Free Close Protection by Riley Morgan

glance around his desk. Fanned out on the corner to his right were seven tickets for a chartered flight from Miami to Havana. Ramon counted three times. There were two tickets for Zeus, two tickets for Basil, and two tickets for Andris. There was only one ticket for Lena.
                  “I swear to God Ramon, you do good work.”
                  “Thank you, sir.”
                  “Twenty years I live here, none of my people have ever been so thorough.”
                  Right about now, Ramon was beginning to wish that he hadn’t been.
                  “I have a concern, though.” Zeus said. “These improvements you suggest they’re a little, uh…”
                  “Extensive? I thought so too. If you flip to page 23, I’ve made a list of suggestions. Some of the changes will be rather expensive without yielding a huge increase in safety. Some of them you could put in today and would make a tremendous difference.”
                  “Like the curtains?” Zeus said with one cocked eyebrow.
                  “Exactly.”
                  Zeus considered the report in his hand and looked up at Ramon. He opened up a desk drawer and pulled out the fattest wad of cash that Ramon had ever seen in his life. A conservative guess would have been twenty-five grand, although it could have easily been more depending on how many of the bills bore Benjamin Franklin’s ugly mug.
                  The big man pulled a few thousand dollars off of the top and handed it to Ramon in a neat fold. Ramon did his best not to look surprised by the amount of cash that he was now holding.
                  “Take my sons first thing tomorrow and buy whatever you can get at the store. I’ll have some help here tomorrow afternoon to help you make things happen.”
                  “Yes sir. Anything else?”
                  “You’ve been spending a lot of time in Lena’s room. I trust you haven’t forgotten our conversation.”
                  He hadn’t. He remembered it in excruciating detail every time he thought about leaning in to kiss Lena, or inching his hand over towards hers.
                  “No sir. She’s getting a little, uh, restless being cooped up. I figure keeping her company is the best way to keep her from jumping out the window or walking around too much.”
                  “How are her feet?”
                  “Honestly?”
                  “Of course.”
                  “Pretty fucking gross.”
                  Zeus nodded and looked down at the paperwork on his desk. Ramon supposed that he was dismissed, and excused himself from the office. As soon as the door closed behind him, he collapsed against the wall and took a deep breath. His chest felt like it was going to collapse, it was hard to breath, his head was spinning.
                  Something was very fucking wrong in this house, and he wasn’t going to stop until he figured out what it was.
     

Lena
                  Lena was sad to see how bad Ramon looked when he stepped into her bedroom. He’d just finished with another meeting with her step-father.
                  “How’d it go?” she asked.
                  “Better than the rest of them.”
                  “Why are you so shaken up, then?”
                  “I don’t know,” Ramon lied. “These improvements, they’re going to be a lot of work. I’m just stressed about them I guess.”
                  The half truth was enough to satisfy Lena.
                  “Guess where we’re going for vacation.” she said.
                  “Kansas City.”
                  “Very funny, funny guy. No, it’s worse than that.