Welcome to a Nightmare

Elsewhere Part 6: Chapter 31: Fool's Gold

Elsewhere Series Part 6

Chapter 31: Fool's Gold

"I'm sorry sir," the voice on the other end of the telephone insists. "But we can't do that."

"Why the hell not?" Gold hisses angrily into the phone. The tired manager of the casinos has stayed up all night trying to find someone, anyone who could possibly track down his wife. Someone with no agenda, who was willing to travel the world, on his dime to find her. Just to give her one measly message that he loves her, and he hopes she will come back to visit him and their son.

"What you are asking for is far beyond our capabilities, we only take cases within the United States and we mostly deal with runaway teenagers and the infidelity of spouses. Perhaps your wife simply does not want to be found because..."

Gold slams the phone down in anger at the mere mention of any form of infidelity. Belle was faithful to him, even after such a turbulent relationship that led up to Gideon's birth.

Both of them had had their differences; Belle's desire to have a quiet family life to raise their son compared to him managing three large casino hotels while his mother was mayor, giving him immense power within the city. He showered them with gifts and did his best to give her everything she had ever wanted, but it never seemed to be enough. For as long as possible, she kept Gideon away from the hotels and the heart of the city, most likely to protect him and give their son a "normal" life. He spent many hours away from his family, making money to provide for them... which was what he wondered if that was the final nail in the coffin for their marriage. He sits at his desk, pondering what his next step should be. He's exhausted and in desperate need of something, anything, a lead to finding his beloved Belle. He needed her to know that he missed her, and he would be willing to do anything to have her come back home, watch their son go off to college and just be together once again.

Gold gets up from his desk and limps across the room to his mini-bar to pour himself a drink. He opens an ice bucket that had the gold-painted design of a spinning wheel on it. His office has a wall of windows behind his large oak desk that looked down at the cityscape. There was a large oil painting of himself on the wall, surrounded by shelves and shelves of books about entrepreneurship, running a successful business, how one could succeed in Las Vegas and so on. Mounted behind his door in large glass cases are a large collection of antique objects, mostly medieval memorabilia. There was a painting of a large sailing ship hanging on the wall above his glass cases of seemingly expensive and valuable objects. One of the rare pieces was a blank globe that was from the 1600s where explorers would draw the various landmasses on with ink to mark their locations. However, his most prized possessions were in the very centre case, behind bulletproof glass and one of the possessions was a jagged-bladed dagger, with patterned markings and a large blank space in the middle where one might engrave something such as the name of the knight who possessed it, however, there were no engravings of any kind on it. The piece was extremely mysterious, all Robert Gold knew about it was that it dated back to the 1400s and could have even been used by Vikings. The other prized possession was a simple white teacup and saucer. It was white with curves around the edges, it a simple blue floral branch design along the side and a ribbon of blue paint along the base. There was no historical value behind it, no monetary one either. It had been something that Belle had found in a curio shop back when the two of them were first dating. She adored how simple it was and said that it reminded her of her mother's own tea set. However, as she held it, she nearly dropped it and it became chipped at the rim of the cup. This forced the owner of the shop to insist that she buy it. Robert, in his good nature, willingly bought it for her and she treasured it, despite the tiny flaw. Once Belle had left and didn't come back, Fiona insisted on putting the things in storage to make room for other fancy things when they moved into their penthouse apartment, but Gold had rescued the cup from collecting dust in a storage unit and once this casino hotel was built, he put it in his case, hoping one day she would come back and ask for it to be returned.