Phanton Drone IV

With pain flaring in my lower right leg, I limped briskly back through the darkness, across a patch of forest toward the narrow road where a pickup waited. Even in my haste, I spared a glance up at the starry dome of the night; here in the middle of nowhere, its majesty was undiminished.

I found the beat-up old truck silent despite my request that the engine keep running. Opened I the creaking passenger side door and hurled myself up beside the shapely female behind the wheel, slamming said door shut behind me. Like myself, the woman was in tee shirt and sweatpants. I could not help but notice the glint of her hanging metallic dog tags. No doubt, she noticed mine.

“We have an issue,” I reported, shivering.

“Where’s the drone?”

“That’s the issue. Turn the heater on, please.”

“What, are you cold?

She might have sounded less incredulous had I asked for a rabid kangaroo.

“No Leticia, I’m not cold, I just like the sound. Turn the heater on!

“I’m sorry Dante, but I’m not burning Jess’ gas just because a grown man can’t handle a summer night on the mountain. Deal with it, just like you’re going to have to deal with the fact that you lost the Phantom Drone!”

“I didn’t lose it,” I protested. “I know exactly where I left it. It’s stolen. Along with my winter gear and camping supplies.”

Leticia huffed and twisted so that her lovely body was mostly turned toward me, and then she leaned forward. It was so dark I could just barely make out her face.

“You know Dante,” she began, “I didn’t mention it before, because we were having such a good time. But I’ll say it now; by removing that highly sensitive piece of world-changing tech from your company’s secured facility, you vastly increased the chance that it would fall into the hands of our country’s adversaries. You get that, right?”

“I didn’t take the drone out of the lab. Molly did. She wanted to show me that she’d cracked the invisibility issue we’d been trying to solve since the project began.”

At the time, I remember thinking it seemed a lifetime since Molly Maguire first showed up at my door, but this was only the night of the fourth day since that happened!

“And as Project Manager – i.e., that woman’s boss -- you immediately returned this priceless thing that didn’t belong to you back to your employer, right? I mean, you two didn’t test a super-secret device in the middle of a public park in front of God and everybody, did you?”

“It… was a private park...”

“Oh? And were only authorized personnel with the proper Security Clearances and Need to Know allowed access to this…”

“Shut up. What’s done is done. I don’t get that drone back, my wife will never let me live it down.”

“Oh?” Leticia responded, “Will she fuss at you while you drive her to school?”

“What?”

“I’ve seen your wife. Like I said, she’s all over social media. I assumed you drive her to school in the mornings.”

It was dark, yet I could swear I saw a little smile cracking Leticia’s face.

“She drives herself,” I growled, “to college.”

“Is she going to college, Dante? Are you sure it’s not…”

“Don’t you dare say high school!”

“…middle school?”

“Will you stop?” I demanded, more loudly than intended. “You sit there judging me while we got a major problem here!”

“I guess we do. Please tell me there’s some Fort Knox level security on that Phantom Drone so we won’t have invisible Nazis flying all over the place.”

“Well,” I sighed, “You need a password to use it. So at least there’s that.”

“You think that’s good enough?” Leticia doubted. “Dante, not too long ago the school where I work had a student hack the system to change grades. He might have gotten away with it if he’d changed one or two, but he changed dozens of grades over a 48-hour period.”

“Kid got greedy.”

“Yeah, turns out he was getting paid a hundred bucks a grade! When we finally caught the little weasel, his grandparents bailed him out of jail, so of course he broke in again and crashed the whole system out of spite. We were doing everything by hand for a week! More to the point, all the faculty, including me the School Nurse, had to survive an Information Security Seminar all weekend long.”

“Ouch!”

“And that’s where I learned the hacker broke our system with a brute force attack. That’s when…”

“I know what a brute force attack is,” I snapped, annoyed. “It’s when you have a computer enter a bunch of random characters till you enter the right password by chance. Yeah, I’ve had Infosec training, too. 15-year Army vet, remember?”

“Do you think whoever took your drone can brute force their way to your password?”

“Well, for one thing it’s not my password. It’s Molly’s.”

“You mean your Chief Engineer who has a crush on you? That Molly?”

“Relax. Molly says a 10-character password has 3.76 quadrillion possible combinations. No backwoods redneck Nazi is going to guess that!”

“Are you sure?” Leticia pressed; eyes boring into me even though I could hardly see them. “Are there any dictionary words in this password?”

“Um… yeah. One dictionary word.”

“And how long is that word?”

“It’s… two letters.”

I found myself shifting in my seat.

“Does this password have any proper names? Surely not your name.”

“All right, cool it!” I demanded. “It’s a perfectly safe password okay, cause we… we got numbers too. Numbers in the password! There.”

“How many numbers?”

“Ah… two.”

“Are those two numbers together in any meaningful way? Like 88? That’s a real popular two-digit number around here.”

“Of course not! See, you got nothing to worry ab…”

“Is the number 42? Because that’s the answer to life, the universe, and everything.”

“Stop it!” I roared. “Quit worrying about it, woman! Everything’s going to be okay. I’ll take care of it. The password on the Phantom Drone is perfectly safe and no one will ever figure it…”

“Nigga, is yo password Dante forty-two me exclamation point?”

I took a long, deep, calming breath.

“We’ve got to get that drone back,” I insisted, “Before the Nazis break the password.”

“The same password I broke in less than two minutes?”

“Turn on the heater.”

“No.”

Another deep breath. Forge ahead.

“You live here, Leticia. Where would Fred hide stolen goods?”

“Dante, isn’t it a pretty big leap to assume it was Fred who took your stuff? Whose to say someone else didn’t find it?”

“My… stuff was on the roof of his store,” I snarled. “When’s the last time you wandered on up to the roof of a convenience store there, Sherlock?”

The shadow of Leticia leaned back from me, and I felt immediate relief. Like her cute little mixed-race daughter, she tilted her head while pondering.

“I didn’t know about the invisibility thing until you told me,” she stated, “But by now, everyone in the world knows that Phantom Drone of yours lets the user fly. If Fred or any of the Brotherhood found that thing, they would all take it to the same place.”

“Where?”

“The Boar’s Nest. It’s the training compound in the woods where the Brotherhood are preparing for the end of the world. I hear they even got underground bunkers out there, in case of global thermonuclear war. The idea is that after the Collapse, they’ll pick up the pieces and establish a Nazi regime over the former United States. After they eliminate the 'mud people' like us, of course.”

“Awesome!” I cried, my heart soaring. “So where is this 'Boar’s Nest?'”

“I honestly don’t know,” Leticia admitted. “This may shock you Dante, but for some reason, the Nazis just won’t tell me where they’re training to genocide the Untermensch. Go figure.”

“Then… how do you know this place even exists?”

“People talk. A bunch of dudes can’t shoot guns in the forest for weekends on end without some information leaking out. Also, Bradley used to be a member of the Brotherhood. And his brother Jess.”

Now it was my turn to lean back and ponder.

“First, you never told me your paramedic coworker Jess was your dead husband’s brother,” I detailed. “Though now I do recall your daughter calling him ‘Uncle Jess’. Second, your husband never told you where this Boar’s Nest was?”

“I never asked. I had no interest in the Boar’s Nest; I sure as hell wasn’t going out there. They’d disappear my ass!”

“I don’t know if there’s enough room in this entire state to hide an ass like yours.”

“Thanks?”

“So… Uncle Jess knows where this Boar’s Nest is?”

“Yeah, Dante. Let’s go ask him!” And with that, Leticia pivoted to face the steering wheel and leaned forward to wrangle jingling keys into the ignition.

“No, you go ask him,” I retorted, “I woke up a wounded, chained prisoner in your shed Mrs. Wainwright, yet somehow, I managed to convince you not to rat me out for the million dollar bounty on my head. I'd rather not press my luck with this Jess guy.”

“Relax!” Leticia assured me, and the old pickup groaned repeatedly, was quieted, and then groaned repeatedly again for an uncomfortably long time before coughing silent.

The driver turned her face toward me and chuckled nervously. Then she turned forward again, and while the engine groaned repeatedly for an uncomfortably long while, it finally coughed to roaring, rattling life.

“Jess is my best friend in the world! Once I explain the situation, I’m sure he’ll help us.”

“Look, I get that you got this guy deep in the Friend Zone…”

“How dare you!” Leticia shouted. “What, men and women can’t be friends? As if a woman is obligated to have sex with a man just because he’s nice to her!”

“Leticia!” I clapped back, “This guy is totally in love with you!”

“He’s married!”

“Irrelevant! You introduce me to this Jess dude, and not only can he eliminate a romantic rival with one phone call, but he can earn a million bucks in the bargain! Come on girl, think!"

“Fine!” Leticia spat, clearly hurt. “But I’m driving Jess’s truck over to see Jess, and he’s going to tell me how to find the Boar’s Nest. You can hide in the truck bed if you want!”

That tone brooked no further discussion, and the driver pealed the ailing old pickup, tires spinning and engine roaring, back onto the winding forest road.

*

We drove in silence for at least half an hour, with Leticia sniffing and wiping her nose frequently. The road was paved, but barely illuminated in the old pickup’s frighteningly dim headlights, and quite narrow as it snaked through the canyon of trees pressing hard from either side. As I recall, we were about halfway to our destination when the driver reached her right hand over and fiddled with the dashboard. Blessed hot air roared out of the vents.

“Thanks,” I sighed.

Her only reply was another sniff.

Just when I thought our night journey would never end, the truck slowed dramatically. I was about to ask the driver “why”, when her actions provided the answer; we were turning onto a narrow gravel track just barely wide enough for the old pickup to fit. Leticia must have been very familiar with the turnoff because I wouldn’t have spotted it in a dozen passes.

We crawled down the serpentine track for quite some time, crunching gravel, when the forest finally opened into a clearing bathed in the glow of tall poled fluorescent area light. A redwood picnic table with attached bench seats, an old hatchback that no one intended to be an offroad vehicle, a battered wooden doghouse, and a mud-splattered ATV were all revealed under that light. But the centerpiece was a rounded little mobile home with skin of gleaming silver.

“He lives in a literal trailer?” I noted. “How redneck can you…”

“Shut up!”

“Right. I’ll lie down here in the cab so they can’t see me.”

“You do that. Wuss.”

“You should leave the engine running so the heater can…”

“No.”

The truck halted and the engine coughed out. Leticia sniffed harshly, rubbed each of her eyes, opened the driver’s side door, and exited the vehicle as I lay down across the bench seat. Then she slammed the door shut with rather more force than necessary.

Lying in the darkened cab, I heard knocking; presumably, on the door of the trailer. There was a creak, and some woman who was definitely not Leticia wailed, “Oh, you have got to be kidding me! Mammy Two-Shoes, you got some nerve to be showin' your mud face around here!”

That speaker was slurring her words; she sounded drunk.

“Darlene,” my driver began, “I need to talk to…”

“Ain’t you done enough?”

“Please, I just need…”

“Jess!” Darlene hollered, “Your bitch is out here!”

“Darlene, I swear your husband and I are not having sex! We…”

“Save it!”

The following pause was uncomfortable even for me, and I wasn’t even out there. But inevitably, a new voice broke into the conversation, this one adult male.

“Tisha?”

“Hi, Jess.”

“Damn Tish, what are you doing at my house? What were you thinking?”

“Jesse James Wainwright!” Darlene screeched. “When I told you to take out the trash, I didn’t mean her. I won’t have you whoremongering in front our young’uns. You want to jaw jack with this painted Jezebel, you’ll do it out here!”

That speech was followed by a door slam. I remember thinking Darlene may well have been a time traveler from the 19th Century.

“Jess!” urged Leticia, voice saturated with emotion, “We… I need your help!”

“Relax babe! We’re almost there, okay? We’re about to hit the jackpot!”

“First, don’t call me ‘babe’ Jess, you know I hate that. Second, I know you want to take… the package to the FBI?”

“We won’t have to Tish; the FBI is coming to us! County Sheriff told Fred that the Feds think Dante Johnson made a cell phone call to his mistress in the vicinity of Fred’s Place just this morning! Can you believe that?”

“Believe that he made a phone call?”

“No, believe that guy has a misstress. Have you seen his wife? Talk about a goddess! Doesn’t hold a candle to you though, Tisha.”

Smooth Jess, I thought.

“So… the FBI is coming here?”

“Yeah, Sheriff says the Feds got on a plane and they’ll be at Fred’s Place no later than zero eight hundred hours tomorrow. That’s great news Sergeant! Now we don’t have to make a road trip to turn Mr. Johnson over to the Feds. Remember, if we turn him over to Sheriff Dunham or any of his Deputies, we’d have to split the reward amongst all the Brotherhood.”

I nearly gasped aloud. No wonder Leticia didn’t go to the police after that football player outrageously assaulted her. What would have been the point?

“We’re not turning anyone over,” Leticia reported, “Dante Johnson escaped.”

“What?!” Jess squealed, choking. “How?”

“Would you believe he tricked my daughter into giving him a paperclip, which he then used to pick the padlock on his ankle and get away? Sorry.”

“Dammit Sarge, you were supposed to keep him sedated!”

“I thought I was, Captain! I used the recommended dosage…”

“Come on Tish, how long have you been a paramedic, and an Army Medic eight years before that? You know the recommended dosage won’t keep down a man that big. And how about you lock your damn shed so a six-year-old can’t get in it?”

“I did lock it,” Leticia hissed, an edge to her voice. “I’m not an idiot! I don’t know how Melody got the key.”

“Dammit Tish…!”

“By now Dante Johnson could have gotten back to his Phantom Drone and flown far away from here.”

“Nah!” Jess replied, and I could hear the smile in his voice. “If Dante Johnson got far away, he stole a car to do it. The Brotherhood’s got the Drone, Tisha. Plus, his winter gear and camping supplies.”

It was a strange relief to have confirmation on who had my stuff. Leticia had been right; technically, anyone could have taken it.

“Jess, do you think they took it to the Boar’s Nest? If we knew where the Phantom Drone was stashed, maybe we could steal it, turn it over to the Feds, and collect the reward for ourselves!”

A long, painful pause followed.

"Jess?" Leticia added, eventually.

“You know I haven’t been in the Brotherhood for seven years, ever since I refused to disown my brother for marrying you.”

“Yes, but you and Bradley trained at the Boar’s Nest before you got kicked out, right? Surely, they haven’t moved it since?”

“You want to know where the Boar’s Nest is? Fine. Give me your phone, and I’ll geotag it. But there’s a price to be paid. Babe.”

“Yeah?”

“I want a kiss.”

“Oh Jess!” Leticia whined.

“A real kiss. Not a peck on the cheek. And it lasts as long as I want; I’m the one who breaks the kiss Leticia, not you!”

“For God’s sake Jesse James Wainwright, you are a married man!”

“Trust me babe, Darlene understands what you and me got going on.”

“Do your son and three daughters understand?”

“My wife’s a raging drunk who beats our kids, Tisha. You know that!”

“That’s an excuse for a 12-step program and Child Protective Services, not an affair!”

“I ain’t even asking for sex. You want the Boar’s Nest? I want that kiss. That’s the deal, Leticia Aretha Wainwright!”

For a while, no one said anything. My curiosity got the best of me, and I lifted the new unattached rearview mirror above the dash so I could see what the heck was going on. Leticia and a large, muscular guy in a billed cap, a man almost as big as me, were locked in a lover’s embrace, groping, and kissing like oversexed teenagers. I was filled with intense jealousy, for while Leticia had obviously been pressured, she was either thoroughly enjoying herself or deserved an Academy Award.

I brought the mirror back down and waited. Eventually, they started talking again.

“Wow!” gasped Jess, “That was better than actual sex with Darlene. I’ve wanted to do that since Bradley first introduced us!”

“Um… the geotag?”

“I am a man of my word. Give me your phone!”

A short pause, then Jess continued.

“About a hundred yards past the front gate here is a small hill to your right, right there,” he explained, raising his voice. “That hill is artificial; the result of grass growing on a mound of dirt piled over a concrete bunker. That’s where the Ammo Dump is; the most secure facility in the entire compound. I’d bet my next paycheck that's where they’re keeping the Phantom Drone.”

In retrospect, Jess’s report on the most likely location of the drone was spoken rather loudly for a listener right in front of him. But he continued, “On the weekends, the place is packed. Weekdays, there will be four to five personnel assigned; two on Guard Duty, plus two to three tasked with maintenance and inventory.”

“And at night?” Leticia asked hopefully.

“Just two: one Brother on the gate, another one patrolling the grounds.”

“Thanks, Jess. I um… I'm going to go now?"

"Sure. Tell you what; I’ll drive Darlene’s hatchback to work tonight so you can keep using the truck. Oh! Before you leave, there is... one more thing.”

“Yes?”

“You remember Ezekiel Tutwiler? They call him ‘Zeke’.”

“Yeah,” Leticia retorted. “He’s one of the garbage teenagers who murdered my husband!”

“Specifically, Zeke was the one who pulled the trigger on my brother,” Jess explained. “Well, he’ll be back here on the mountain by tomorrow.”

“What?!” my driver yelped, astounded. “He was supposed to serve a 10-year sentence for manslaughter! It’s only been two years; they’re letting him go already?”

“Zeke turned 18 yesterday, having spent three years in a juvenile facility. Rather than transfer him over to the state penitentiary with the adults to serve out the remainder of his sentence, the Parole Board voted on seven years of Supervised Release. Probation, babe. I am so sorry!”

“Why?!” screamed Leticia with a broken howl that rent the sky. “Why is this happening to me? I… I pray every day! I have my devotions every damn day! I go to church every Sunday and Bible Study every Wednesday! I’ve always followed the rules and patiently waited my turn. I am good and just and right and forgiving, and this is my reward? My righteous husband dies in my arms, while the damnable Nazis who slaughtered him get to freely dance around on his grave like nothing happened. What is this?”

After the rant, the driver’s side door opened, letting in a blast of chilled air. Lying on the bench seat, I scrunched back toward the passenger door to leave space for the driver.

“Tisha!” Jess called. “Whatever happens, I will always love you!”

At that, Leticia Wainwright shook the foundations of the Earth with a shrieking F bomb.

This time, the old truck had mercy on us and started on the first try. We pealed out of there in a cloud of dust I could see through the cab windows from where I lay. I counted to 60 before I risked sitting upright, and what I saw upon sitting caused me to scramble for the seatbelt. My driver was exiting the long gravel driveway with far less care than she entered, so between the dimness of the headlights and the narrowness of the track, I’d thought we’d climb a tree for sure.

“Leticia?” I asked, “How about you let me drive for a while?”

She slammed on the brakes, bringing us to a juddering halt. But rather than get out so we could trade places, Leticia dug a smartphone out of her sweatpants, tapped away on it, and then tossed it at me.

“Call your damned wife!” she howled and stomped back on the gas.

I looked at the offered phone and realized the number I’d memorized for Matilda was no longer valid, for according to our last conversation, she’d had our neighbor Noah Wáng bash it to pieces with a hammer.

At a loss of what else to do in that dark, rattling old truck, speeding through the night next to an emotionally compromised driver, I decided to check out my wife’s social media. There was far too much in both texts and videos for me to give it all a fair hearing – where did she find the time? – but a quick scan was sufficient to sink my heart.

My husband is being framed. My husband is a good man. My husband loves me. I trust my husband. Dante works hard. Dante’s being tricked by his evil Chief Engineer. The company is lying about my husband. The government is lying about Dante. Dante is the best man I’ve ever known. I love Dante. I love my husband. I love my husband. I love my husband.

My eyes blurred with tears, and I hung up the phone. I couldn’t take it anymore.

The truck slowed suddenly and parked on the side of the twisty woodland highway. We both sat there quietly for a while, the truck rattling as it idled. It was Leticia who finally broke the heavy silence.

“Boy, do you have any idea where you are?”

“How about you don’t call me ‘boy'?"

“You could have easily run out of power in that flying drone thing and crashed deep in these woods, wounded if not dead, and within practical walking distance of literally no one. How did you navigate Dante? GPS?”

“No, GPS would have compromised my invisibility. I used a compass and a physical road atlas.”

“Had you followed the Interstate and major highways, you would have practically guaranteed yourself a power source to recharge your drone every day, plus you would have avoided a certain remote community of Nazis.”

“I was hoping to minimize capture by avoiding major population centers,” I explained, “and to reach Seattle soonest via the most direct route. Plus, I thought we had the whole Nazi situation handled somewhere about the middle of last century.”

“Yeah, they’re pigs,” Leticia agreed, “Violent, feral hogs with an unlimited appetite for destruction, and hate for any one outside their sounder. But that don’t mean they’re wrong about everything.”

“Oh? What the hell are they right about?”

“Nazis believe the Earth is round, don’t they? They’d be happy to tell you Jackson is the state capital of Mississippi, and that A squared plus B squared is C squared. So they’re right about a lot of things, including this evil government.”

“Careful…!” I warned.

“The Federal government is of the Devil, Dante. American Christian Patriots had more freedoms under King George the Third than under these Satanic clowns.”

“Wow!”

“Wow what?”

“Wow, as in you’ve been living way too long among these Nazis. You're not going hit me with some crazy nutcase conspiracy theory, are you?"

“During the Civil War, Union troops liberated my ancestors and gave them their master’s plantation,” Leticia started, the words rushing out of her mouth. “So that land was in my family for generations until some tech oligarch offered to buy it. Of course Daddy said no; that land was our family’s legacy. Next thing we know, my father, who never got as much as a parking ticket, is up on all kinds of Federal charges. They seized his land and then had the nerve to tell him he could get most of it back if he pled guilty to a lesser charge.”

“You guys didn’t hire a lawyer?”

“The government also seized Daddy’s bank accounts and froze all his assets. That made it a bit of a challenge for him to hire lawyers and pay court costs. My father, a man so proud of his self-reliance and ability to provide for his family, had to go hat in hand to his friends and relatives, groveling for their pennies. Meanwhile the press bought the government’s BS story, hook, line, sinker, fisherman and boat! They claimed my Daddy, a decorated combat veteran who faithfully served this country 20 damn years, was a terrorist! A terrorist, Dante!”

“Let me guess," I proposed, "The government seized the land, put it up for auction, and that tech bro you mentioned bought it?”

“Every acre,” Leticia spat. “For a song. And after 22 months of hell, our benevolent Federal Government graciously allowed my father access to his own cotton-pickin' bank accounts and unfroze his assets, but we never got any of our land back. And get this Dante, through the whole ordeal he was never tried, much less convicted of any crime. Daddy never did get over it, he… (sniff) he took his life…”

A choking sob cut her off. The woman sat there, weeping softly, so I put what I hoped was a comforting hand on her shoulder.

“You're right to be upset,” I admitted. “That was a gross injustice, and it never should have happened to your family. Honestly, I’d be ready to murder some fools if that happened to me. But Leticia, you can’t demonize the whole government just because some greedy bureaucrat hurt you specifically. As sovereign American Citizens, we have to…

“Kiss me, Dante.”

“… hold our public servants accounta… wait, what?”

She struck like a pouncing cat, wrapping her arms around me…

I savored her sweet lips, her warm mouth, the glorious strength of her passionate embrace, her firm, heavenly body fulminating under sweatpants and tee shirt, her delicious, voluptuous curves under my hungry, probing hands.

I broke the kiss, pushed her down and off me, but then fell, my mouth upon her offered throat as she moaned with pleasure. She wrapped her legs about me like a vice, I could feel the fire burning… The musk and the panting heat inside the dark little truck cab…

I sat up, broke her leglock, dragged off her tee shirt, pulled down her sweatpants…

I froze, Leticia’s sweatpants in my hands.

“Dante? Sweetie, what’s wrong?”

I struggled for a while, but then I managed, “she cheated on me.”

“Who, your wife?”

“No, my first wife. Not Matilda, never Matilda. She… I loved that woman more than I loved anyone or anything. But it turns out she liked to… visit the barracks. When I found out about her… multiple… situations, I lost my damn mind and made some very poor decisions. I was a highly decorated veteran of multiple wars. They said I was on the fast track to make general! But, not only did I destroy my career, if it wasn’t for a certain general whose life I saved, I’d be in prison right now, instead of allowed to retire with an Honorable Discharge. My marriage imploded, I was financially wiped out, my wife got the kids and she’s raising them all the way across the country…”

“Oh Dante…” Leticia moaned, and she sat up to put a comforting hand on my shoulder.

“Marriage for love didn’t work out, so I decided to marry for money. That general I saved hooked me up with a teaching gig at this exclusive, top-tier private college. I started scamming rich college girls and finally convinced one to marry me.”

“Dante!” cried Leticia, “How could you?”

“Well, I justified it by saying that she was using me every bit as much as I was using her. She wanted to virtue signal to the world and slap her Daddy in the face, I wanted to be rich. The way I saw it, we both got what we wanted out of the deal. Except I hired a team of private investigators. The plan was to catch her when she inevitably started seeing some dude closer to her own age. Then I’d divorce her for adultery and walk away with half her inheritance.”

“Good Lord, what a vile thing to do to someone!”

“She's worth a little north of 300 million Leticia! My wife left me with nothing. I was leaving Matilda with a hundred fifty million; not like the girl was gonna starve. Except…”

Here, I found it difficult to continue.

“Except what, Dante?”

“Look, Matilda’s no angel. She’s a spoiled rotten little brat. Also, she will literally refer to herself as ‘Mommy’ while she’s giving me some condescending lecture. At 12 years my junior, it’s hard for me to take her as my equal, much less a superior. But she… she… Leticia, it’s been two years, and my detectives assure me that men and women hit on Matilda all the damn time. If she’s had one chance to cheat on me, she’s had a hundred, and she won’t, do, it. When I took the Phantom Drone, she… she personally organized this plan to have me go hide in a foreign country with our maid’s family. I just looked at her social media feed and… and… Leticia, it’s nothing but relentless, unwavering loyalty to... to ME, of all people! She…”

I choked. My voice broke, and tears filled my eyes again.

“Dante?”

“Matilda loves me, Leticia!” I mewled, unable to control my voice. “She loves me! What am I going to do?”

I felt a big cry coming on, but thank God, I was able to squash it. Instead, I just sat there quietly holding the woman I loved, and she held me just as tightly, also without comment.