Sea Creature Read Online Free PDF Page A

inside him. Of all the people in Damien Russell’s life, Christopher was the last one that should be treated this way. He was the one that knew all the bank accounts, all the offshore investments to avoid taxes, all the shell companies to swindle the government. He was the one that lined up the prostitutes in Washington D.C. and New York and Milan and Paris and London; and he was the one that would drive them to the hospital afterward and pay them to keep quiet. He was the one that had all the secrets.
    “To be perfectly frank with you, sir,” he said, “you’ve already lost one son. Do you want to lose the second too because you’re too stubborn to send him a few bucks?”
    “You bas—”
    “Mr. Russell, I’m being honest with you. Patrick needs this. Reactivate our credit card so we can stay down here a few more weeks. He should have it out of his system by then.”
    “Go fuck yourself, Christopher! And you’re fired.”
    There was a click and then the cell phone ended the call. Christopher took a deep breath and pretended that he was pushing all the negative energy out of himself with the breath. He walked back to the hotel and went to Patrick’s room.
    Patrick was lying in bed, a bottle of beer in his hand, listening to a Mozart concerto on the radio. His shirt was off and sweat glistened on his chest. Christopher sat in a chair near the bed and waited until the piece was over before speaking.
    “Where were you at dinner?” Christopher said.
    “Didn’t feel like coming.”
    “Patty, I set up that dinner so you could meet Maria.”
    “I didn’t really want to meet her.”
    “You need to find somebody. You’re bouncing from one chick to the next and I see it taking a toll on you. Don’t you want the white picket fence and the kids and the dog and all that shit?”
    “Kids? What if I turned out like my father, Chris? They say you become the parent your parents were.”
    “You’re nothing like him. Believe me.” Christopher went and got a beer out of the mini-fridge and sat back down. He popped it open, guzzled half of it, and let out a wet burp. “Speaking of his highness, I just spoke to him.”
    “What for?”
    “Our credit card was declined at dinner. I can’t tell you how fucking embarrassing it was to have Maria and her friend have to pay for their own meals cause I didn’t have enough cash.”
    “That’s terrible. What’d he do, cancel it?”
    “Yeah.”
    “That’s his power over me and . . .” They glanced to each other and Patrick looked down, absently tearing at the label on his beer. “That was his power over me and Andrew. His money. I think without it he wouldn’t be able to survive.”
    “Well we can relate cause without it we’re not going to survive. They’ve been running the card here every week and when it declines this week they’re gonna throw us out. Unless there’s more fights in you we can bet on, we need to go home.”
    “I’m not going anywhere, Chris. But you should get back before he gets pissed and thinks I’m stealing you away.”
    “A little late; he already fired me.”
    “He’s fired you before.”
    “I know and I’m sick of it.” He walked over and lay down on the bed next to him. “This is our chance, Patty. More important, this is my chance. I’ve been researching this the past couple days. Everybody I’ve talked to thinks this thing in the ocean is a giant squid. There wasn’t a single fisherman that even suggested anything else.”
    “I know.”
    “No one’s even seen a giant squid before. There’s some like blurry National Geographic photos and that’s it. They don’t even know how big they can get. Some people think they can get as big as two to three hundred feet near the bottom of the ocean. That’d be the biggest animal on earth.”
    “So what?”
    “So wh . . . are you kidding? Could you imagine if we caught or killed this thing?”
    “No one would care. It would be all over the internet for a while and then