One In A Million (The Millionth Trilogy Book 1) Read online

  ONE IN A MILLION

  TONY FAGGIOLI

  ATTICUS CREATIVE, INC.

  CONTENTS

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also by Tony Faggioli

  All rights reserved

  (c) Tony Faggioli July 2016

  Atticus Creative

  This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  ISBN 978-0-9978974-0-1 print edition

  ISBN 978-0-9978974-1-8 ebook edition

  For my father...who gave so much for one little boy. And who was always happiest when that boy was writing.

  CHAPTER 1

  STANDING IN THE BATHROOM of his hotel room, the sweat of lust glistening on his chest in the mirror before him, Kyle Fasano realized he had done a terrible thing. Her lipstick was smeared on his neck. He could still feel her hands on both his temples, pulling at his hair, urging him on, silently begging for something far more than the deed itself could ever provide.

  He heard her stirring in the bed. He’d waited until she’d fallen asleep, her breathing soft and level, before he slid her arm from his chest and snuck to the bathroom. He still couldn’t believe he’d done it. A twenty-three-year-old, the most ogled girl at the company the last two months, and he landed her. Or more likely, she landed him. He knew his intentions, but really, this had always hinged on hers. Even when they decided to get a room a few hours earlier, the look in her eye, the hesitation, and yet… a faint smile betrayed a subtle hint of determination.

  What had he done? It was all a mess. He could keep getting laid, screw up his whole life for a kid who would grow weary of him soon enough, or he could stop it all now and risk ending up in Richard or Jerry’s office on Monday with a stack of sexual harassment paperwork to square up.

  He wiped his face with a hand towel and took a leak, aiming for the inside of the bowl. He didn’t want to wake her. If he did, she might want to go again, and he would. There was no stopping it now, this lust that had sparked the first time he’d laid eyes on her and inflamed over drinks after everyone else bailed at the end of happy hour. That was right before the jokes about getting a room started. Just kidding around, just a little joke.

  He looked in the mirror again, seeing the punch line.

  He couldn’t breathe. It were as if the lust was a living thing, sucking up the air in his lungs and suffocating his heart.

  He remembered his grandmother when he was all of fourteen, lecturing him on the Bible while she chopped vegetables for dinner, telling him in her stern Catholic voice that all sins were forgivable save one: adultery. She told him that her best friend once died on the operating table and had been brought back to life, and she’d claimed to see, to her horror, that hell was filled with adulterers. “That is one sin you don’t get past, Kyle. Remember that.”

  How absurd. He was only fourteen. How in the world did he have any idea what adultery was, or marriage for that matter, in any real sense? Now, as an adult, he wished he’d been old enough to ask the obvious questions that day, the ones that might’ve gotten him slapped upside the head. Exactly how did your friend know all this if she hadn’t done that very deed herself? Was it some sort of whorish act of infidelity with the butcher in the deli just after closing, or had she simply fulfilled a cliché and been seduced by the mailman, turning to her rosary just after her orgasm in a sense of shame that would haunt her the rest of her life?

  What was it, Grandma? And by the way, it wasn’t you, was it, Grandma?

  His conscience was beginning to dig and bite at him like a cornered rat. He was starting to care again, just a bit, just enough to make it feel wrong, and the feeling was incomplete, as if there was more guilt to come, a ton of it actually, but just not right now.

  God, what have I done? I’m so sorry.

  The irony of the prayer, lonely and brief as it was, was not lost on him. As if any God, Almighty or otherwise, was interested in bailing out a thirty-eight-year-old man who had just broken his marriage vows, tossed the security of his children to the wind, and, oh yeah, in many ways just taken advantage of somebody’s loving daughter.

  The gears in his mind turned and rang like a cash register tabulating the price that would have to be paid for this night. He chuckled. He hated being in sales; everything came down to the math: the commissions, the residuals, the losses.

  After turning on the cold water, he splashed his face, trying to wash her smell off his lips, that sweet smell of sin and victory that comes from getting a girl to do something against her better judgment, after she’s done pretending that she doesn’t want it too. His shoulders felt tight. Standing naked on the marble floor made the cold air around him seem more intense and he began to shiver, causing the shadows cast by the lights over the mirrors to move across his body in eerie patterns.

  He thought of his wife, Tamara, and as swiftly as her face came to mind he banished it. No. Not here. Not now. Not with the smell of another woman’s perfume all over him and that deep red lipstick still smeared there on his neck like blood from the marriage he’d just murdered.

  Tamara was never anyone’s fool and never would be. She would never tolerate this. Not even to protect the kids. Well… maybe. That would be the only card left to play. But what did it matter? He didn’t care anymore, right? That’s right. Who cares? Screw it.

  Perfect word. You screwed her and now you’ve screwed yourself, all in a few short hours of your life. Great job, champ.

  He had to leave. The urge to get out of the hotel room struck him as surely as the urge that had gotten him into it. His breathing became even more labored as his lust morphed into anxiety, and he mocked himself for probably being on the edge of a heart attack.

  That’s what you get for banging a kid nearly half your age. She had so much energy. You could barely keep up, and now, well, how about a big laugh at the idiot who goes into cardiac arrest in a hotel room with another woman on the night of his wife’s thirty-sixth birthday?

  He forced himself to concentrate. Deep breaths in, deeper breaths out—but even then they were barely more than puffs. He remembered football in high school, the game against Mater Dei when the wind was knocked out of him. Coach Pete standing over him like a stone golem, screaming at him to breathe, because he had cost them a time out. Coach Pete was the biggest bastard he ever knew, and sure enough here he was again, all these years later, a mirage on the bathroom wall, screaming at him again, “Kyle, you little priss, don’t you black out on me! Breathe, dammit!”

  He did, barely, clawing air down his throat in desperate gulps.

  Again, it hit him: he’d really done this.
He had. Worse still it was dawning on him that, like it or not, he did care. He did. Hearts would be broken by this, and lives, all for a college-style lay.

  He thought of his daughter, Janie, ten years old, and her soft brown hair, and what it would feel like to read her bedtime stories only on every-other-weekend visits.

  Nausea stirred his stomach, and he grabbed a towel. First he couldn’t get air in, and now he could feel vomit trying to come out. He willed the urge away and scrambled toward the bedroom. He would get his clothes, quietly, and like a low life piece of shit, he’d sneak out of here before she woke up. Later it was going to be bad, when he’d have to see her again at work, but now, this moment, was more than he could take.

  As he stepped from the half-light of the bathroom back into the bedroom, he heard her before he could see her. It was an odd sound, half-murmur and half-whisper. His lack of vision as his eyes adjusted to the darkness seemed to heighten his sense of hearing. He could barely see her outline; she was sitting at the foot of the bed, slightly hunched over.

  “I’ve done what you want, what you want, done what you want, want…”

  He froze. Was she on her phone? Had this whole thing been some sort of setup? How? Why?

  Her voice was changing, the words now gone, and then she began a soft chant of some kind. He felt hairs across his entire body rustle to some sort of primal attention, as if an unknown danger had just joined them in the room. But that was ridiculous.

  He stood there for a good fifteen seconds, naked and exposed, trying to get his head around what was happening.

  Adrenaline poured into his bloodstream. The breathing problems? Subsiding rapidly. The nausea? Gone.

  Jesus! What do I do?

  Something was very wrong here, in a very bad way. Something told him that he would be the stupidest man alive to make a sound, to yell at her or try to snap her out of it—whatever “it” was that she was doing. What the hell? Was she a head case? She had never seemed like one. Was she on drugs? Possibly.

  But if the explanation was as simple as some bad X, then why was there an irrational command from somewhere deep in his mind telling him to consider every move he made next very, very carefully? It was as if he was being introduced to an instinct he never knew he had and it was telling him, point blank, not only to avoid disturbing her but to run, naked, right out of the room.

  The whispered chant, intonations from deep in her chest, continued as he willed himself to move forwards, to the chair where his shirt was tossed. He did so slowly, to avoid making any sound on the carpet.

  Shirt in hand, he grabbed his shoes and looked for his socks.

  As he moved to the side of the bed, closer to her now, her chant subsided, and again she began to speak. “I know, I know, I know, I know, I know.” The two words were like rocks skipping across a lake, slippery and fast, plunking between each pause. She shook and her hands fidgeted in her lap, the fingers strumming one another uncontrollably.

  Screw the socks. He could do without his jacket too. Then his stomach dropped.

  His pants lay on the floor, opposite the corner of the bed where she sat but still far too close to her for comfort.

  He actually decided to go without the pants, as crazy as that sounded, before realizing that his cash and keys were in the pockets.

  Shit. She’s probably got Tourette’s or something, Kyle. Just let it go. Snap your fingers and she’ll come around.

  As if in response to this thought, the girl he knew as Caitlyn went completely silent.

  Are you kidding me?

  Not a word. Not a sound. And the silence was far worse than the chant.

  He dropped to one knee and half-scooted to the pants. The bed was a nice big California king. She was a little thing, easy to bounce around, and oh what fun that had been a hundred years ago, before this moment. But still… at five foot four or so, her at one corner and he at the other, she couldn’t possibly reach him.

  Yes. That’s the good salesman. Do the math.

  But that same new instinct was telling him that she wasn’t human anymore.

  That’s ridiculous! She’s hopped up on speed or something. That’s it. She’s just tripping.

  He was losing it. Barely able to stifle the panic in his body, he edged closer to his pants, realizing that he would have to take his eyes off her for just a second to reach down below the bed, sacrificing his line of vision.

  He grabbed the pants and immediately looked up. She was staring directly at him, her chin out and her head tilted at an odd angle.

  The room, his heart, time, and the heavenly host above, all stopped. Frozen.

  “You weren’t supposed to see, supposed to see, supposed to see…” she said. Her words, deep and guttural, were nowhere near as chilling as her eyes. They were now pure black orbs.

  Again, he pleaded. Oh God, please, get me out of here.

  She stood, but even this movement, from sitting to standing, was jilted and inhuman, a cross between a mime and a puppet, the joints in her knees popping loudly.

  It was time to go. Period.

  He moved toward the door, and she smiled.

  Here he was in this horribly unreal situation, in a hotel room with a woman who was not his wife, and a part of him was still clinging desperately to the notion that he could get out of this clean somehow. But her smile proved how pathetic that idea was and how desperate he had become; it was the same level of warped desperation that makes an animal stuck in a trap believe that it can still get away if it just chews a little flesh off its leg, right around the edges, just a little at a time, then just a little bit more.

  “Was I good, Kyle?” she asked, and the words came out with a half-click at the back of her throat. She moved towards him, bringing her arms out at her sides like a gunslinger, her fingers splayed as though she was in some sort of primal attack mode.

  He couldn’t speak.

  She wasn’t human. It was obvious now. She wasn’t. It made no sense, and deep down inside, way deep down, he hoped that he was the one who was tripping, some weird brain convulsion caused by too much rum and the Viagra he’d snuck earlier at the bar.

  Yes. This whole thing had been very much premeditated, hadn’t it? Right down to the pill he’d taken to bang her better. He was no innocent husband seduced by the office harlot. He had planned it all out, very carefully. Like a suicide.

  “What do I do, do I do, do I do?” she asked, speaking to the floor now, caught in a conversation with someone or something else, momentarily distracted.

  He saw his moment and took it. In three quick strides he sidestepped to the door and opened it so he could escape. He didn’t take his eyes off her for a moment, his hand still on the door handle, his peripheral vision guiding him.

  She looked up. “Kill him.” She said it matter-of-factly, as if she were ordering a scoop of ice cream, before those horrible black eyes went wide with rage and those fingers with their French-tip nails came forwards to stab and claw the soul right out of him.

  She charged the door with a scream as he stepped out into the hall and slammed it shut behind him. He heard her thud against it loudly on the other side. That too was abnormal. A human being would’ve slowed down upon seeing the door being closed in their face, but like a feral cat or a rabid dog she had charged directly into it.

  He fled down the hall, nearly naked and with clothes in hand, closing the thirty feet to the elevator.

  She banged and screamed from inside the room as if she couldn’t get out, the sounds echoing down the hall, and he realized that she might not be able to, that the difficulty of using those claws to open that door might be the only thing saving him right now.

  But still, what was human in her, if anything, might figure it out any second now. Then she would be out and after him.

  He had no time to waste. Making it to the elevator he pushed the call button, and to his relief the doors opened immediately. There was no one inside. Finally: a moment of luck in this whole mess.

  He
jumped in and punched the “close” button repeatedly. He held his breath as the doors shut agonizingly slowly, certain that she would appear in the opening before they fully closed.

  When the doors finally came together and the elevator began its descent, he exhaled deeply, still in a state of shock.

  Oh God. What just happened? God, please, just help me. Get me out of this.

  He had twenty-two floors to get himself dressed and he managed it, but just barely, and only because there were no stops along the way. The elevator opened and he was out into the lobby at a quick clip. Passing the front desk, he nodded curtly at the smartly dressed employee on duty, thankful it was a man for some reason.

  When the front doors of the hotel opened and the crisp night air outside spilled over him, he began to reason with himself. This was all a bad dream. Yes. He was brilliant enough to have had an affair with a closet crack addict who was up there in that room right now in some sort of drug induced hallucination. That’s all it was. He just had to get to his car and—

  “Kyle Fasano?”

  The voice was deep, authoritative, and came from somewhere to his right.

  This had been a setup. He was going to get scammed somehow.

  He turned to face a tall man with a gray face, who was in a gray suit and wore a gray hat that sat evenly over his white hair.

  “This is not a scam, Kyle,” the man said, his face full of pity.

  Had this guy just replied to his thoughts? No. That was impossible.

  I must’ve spoken aloud without realizing it.

  “No, you didn’t,” The Gray Man said.

  Kyle hadn’t buttoned his shirt up all the way, and the cold air bit at his chest as the night came to a standstill.

  “What is this?” Kyle finally asked.

  “You’ve been asking for God’s help, haven’t you?”

  “What?”

  “Yes, a number of times, actually, in the last few minutes.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You know, Kyle, I actually feel a bit sorry for you, I’ll admit it,” The Gray Man said.