“Don't you have any sympathy for me?” she asked in a playful way.
“Of course. Come here.” He pulled her to him, and they cuddled for a few minutes.
“Gotta get going,” Milan said eventually.
His Ferrari roared to life, and he drove down the drive to the man on security. The man nodded and opened the gate. When they'd gone just a few yards up the road, a boy of around eleven flagged them down. He was small and wore a pair of blue jeans with a yellow Batman T-shirt. He looked slightly apologetic for having to stop them.
“What's up?” Milan said. The boy didn't say anything. He just handed him an envelope. “What is it?” Milan asked. The boy shrugged his shoulders. “Why are you giving it to me?”
“A man gave it to me. I live down there on the corner. He gave me fifty bucks and told me to give it to the man in the red Ferrari.”
Milan opened the envelope and pulled out a white sheet of paper. It read, “I know where you are, bitch. I'm coming to get you.”
“What did he look like?” Milan asked the boy.
“Shaven head. Funny eyes.”
“Dritan,” Jessie said.
“Okay, kid, thanks. If you see him again come and tell me. I'll give you a thousand bucks.” The boy’s eyes lit up at the prospect, and he began the walk back to his house.
Milan looked at Jessie. “I think you should go away. He clearly knows you're here. I'll make arrangements for you to go abroad for a few weeks until we've settled the issue.”
“No. I don't want to leave you. I feel much safer here, by your side.”
“He's an Albanian. They are crazy. People call us Russians crazy, but we fight fair. Those guys don't.” It was going to be much easier to root him out and deal with him if he didn't have to continually look out for Jessie. The best thing for her to do was to disappear to another country for a while.
“I don't care. I'd rather die than leave you,” she said.
“Why are women so darn stubborn?” he said as he sped off again. “You'd be far safer abroad. I could concentrate on sorting him out. But if you insist on hanging around here, then don't leave my side. Okay?”
“I don't want to leave your side.”
Weeks went past and nothing more happened. They waved to the kid who had given them the note from Dritan whenever they saw him. They found out he was the son of the local doctor. He was twelve and loved astronomy.
Milan settled into his role as head of the casino business and made sure Jessie traveled with him wherever he went.
“What's with you and this Jessie girl?” Limonov asked. “Are you gonna marry her or not?”
“Maybe. I love her, so I suppose I should.”
“Well, get on with it. Your mother wants to know why it's taking so long.”
Milan laughed. “Women, eh, Pops?”
“They love a good wedding. She's a nice girl. Get a ring on her finger. You shouldn't let a good woman like her slip through your fingers.”
Milan gave it a lot of thought and always came to the same conclusion. He wanted to marry her, but was it all a bit too fast. They'd only been dating three months. He thought for a moment about how she would react when he asked her to marry him. Would she even say yes? Maybe she'd been too damaged by the Albanian to want to marry anyone.
“Are you finished yet? I want you when we get home,” Milan asked Jessie.
“I'll only be a minute. Then you can take me home and fuck me senseless,” she whispered. Milan felt something in his pants move at the prospect. “I'll just go to the ladies’ room, and then I'll be right with you,” she said.
“Hurry up then. You just turned me on so much that I don't think I can wait very long,” he said.
The ladies’ restroom was down the corridor at the end of the building. Jessie made her way there, opened the door, and went into a stall. She locked the door, hitched her skirt up, and squatted over the toilet. Before she had time to doing anything, she felt something cold around her neck. She put her hands to her neck and tried to free herself of what felt like wire. But it got tighter, and she began to choke.
Milan sat chatting to some staff members for ten minutes. She's a long time, he thought. He gave her another ten minutes and then began to worry.
“Jan can you go to the ladies’ and see what Jessie is doing? She went ages ago.” Jan, one of the best croupiers in the casino, nodded and went to find Jessie.