Sin City Baby

“You don’t have to pay me, Kevin. It’s only a couple of hours.”

“I’m paying you,” I said. “That’s how this is going to work.”

“Okay,” she said. “I’m—sorry.”

“You’re what?” I asked.

Her eyes fluttered up to me as the kids held her hands.

“My comment yesterday. I’m sorry,” Brooke said.

“Water under the bridge. You guys have fun, okay?”

I wanted to stay a bit longer. But I couldn't. If I did, I’d miss the meeting with Gianni. Yet, somehow, as I got a good look at Brooke with my twins, that didn’t seem like such a big deal.

I took the golf cart and met up with Gianni in the middle of town. He insisted on this restaurant that supposedly had the best island food around. I wasn’t going to break it to him that it was subpar, at best. Gianni was one of those men that wouldn’t have been caught dead in a hut eating fish from a stick.

He had money and he wanted people to know it.

“Gianni, glad to see you again.”

“Kevin,” he said. “I’m so glad you could make it. I hope I didn’t throw a wrench into your vacation plans.”

“Not possible for you,” I said with a grin. “So, what can I help you with?”

“I’ll get right to the point so you can get back to those beautiful children of yours. The security company I use for my bank is no longer upgrading their software.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“I mean, their business is stagnant. They pedal the same product over and over without attempting to tweak it or overhaul it in any way. It is no longer sufficient to fulfill our needs.”

“So you’re looking for something else.”

“I am, yes,” he said.

“Then you came to the right place,” I said with a grin. “Our newest line of product has some things I think you might be interested in.”

“Talk to me, then.”

“Cameras you can hook up with night-vision surveillance. Applications you can install to access those cameras on your laptop wherever you go. Closed circuits that are accessible only to those who know the frequency and the passcode, so no intruders from the outside can see what’s going on with your institution.”

“I like what you’re offering,” he said.

“We have a variety of products, from cameras to lasers to ear-bleeding alarms that trigger when someone walks past them. Those things can bring a person to their knees within a half a second of hearing that noise. Stops anyone dead in their tracks.”

“Those could be useful in my vaults,” he said.

“Very. We also have cameras with backup batteries that are rechargeable in case power goes down. And we also sell top-of-the-line custom-made generators, so your institutions will never lose power.”

“See, that’s what I’m talking about. This is the kind of company I should be doing business with,” he said.

“We’re happy to help. Keeping my billion-dollar players safe in any way I can is my specialty.”

“Do you have material you can send me on all the things you offer?” he asked.

“Yeah, give me an email address and I can send it to you along with our standard contract.”

I walked out of that meeting with my head held high and a pep in my step. This would be huge for my company. For the longest time, I had been trying to break into the banking industry. I was in the hotel industry, the technological industry, and I’d even released my own line of high-end home security products. But banks were not only lucrative, they were also hard to get into. The banking industry kept a tight web of who they could trust and who they couldn't, and it was hard penetrating that web and proving someone was trustworthy.