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“Again, when Jones has lost all his money, he’ll summon his precious diamond and put it up as an ante so he could have another chance to win back something. But if he still loses, which hasn’t happened before like it did last night, and he has to hand over the ante, which is the diamond, then there’s this little thing we have to do. It’s like a card trick and he makes us practice this hundreds of times, so it’s done so surreptitiously no one will suspect anything.” Clearly while he thought he couldn’t fool the men with his card tricks, he believed he could with his diamond trick.
“So his opponents have already inspected the diamond, the real one and think that’s what they’re playing for,” she continued.
“But when he loses as he did last night, it was my job to replace the real diamond with a lab generated diamond which is hidden in a pouch under the table on which the glass case sits. See, what I’m saying?” She waited for Raven to nod before she carried on.
“So I take the real diamond and replace it with a fake one and then take the real diamond and put it into the pouch under the table. Once his opponents leave, I remove the real diamond from the pouch and put it back on the little velvet cushion in the casing and then he takes it and puts it in his safe. He’s happy because he gets to keep the real thing even though he lost. And it’s cheaper for him to keep generating fake diamonds anyway. So the cycle will continue but he’ll never play the same diamond trick twice in the same country.
“But you see, I completely missed swapping the real diamond for the fake one so I ended up handing over the real diamond. So then I had to put the fake diamond on the velvet cushion instead.”
Raven just stared at her.
“Look, no one said it was the most genius idea ever. It’s a bit sloppy, but that’s how Jones’ runs things.”
She lifted herself off the floor, then started to pace instead.
"He thinks he has the real thing. I couldn’t even keep the fake diamond because if he saw no diamond, I’d be dead already. I don’t know how much time I have before he figures things out." She stopped pacing as the solution that had rattled around in her head became the only feasible one now.
"I know what I have to do," she said, nodding her head. "I just have to replace the real one with the fake one, then replace the fake with the real one. Two trips back and forth. That’s just the way it has to be done."
"I think that’s your only option." Raven agreed. "Do you know who they are?"
"Michael Newman. Preston Reyes. Zachary West."
She'd never admit that they'd taken up permanent residence in her head when they were just three strangers who hadn't said a word to her at all.
"They all three live in the same house, so I just have to break into their private space, find the diamond, take it back to Jones, without him knowing, then take the fake diamond back to their house so they won’t think they’ve been robbed. Easy.”
"What if they recognize you?"
"Oh, they won’t. I was wearing a mask. Besides, they wouldn't have looked at me if I stood there naked with horns coming out of my nipples and rainbows coming out of my ass. Men like them don’t look at girls like me."
"Oh, shut up," Raven said, dismissing her claims, but Dakota stood by them because they were true.
She had been so inconsequential to them; she could have been invisible. Just another of Jones’ paid groupies. A shallow bimbo dressed in expensive clothes, trying to hide her lack of status. Yeah, she probably only belonged in their world to clean their floors.
"Besides," Raven continued, "they might recognize your red hair. Hang on, I have some color remover in my apartment to take you back to your naturally dark brown hair. You will also have to call in sick. You’re going to need a few days off work."
She didn’t know why, but at that point, she grabbed Raven and hugged her tightly. She couldn’t imagine facing the possibility of death without her friend’s company.
"Get off me. We have work to do," Raven snarled, but there was a smile in her voice.
"Right," Dakota said as she picked up her phone. More than anything, Jones had a fervent phobia of getting sick with the sniffles. He’d definitely tell her to take as much time as she needed before she came back to work.
Under other circumstances, she could have said she had the best boss ever. Except he was going to kill her; he just didn’t know it yet.
Now all she had to do was pray that he wouldn’t figure out her diamond debacle before she had a chance to rectify it.
Two hours later, freshly showered, she sat in a robe, her hair back to its dark chocolate hue, while Raven looked at images of their house.
Only it wasn’t a house. It was a house on steroids. It was a palace, and Dakota’s heart sank. There was no way she was going to easily stop by, break-in, find the diamond, and escape. There was something like twenty bedrooms, easily. It would take her forever to scour the place.
So she came up with a better plan.
Clearly, the return of the diamond was going to happen in stages. She had to stake the place out first. Then plot her next move.
"How hard can this be?" she asked, gaining confidence. "They’re billionaires, right? They probably have people to do everything for them. Feed them, bathe them, clothe them, and kill cockroaches for them.
"They may look like Greek gods, but you know what? They’re probably just soft because they sleep on, I don’t know, more than a thousand-thread-count Egyptian sheets. With their bespoke suits, near-priceless watches, and ridiculously attractive faces, they are just as easily frightened.
