Holden peeled seven hundred-dollar bills off what was left of his roll and started a tally on the back of a cocktail napkin, because a napkin was what he had and the number needed to exist somewhere other than his head.
Tiger: four hundred, plus two for the handler’s silence.
Baby: three-fifty, Renata’s cut included.
Rolex: six hundred to un-pawn what should never have been pawned.
Cop car: five hundred, paid against a favor Stella had spent, not him a debt he now owed her instead of Metro.
The villa manager’s silence: eighteen hundred, the single largest line item of the weekend and the one Holden least regretted.
Jade’s clean annulment.
The fountain, twice.
Add it up and the number came to just under seventy-two hundred dollars, and Doug didn’t know a cent of it, because a groom on his wedding day shouldn’t have to know what his happiness cost.
Phil thought the weekend had run maybe a grand in incidentals.
Stu still believed his marriage had dissolved itself, tidily, with no help from anyone.
Alan thought the tiger had simply wandered off, the way tigers apparently did in Alan’s understanding of the world.
Holden had four hundred dollars left in his poker roll and a Bangkok fee already promised to Stella.
He capped the pen.
Sat back.
Outside his apartment window, Vegas hummed on, indifferent to what any one weekend had cost anyone.
It had been a good wedding.
Clean.
No disasters, no calls, no security officer watching them with that particular patience that meant a shift-meeting story in the making.
Doug was married.
Tracy was happy.
From the outside, it looked like nothing more than a good time, which was exactly the illusion Holden had spent three days and most of a poker roll constructing.
His phone buzzed.
The text was from Stella.
Small ask.
West Charleston pawn shop.
Tag 7740.
Client needs it back before his wife notices.
$200 if you can swing by today.
He read the number twice.
Checked his wallet.
It was Sunday, the wedding two days behind him, and the two hundred was more than the day had otherwise promised to make.
He texted back.
Address.
She sent it.
He was fifteen minutes out.
The pawn shop was exactly the kind of place you’d expect: barred windows, a clerk with the dead eyes of a man past caring, a case full of other people’s mistakes under yellow light.
Tag 7740 was a bracelet, white gold, decent stones the kind of thing a man bought when he meant it and pawned when he was in trouble he couldn’t tell anyone about.
Holden paid two hundred cash.
The clerk didn’t ask questions. Visit novelping.com for the full chapter.
He texted Stella a photo of the receipt.
Drop-off is the Venetian valet stand.
Black Audi.
Guy in a grey suit.
He’ll know.
He drove to the Strip, found the Audi, handed off the bracelet to a man who said thank you like he meant it, and came away with an envelope holding three hundred dollars.
Gone out two hundred, come back three a hundred clear for forty minutes of driving, better than grinding poker and no harder than knowing the roads.
His phone rang.
Stella.
“You’re fast,” she said.
“It’s a small city if you know the roads.”
“Client’s happy. I’m happy. Two more if you want them. Both easy. Both tonight. Cash on completion.”
A family walked past his car toward the casino entrance, a kid on the father’s shoulders, the mother laughing at something.
They still thought Vegas was fun.
You could tell.
“What’s the pay?”
“Hundred fifty each. Done by ten.”
“Send me the addresses.”
She did.
A jewelry store on East Flamingo.
A gym locker downtown.
Neither one dirty a watch back from a repair before a husband noticed the receipt, a bag someone needed before a flight.
He ran them both in under an hour, no names, no questions, and was pulling back onto the Strip when Phil called.
“You seeing this Bangkok flight situation?” Phil said, no hello.
“Stu wants us there five days before the wedding. Five days, Holden. That’s not a bachelor trip, that’s a hostage situation.”
“He’s nervous about Fohn.”
“Who?”
“Lauren’s dad.”
“How do you already know Lauren’s dad’s name?”
Holden merged around a stalled tour bus and let the silence answer for him.
“I read the itinerary Stu sent. Twice.”
“See, this is why we need you there five days early. Nobody else reads the itinerary.” Phil’s voice brightened, already moving on.
“You in for the group flight? Stu’s trying to block-book seats.”
“I’m in.”
“Good man. I’ll tell him you said yes so he stops texting me about it.” Phil hung up without saying goodbye, the way he always did, like the conversation had simply run out of road.
Holden drove home at ten-thirty with five hundred dollars he hadn’t had at six, and one more flight to pay for that he hadn’t budgeted yesterday.
His apartment was dark and still.
He sat at the kitchen table and spread the bills flat, five hundreds in a row next to the napkin with its running tally, and let himself do the accounting his body had been avoiding all day.
Alan had walked away from the weekend convinced he’d had the best few days of his life and learned nothing at all about dosing his friends with a black-market party favor. Read the latest chapters at novelping(.)com.
That was the cost nobody billed for fix everything quietly enough, and the people you protect never have a reason to change.
Stu had been spared his worst blackout and still spent the weekend braced for a disaster that never arrived, which was its own kind of unrelieved.
Phil had toasted a groom at a wedding that only happened because Holden had spent himself thin to keep it standing, and would never know it.
The pack thought they’d won clean.
From where they stood, it looked like nothing but a good time and that was the false victory Holden had built for them, brick by paid-for brick.
He could see the whole shape of it now, alone at his own table with the lights off and the cash counted.
He’d solved every problem by making sure no one ever had to know there’d been one.
Alan would do it again.
Next trip, next city, next mystery pill from a guy named something friendly.
His phone buzzed.
Stella.
Client feedback’s good.
Two more next week if you want standing availability.
I’m in, he texted back.
She sent a thumbs-up.
He put the cash in an envelope, wrote BANGKOK on the front in block letters, and buried it in the drawer under three months of mail he hadn’t opened.
The envelope was thin.
Four hundred dollars against a fee he’d already promised Stella and a country where he wouldn’t know the roads.
Outside, Vegas kept humming, constant and indifferent, the sound of a million air conditioners fighting the desert.
He’d kept the pack safe.
Doug was married, Tracy happy beside him.
The weekend was clean enough that no one would ever tell stories about the parts that mattered.
It wasn’t perfect.
Perfect wasn’t the job.
Getting everyone home that was the job, and he’d done it, and in three weeks he’d do it again in a country where he didn’t speak the language, didn’t know the roads, and couldn’t call Renata when things went bad.
Three weeks to Bangkok.
He had a napkin, an empty envelope drawer, and no idea yet what waited on the other side of the flight.
He’d figure it out.
He always did.
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TL;DR —
Silver / $6 / 10 ahead
Gold / $9 / 15 ahead
Platinum / $15 / 20 ahead, no weekly wait
That’s it.