Monday, November 19th, 2018- Monte Carlo, Monaco
Daniel's Apartment
Max doesn't concern himself with anything so inconsequential as having any shred of common decency this morning simply because Daniel was still sleeping soundly at this hour– that would hardly have been conducive to his plans for the day since by his count, they were already an hour behind on schedule.
And he really doesn't care to admit just how many times he's checked his phone this morning, let alone in last hour because things are already starting to get really fucking pathetic. As if that weren't enough, there's the matter of his slow, steady descent into full blown obsession over where you are and what you're doing and why in the hell he's not heard back from you since Friday night to contend with... and Goddamn, does Max hate all of this.
He can't bear the thought of unlocking it again and again and again, only to open his texts to see more of the same– a screen full of nothing but his messages, delivered and unread, the monotony of which is broken only by the single photo of Kaia he'd snapped at lunch yesterday and then promptly sent in a desperate last ditch attempt to break the silence. To no avail. .
So, simply put, he may have ruled out throwing his phone off of Daniel's balcony, if only because he doesn't want to deal with the lecture that will earn him, but that doesn't mean he's going to handle any of this in a healthy manner. No, no... Max has decided he's going to deal with this the worst way he knows how, the tried and true method of packing his schedule so full of bullshit activities that there's no time to spare for anything else.
"Kaia! Get a move on, it's time!" He calls out down the hallway in a stage whisper, his words softened purely in the interest of preserving the element of surprise, waiting impatiently as his daughter comes scuttling towards him with a wicked little grin on her face, "just like we rehearsed, okay?"
"Okay! Okay!" The toddler nods her little blonde head in agreement, practically levitating with excitement, her riot of sleep tousled curls bouncing along wildly, adding only further emphasis to her exaggerated movements, "Da! Come on! Come on!"
"Ready?" Max already knows the answer, but he still asks it all the same, enjoying the childish anticipation Kaia is consumed by right now, her joy over something so simple as wreaking chaos and her enthusiasm at the mere prospect of inciting parental approved mischief is enough to brighten even his sour mood, leaving him grinning in spite of himself as he carefully twists the handle of Daniel's bedroom door and pushes it open.
Giving the three-year-old at his side a solemn salute, they tiptoed into the room as quietly as they could manage, his daughter giggling softly to herself as she crept forward, pretending to be a little mouse, just like they'd been practicing since she'd woken up with the rising sun hours ago. He'd had to come up with something to keep her occupied this morning or the entire apartment building would have been in for a very rude awakening.
Quite simply, it was a matter of acting in the best interest of the greater good because clearly, one man's loss of sleep was everyone else's gain. So, really, if you stopped and thought about it, Max was just being a good, considerate neighbor here.
Sure, he might be serving up his teammate like a lamb for the slaughter and yes, the argument could be made that, at the very least, he should be feeling some modicum of guilt over the decision to sic Kaia on an unsuspecting Daniel but that hardly seemed like enough to dissuade Max from seeing this through.
His mind was made up and there would be no changing it now, not when the plan was already in motion, his three year old a step or three ahead of him, and all but bouncing off the walls of the narrow hallway which feeds from the door of the master suite into the bedroom proper, flowing elegantly past the pair of darkly shadowed archways that hide away the massive marble bath and the walk in closet from view.
