end of her bad side until today.
“Stay with me,” I beg the man who I have never met before in my life. “Help is on the way.”
“I’m out of here,” Janka says disgustedly. “You’re on your own.”
“Come on, do the right thing,” I plead. “What are you going to get in trouble for? You were out on a date with a guy. That’s it. That’s all anybody has to know.”
“You can tell them whatever story you want, love,” she says, blowing me a kiss. “I’ll be nowhere to be found.”
“Janka!” I shout after her, but the door slams, and I know she’s gone. Now it’s just me and the dying guy, and my thoughts are racing back and forth between what the hell am I going to tell the authorities when they show up, and how many more chest compressions can I do before I accidentally crack one of his ribs.
The pounding on the hotel room door leaves me no option but to get up and get this over with. “He’s on the bed,” I shout to the paramedic. “I don’t know what he took, but I think a boner pill? Viagra? I don’t know, I didn’t see him do it. I just got here.”
They immediately run back to the bedroom, and before I can grab my coat and put it on, a security officer from the hotel pushes his way through the door. “I’m going to need to see your ID, ma’am,” he says, blandly but commandingly.
“I’m nobody,” I say. I have done everything in my power to avoid any kind police since my divorce. Just seeing a man dressed up in uniform, gun hanging from his hip, immediately sends me into a panic spiral. I’m doing my best to hold myself together, but I feel like every single shot of vodka I drank tonight is hitting me all at once.
“Okay, nobody, I still need to see your ID,” he says. He grabs me by the arm with a little more force than necessary, and I can see in his eyes, he’s looking at me like the disgraced prostitute I look like. I worry for my safety if I end up alone with this man.
“Please, it’s in my purse,” I say. “You can get it out if you want.”
He rolls his eyes. “Go get it.”
I grab my purse off the coffee table, just as he told me, and I take off running like I’ve never ran before. I run so hard my lungs feel like they’re trying to explode out of my chest, but I don’t stop until I reach the stairs that lead to the fire escape. I take the steps two by two, not looking back over my shoulder even once. I try to convince myself the sound of footsteps behind me are just in my head. When I hit the first floor and push my way out the door and the cool night air hits my face, the adrenaline that got me here seems to vanish.
I walk to the nearest shrub outside of the casino and proceed to throw up on it. I wipe my mouth on the back of my hand and look all around to see if anybody’s watching me. As I pace down the sidewalk, my brain tells me to turn around, go back, turn myself in. I didn’t do anything wrong, I just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Visions of the old man’s blue lips and bulging eyes haunt me almost as bad as the hungry look on that security officer’s face. I need to get out of here now before things get even worse. I need to go home and go to bed, pull my covers up over my head and pretend like this was all a bad dream.
I wave down the first taxi I see and pretend like the security cameras that line the entrance of the casino don’t exist, or maybe they’re broken. Whatever I have to tell myself to get through the night without freaking out in front of this cab driver. I slide in the backseat.
“Where to?” he asks.
My phone dings in my pocket and I almost have a full blown meltdown. I cringe when I realize it’s a message from Serafin. That part of the night seems like it happened forever ago.
“What’s your ETA?” the text message reads. I throw my phone back in my purse. Maybe going to Serafin’s birthday party might be the best thing I could possibly do right now. It would at the very least give me an alibi. If the cops come looking for me, I’d feel a lot safer surrounded by the Kings of Krakow than I would with Janka the flake who got me into this mess to begin with.
I can’t, though.
I know what happens to people who ask favors of Serafin and his men. I just got out of a relationship where I felt like I was constantly in debt. I’m not falling back into that trap again.
I need to figure this out on my own if I’m ever going to stop being such a loser.
“Can you take me to Weilki Gardens, please?” I ask.
He lifts his eyebrows. “You sure about that, miss?”
I know our apartment complex is in a rough part of the city to say the least. I don’t need this man to remind me, I just need him to get me out of here
