Page 51 of Bristol

Mack returns with my ID and sends us on our way.

She wasn’t kidding. Mack went to work right after we left and within a week, she called us to come back in, having acquired everything we needed and got it all sent off to the insurance company. Kendra brought me this time though because Sebastian and Reaper were MIA and had been for the last three days.

Kendra and I walk into Mack’s office and the two of them hug each other with huge smiles on their faces. “It’s so good to see you, K!”

“I know! It’s been too long since we’ve had a girls’ night. We have to change that soon when you get some time off.”

“Okay. Bristol, here’s what we have.” Mack sets a check down in front of me that is addressed to me in the amount of nine-hundred eighty-nine thousand dollars. It feels surreal to hold this in my hand.

“Holy shit.” My mouth is parted and I’m staring at this check like it’s going to talk or do a back flip or spontaneously combust in my fingertips.

“It was a pleasure doing business with you, Bristol,” Mack says, extending her hand. I shake it as I try to hold back the emotion clawing at me.

“If you need anything else, anything at all, you let me know. If my husband gives you any more trouble, you let me know that too.”

“I sure will. Thank you so much.”

Kendra and Mack hug and we exit the building. I climb into Kendra’s car, which Reaper spared no expense on. She has a brand new, Mercedes Benz S-Class that has a custom metallic candy apple red paint job and a copper interior. The sunroof ties it all together, making it the most expensive and the most beautiful car I’ve ever ridden in.

“To the bank?”

“To the bank.”

Kendra whips smoothly through the daytime traffic in Gulfport and we arrive at the bank in a few short minutes. I go inside and tell the teller at the counter I need to make a deposit and pull out the paperwork from the account Sebastian helped me open last week and the check.

It’s quick and mostly painless as she types on the computer then tells me my funds will be available in the next few days. She didn’t seem surprised at all by the amount on the check and that in itself surprised me because how often does she see amounts like this? Is everyone rich and I’m just late to the party? Because that is a whole hell of a lot of money to me.

Sebastian put a few thousand dollars in my account until my money clears, but I haven’t spent any of it yet. That is until now.

I sit back into the car with Kendra.

“Who do you know around here that does tattoos and is good?” I ask.

Her eyes light up. “Oh! Bosco has a guy that we’ve all been using since he started prospecting. He’s about thirty minutes north of here and his work is bomb.”

“Can you take me there? If you don’t have time to wait with me, then that’s okay. I can go another day or… I don’t know. I would figure it out.”

“Oh, girl. I can definitely go with you. There are a few good artists at that shop and I’ve been dying to have this tattoo on my hip fixed. It’s god-awful because I was allergic to the lotion they used and the ink has been ripped out in some spots.”

“Perfect,” I grin. I’ll get to surprise Sebastian. I’ve had this idea of a tattoo in my head since I was held in captivity and now I’ve got the funds to bring it to life.

The ride to the tattoo shop is peaceful. That’s the only word that comes to mind as we wind down a curvy back road with the sunroof open. The sun beats down on my skin, the sky is blue and there is not a cloud in sight. I feel so… free. It’s a random Wednesday and I’m on my way to a tattoo shop. I never would have believed a year ago that this is what I would be doing. That this is what my life would look like. My wildest dreams of life outside of captivity could never have figured it up this good.

The back road ends and we come to a red light in a small town. I see the flashing neon sign up ahead with an arrow that says, Tattoos Here. The sign makes me smile. I’ve never gotten a tattoo before and I’m pretty sure for my first tattoo I should not be getting what I want to get, but nothing in my life has ever been what it’s supposed to be so why should that change now?

Kendra puts the car in park and we walk in through a set of black glass double doors. There’s a receptionist behind a glass case with saloon-style swinging doors behind her. There are intricate designs of artwork on the three walls surrounding the glass case and four chairs to the right of the door for people to sit and wait.

“Whew, it’s dead in here today,” Kendra says, approaching the receptionist.

“Kendra! Hey girl! Yeah, it’s Wednesday at four o’clock in the afternoon. What’d you expect?”

We all laugh.

“What can I do for you?”

“Well, I need to get my hip piece fixed, but I’ll get Crusher to do it instead of Kris. My girl here is wanting something amazing, of which I do not know yet, and I want her to get the best seat in the shop.”

The receptionist begins pulling out paperwork for us to fill out and asks for my ID. I rummage through the purse I just started carrying in search of the damn thing and finally find it in the bottom underneath the wallet it should’ve been put back in. I’ll get used to this stuff eventually.

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