THE SECRET JOURNAL OF NEIL PATEL #20

WARNING: NEIL ONCE DATED A GIRL NAMED TYPO...

​Entry #20
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I held up my hands. “Okay. I see where this is going,” I said, grasping for some way to appease the rising tide of you know what heading in my direction. 

Big Boy #1 walks up to me and bumps me with his gut. “I think you planned this.”

“Of course I planned this—“ then I understood where his mind was chugging. “Wait, no, I didn’t plan THIS. I planned us getting here, remember? I planned us taking care of this guy.” I pointed at the Russian who looked even more pathetic than I felt. Seriously, what I wouldn’t paid to have Top come and push Big Boy #1’s gut off of me. 

“If you’re so smart, maybe YOU’ve got the crypto,” Big Boy #1 says.

“Yeah. He’s got it,” Middle Sized Guys chimes in.

“Yeah.”

“Yeah.”

Their solidarity was charming but did little to bolster my confidence. 

I had options. Of course I had options! That’s what the guys are always saying, that options are limitless, that it just take a minute to sort them out in your head. Only I didn’t have a minute. At least it didn’t feel that way now that the rest of them were bumping up against me. 

Pay them off? I could. I had plenty of money. But that didn’t seem like the right answer. 

Dig into the Russian’s assertion that he was at a zero balance? Sure, that could work. Again, I didn’t feel like they’d give me that time. 

So I rested on the only option that seemed viable at the time. 

“How about the guys we tied up outside?” I asked. “Maybe we should see what THEY did with the money.”

Luckily, and to my great relief, they chewed on that, taking their conversation to the other side of the room as the Russian and I exchanged our own glances. 

Damn. Why did I ever have to buy a motorcycle?

Be back with more soon,
Neil “cornered like a rat” Patel