Unintended Consequences (Act One) Completed

Prologue: Never Letting Go

Rayyan clamped the cuffs down tight on her wrist and threw the key as hard as he could without bothering to see where it landed.

"How could you leave me?" Tears filled his eyes and an invisible vice squeezed his chest.

"I won't leave you. I'll never leave you, baby," his blushing bride promised, seemingly oblivious to the titanium cuff biting into her skin.

"I'm better than him, right? I'm better than he is." Rayyan stood on unsteady feet, pointing menacingly at a teenager bellhop.

The poor boy had hoped to simply watch the show, and now it seems he was intimately involved in the drama between the drunk newlyweds.

"You're better than all the rest of them. All the others are shit!" The bride screamed, her face twisted into a vengeful sneer as she eyes the other men I'm the lobby.
"And you know why?" Her voice softened as soon as her eyes got back to the man she was now shackled to. "Because you're my husband and I'm your wife. That means they're shit and you're king."

The bleary-eyed bride wrapped one arm around Rayyan shoulder and slid the other hand inside his jacket and under his shirt. He held her body against his in a way that seemed vulgar despite the conservative formal attire they both wore.

The bellhop blushed as he watched the pair lock lips in a passionate kiss. The front desk manager smiled as she watched the two wavering bodies clutch each other in an intoxicated kiss to rival every movie kiss Hollywood has ever produced. She smiled knowingly.

A decade working in a second-tier Vegas hotel had jaded Rachel. She'd seen just about everything from her post. Nothing surprised her anymore. But more importantly, it had given her an insight into the truth about people.

This pair, she said, was the real deal. They may not have arrived in Sin City together, but they would leave together.

"Hurry up and show them to their room," she urged the red-faced bellhop.

"Why me? They can find it on their own!"

"Do they LOOK like they can find it on their own? Hurry up and take them before they make a bigger scene in front of the other guests."

The boy sighed and took the key card from her before stomping over to the couple making out in the lobby.

"Ahem, excuse me!"

Rayyan and his bride looked up in surprise. Despite his drunken state, he had enough clarity to take his hand off of her breast while the younger man offered to "escort" them to their room.

"No luggage?" He asked, not at all surprised to see them armed with nothing but a toiletry bag and an oversized tote.

"Oh shit, that's what we forgot, baby. The luggage!" The bride cried out in distress before bursting into peals of laughter.

"This ain't that kind of party, young man," Rayyan said with a perverse smile.

The bellhop rolled his eyes and lead the way with Rayyan hot on his heels and his new wife teetering along behind them, half pulled, half dragged by her shackled hand.

"Enjoy your stay here at the Pine Lodge," the young man said, opening the door to the hotel's only available suite. "Good luck."

"I don't need luck. You see that woman right there? She's my wife. That's all the luck I need in this life," he replied, getting teary eyes.

As if summoned from her stupor by the sound of pain in his voice, Rayyan new bride took his face in her hands and kissed his lips softly

The two toppled into the room and the exasperated bellhop simply threw the key card in behind them and shut the door.

When he returned to the lobby the hotel owner, Mr. Pine himself, was busy examining the register and checking it against something he found online.

"Do you know who that is?"

"No, sir" the boy replies.

"Of course not, Todd, why would you know anything about anything important. That man is a heavy hitter. He made it big in tech. Now he developed games or something. If I'm right, this could be a big scoop!"

"Are you going to call the press?" Todd asked, straightening his round cap on his head.

Me. Pine waited until he was done before he hit the boy in the head with a steno pad.

"Now what kind of hotelier doesn't respect the privacy of his guests. Besides," the older man turned the monitor of the computer to face the put-out teen. "He really can't afford to have any more scandals."

A cell phone video of the boozy guests fighting with a police officer played on the screen. The article underneath speculated how his behavior would affect his current multi-million dollar deal with another company whose name Todd couldn't pronounce.

He looked at Mr. Pine quizzically.

"So?"

"So there's more than one way to skin a cat, my boy."

The older man smiled in a way that told Todd that much like the activities currently happening in the suite, he didn't want to know anything about it.