After about an hour of just laying there, Nico slid out of the bed and went into the bathroom to take a piss. When he came out of the bathroom, he looked around for Jasmine’s cell phone.
Jasmine had her FBI-issued BlackBerry inside of her open Gucci bag, which was not too far from the bed, and she had her regular BlackBerry on the nightstand right next to her head. Seeing the BlackBerry on the nightstand, Nico never thought to look inside her Gucci bag. He walked over and picked up the BlackBerry on the nightstand and walked back into the bathroom with it. Then he locked the door and started searching through the phone.
Nico looked at text messages, incoming calls and outgoing calls, and he figured out how to play back recordings. The only recording he saw was the one that Jasmine had made when Bebo had shot her.
Realizing that she hadn’t taped any of the conversations she’d had with him, Nico came out of the bathroom and placed her phone back on the nightstand. He quietly got dressed, got his phone, and made sure that all of his cash was in his pocket. Then he took a long look at Jasmine, and as she slept, he reconfirmed how fine she was. Though he felt some relief that she hadn’t recorded him, he still had a gut feeling that she was working with the feds.
Nico slipped out of the room headed to the roulette table, but he decided to go to his room first. When he got there, Mia was nowhere to be found, and her bags weren’t there. He called her three times, but she didn’t pick up. He decided to just go play roulette for an hour, telling himself if Mia wasn’t in the room by the time he got back, he was just going to go to the strip club or back to Jasmine’s room and fuck her one more time.
Nico had no idea that Mia had already checked out of the room and had checked into an inexpensive hotel room right near the airport. She was tired of Nico and his bullshit love triangle. And she was even more tired of him just tossing her to the side whenever he felt like it, like she was a piece of trash or something. She had made up her mind to head back to New York the next day, and she was going to go straight to the safe deposit box Nico had her open up for him and take the three hundred and fifty thousand dollars in there and then disappear and spend the money however she felt. That would be the best form of revenge to sting Nico with. Even though it could possibly get her ass killed, she didn’t care. She was going strictly off her hurt feelings.
***
When Jasmine first opened her eyes, she wasn’t exactly sure where she was. So much had been going on in her life, she wasn’t sure if she was at her mother’s house, at Simone’s house, or at her and Nico’s house. After about a minute she sat up in the bed, and then she remembered that she was in Las Vegas, and that she and Nico had just spent the majority of the previous day fucking their brains out.
Seeing that the light was on in the bathroom and the bathroom door was closed, she assumed that Nico was in there. She walked over to the bathroom door, knocked on it and called Nico’s name, and waited for an answer. When she didn’t get one, she tapped on the door again and opened it up and went inside.
Jasmine shook her head as she exited the bathroom. When she realized it was five o’clock in the morning and there was no sign of Nico, she knew he had purposely slid out on her.
Jasmine went back into the bathroom and peed and then washed her hands before getting back into the bed. The room was still somewhat dark because the sun hadn’t risen yet. Jasmine lay in the bed feeling like a whore, knowing that only hours ago Nico had been fucking the shit out of her, and he was now probably fucking Mia the same way.
She reached over and grabbed her BlackBerry. She called Nico, but she got no answer.
Nico would have answered his phone, but he was in the strip club getting a lap dance and didn’t even realize that it was ringing.
“I can’t do this shit no more,” she said out loud in frustration.
She then sent Nico a text message: So it’s like that, Nico? You just fuck me for hours and leave without telling me???
Jasmine waited five minutes, and when she realized Nico wasn’t responding, she texted him again: You back on that bullshit AGAIN! It’s all good, though. Don’t worry I WON’T CHASE YOU!!!
Jasmine tried to go back to sleep, but she couldn’t. It had now been a full hour, and Nico still hadn’t responded to her missed call or to her texts. She needed to feel wanted, so while still lying in the bed, she decided to call Derek.
When Derek didn’t pick up, she left him a voice mail: “Hey, Derek. This is Jasmine. I know it’s early, but I just really need to speak to you. First, I want to really, really, really apologize for yesterday. I am so sorry. But call me back when you get this, so I can explain. It’s way too much to explain in a voice mail.”
After about five minutes Jasmine decided to send Derek a text message: Hi Derek, it’s Jasmine. I just left you a voice mail. Call me as soon as you can.
Jasmine grabbed the remote, turned on the TV, and started to flip through the channels. Two minutes later, she heard her BlackBerry vibrating on her nightstand. She quickly reached for it. She thought it was a phone call, but then she realized it was a text message from Derek.
Jasmine, the pussy was good, but I don’t need the drama. LOSE MY NUMBER! Thanks!!!
When Jasmine read that text message, she felt like she had just been dropkicked in the gut. She immediately called Derek, but it went to voice mail. She knew he was done with her and was avoiding her. She was so mad with Nico at that point because not only was he playing games with her, but he had now managed to fuck up the NFL jackpot that had fallen in her lap.
Beyond frustrated, Jasmine got up and went to the wet bar and poured herself a drink. She was done with Las Vegas. It made no sense for her to stay out there any longer. After her drink she was going to take a shower, get dressed, eat breakfast, and then head to the airport and see if she could change her ticket or fly standby so she could get her ass back to New York and reassess everything.
Twenty
When Jasmine made it to the airport to head back to New York, she asked to see a JetBlue supervisor. She complained to the supervisor about how rude the JetBlue stewardess had been to her on her flight to Las Vegas, and asked if she could be upgraded to the front of the plane so she wouldn’t have to be subjected to the same ghetto treatment.
The white male supervis
or looked like he could be a weatherman on the local TV news, with his blond hair, bright blue eyes, and perfectly tanned skin. He began furiously typing into his computer.
“Would you like a window seat or an aisle seat?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Jasmine replied.
“Okay, just give me one more minute, and I should be—Oh, okay there we go. Would the third-row window seat be good?”