They Call Me...Montey Greene

Chapter Thirty

WHO GIVES YOU that much money and drives away trusting that you'll show up at some ticket counter for a train ride you didn't even want to take?

Montey was pissed that he was given a new itinerary. Not that he wouldn't have mind going to Paris, the city of light and love as some call it. But the circumstances weren't going to make for a pleasant journey he tried convincing himself as he fished out his phone.

He called his wife Patricia on the home number and her cellphone over and over again netting the same results—voicemails.

Now Montey Greene was cursing himself for going back to that boutique after Paolo entered the store that very first day interrupting the conversation he was having with Alejandra.

Was it boredom, ego, loneliness for the comfort of a female or all three?

Montey was asking those questions over and over when he heard a familiar voice saying, "That's a dangerous game you are playing there groundhog."

He turned around to see Maria coming out of the building with a newspaper folded under her arm.

"Groundhog?" he asked somewhat puzzled.

"That woman...," Maria started to say as she took her usual seat in one of the chairs anchored alongside the building. "With a woman that beautiful the animalistic nature of a man is bound to rear its ugly head eventually," the landlady of the building said as she unfolded the newspaper, and held it up to read so the front page was facing Montey.

Montey didn't know if she did it deliberately to show him the semi-grainy photo of his profile that someone snapped in front of Armani-Nobu during last night's fiasco, or if she even recognized it was him at all.

Maria then asked, "Wasn't it about the same time yesterday that you stepped out of that same car holding the same bag, with the same woman sitting in the backseat?"

"Ironic, huh?"

"If irony is your thing, then yes."

"So you don't believe in coincidences either?"

"What's not to believe? Two occurrences happening at the same point in time, that's the essence of how life really works."

"Now if that Driver shows up..."

Maria peeked from behind her newspaper and replied, "It's still early yet, give him some time...," then ducked behind her newspaper again.

Montey's phone buzzed. He damn near dropped it trying to answer it so fast—it was a text message—

Daniel: are we still on for breakfast?

—Montey sighed, "Freakin'-a," he uttered under his breath.

"Everything okay?" he heard Maria ask him. Though she was sitting right there her voice seemed off in the distance like his brain was at the moment.

"Suppose to meet Annette and Daniel for breakfast."

"And you said you weren't a groundhog," Maria jokingly stated. "No matter, at least she caught up to you."

"What?"

"The young lady. She came back looking for you yesterday evening. Said she had something that belonged to you?"

"Was she by herself?"

"No the big gentleman was with her."

"Bruno."

"Could be. She did not say his name, but that name would be befitting given his physical stature."

Montey paused for a long few seconds then asked, "What do you know about her father?"

"What everyone else knows. He owns Lasprilla Textiles and related companies. Some people suspect him to be in a criminal way, but that's to be expected."

"What's to be in a criminal way?"

"What folks around here say about him. He's rich, powerful, and always has that hulking gentleman with him."

"So a rich, powerful man can't have a friend who looks like a bear?"

"He could. But when that bear has his own set of cubs that follow him around also, in armored plated vehicles no less, people suspect things."

"You know he drives an armor plated car?"

"All of Milan knows he drives an armor plated car. It was all over the media when it was delivered to him."