Double update since it's been a while. Go back and read that, or you will most certainly be perplexed. Disclaimers, yada yada.

Anna was startled by a heavy beating at the door. Luckily, so was Hans.

"I have to take care of this," Hans mumbled into his phone. "Thanks for negotiating the legalese. We'll be back in Jersey soon."

The beating at the door didn't let up.

"Just a moment, please," Hans said, unhurried. He threw a sleeveless undershirt on, a weird pairing with his pressed slacks and shiny leather shoes; Anna lost sight of him as he walked toward the door.

"Fuckin' women, Hans, can't do anything with them."

Al.

"You look like you could use a drink," Hans said. "Come on back to the bedroom and we'll raid the minibar."

"You'd think I'd at least break even, not leave in the hole thirty-seven thousand dollars."

"Thirty-seven? Shit."

"I just couldn't stay at that table a second longer. What with the dying lady on my right, and that unsettling doctor playing? You know he had a card up his sleeve? Who does that at these kinds of tournaments? Whatever happened to professionalism?"

"Dr. Facilier was cheating?" Hans asked.

"Yeah, can't believe I missed it, though I'd had a bit to drink," Al said, ripping open a complimentary trail mix bag. "I'm fucking starving… raisons? I hate raisons—"

He spat the half-masticated glob of nuts and candy into the waste bin.

"How'd you catch him, then?" Hans said genially, finishing off some amber liquid in a crystal tumbler.

"Wasn't me. Blondie was onto him from the start."

"Who?"

"Blondie? Came in there and absolutely cleaned us out. Probably cheated, too, for all I know. But I had to leave the table, didn't have anything else to bet but the shirt off my back. I did the shirtless thing as a kid, I'd rather not go back to it."

"You're saying the Ice Queen came to the table? Jane…"

"Man, you sent her, though I could have used a little heads up. What's the phrase the Americans use? 'Bitches be loco.'?"

"Crazy."

"I know, it's crazy!"

"You told me she was with the other one," Hans said, harder this time. Al, in his drunkenness or obtuseness, didn't catch the tonal shift. Anna steeled herself for the Baretta to make an appearance.

"They're probably back doing their celebratory fucking… which, by the way, didn't you say you'd facilitate something along those lines?" Al asked.

Hans seemed genuinely surprised, jaw dropping and brows rocketing toward the ceiling. "What?" he said, flat.

"Come on man, you said you'd get me a girl. Or two, if the agreement still stands," Al said, chugging a tiny brown bottle of something from the minibar. He was swaying at the desk.

"No, about the girls… they're fucking?"

"Thought I told you that."

"You said they were here, together,not..." Hans course-corrected. "You knew we needed Jane."

"Jane. Bro, I didn't even know that was her name. Besides, you've already talked to her about it right? Setting up the online portion of the casino? Who cares what she does on her free time as long as she gets the credit card numbers for us? Bitch is still bitter, but I don't care as long as she holds up her end of the bargain."

"You're saying the two of them were— are— having sex?" Hans led, though his words bled incredulity.

Anna was more than off-put by his fascination with hers and Jane's relationship.

"The fuck I'm supposed to know?" Al asked, voice cracking toward the end. "It'd be something to see, but that British one, fuckin' cunt, wouldn't stop mouthing off to me about earlier, being lovers and all—"

Hans was chuckling low, his shoulders jumping sporadically, infinitesimally, like Mexican jumping beans.

"She really knows how to screw with people," Hans mumbled. "I think I taught her a little too well. How the hell did the blonde one get in on the table in the first place?"

"Huh?" Al hadn't heard well, but Anna did. "What's up with the third degree, man? You sent her. Shit, between you and Blondie, it's like an interrogation."

Anna had always been adept at reading body language. Words can lie but the body betrays, and she had the benefit of a few years with Hans to recognize his natural stances… and his enraged ones. The hand holding the glass tumbler curled into a fist, and it took a fair amount of emotional curtailment for Hans to place it calmly upon the nearest flat surface without shattering it first from an iron grip. The tendon in his neck bulged, and the German man grit his teeth.

"What… questions?" Hans breathed, sinister.

"Let's get out of here," Al slapped his palms to his knees and stood, heedless of Hans's words. "I'm broke and on the way to sober, which is not how this weekend was supposed to turn out—"

"What did you tell her?" Hans rephrased, the baritone timbre of his voice brokering no further dismissal.

"Ibn metnakah, what does it matter? We were just playing cards, drinking, smoking, and she brought up B4. I can't remember what I said."

Anna had been expecting it, but he moved so fast she didn't even see the barrel until it was trained on the poor Arabian man's forehead.

"How about now? You remember now?"

"Hans, what are you—"

Hans pulled back and threw the butt of the handgrip against Al's jaw, causing the man to stumble back and fall to the edge of the plush hotel bed. A throw pillow fell to the floor with a light plop, and Al's eyes crossed as he tried to focus on Hans.

Anna, meanwhile, held her breath.

"Let's try this again," Hans said, picking up said throw pillow and tossing it toward Al. "What—the—fuck— did you tell her?"

"N-N-Nothing that she didn't already know!" Al sputtered.

"Which was?"

"About B4… the Carol lady was already talking about the casino boats, the new fleet, how you had gotten that contractor in Belfast to provide the booze! I asked her how she was going to get the credit cards, and she just threw a vodka shot back and sneered at me. I thought it was a poker bluff, I swear! Just gaming talk."

Wait, a shot? Jane wouldn't do—

"Tell me, exactly, what she asked." Hans shoved the extended silencer barrel just under the soft part of Al's jaw, tilting the older man's head back into an obtuse angle.

"Just how we came across each other!" Al gasped. "Asked about your family, I mean, you know her, right? Just told her about our connection, how they showed me how to steal. Hans, seriously, what are you doing man? If Kurt and Ulrich were here—"

"Do you see any of my brothers here!?" Hans asked. "God, you are so pathetically shortsighted, no wonder they dumped you when they got the chance."

"That's not true!" Al raged, despite the metal at his throat. "We're in dealings that you would never—"

"Save it, fucker," Hans said, and he threw a jab into Al's face to disorient him further. Between Anna's and Hans's individual efforts, the man would be purple and green from nose to jaw come morning.

Anna remained stone-still, breath shallow, biting her lip with such pressure she tasted warm copper. There was a spider crawling inches before her eyes but she dared not twitch, not with the situation unfolding so horrifically before her moistening eyes.

"Guess who I just got off the phone with?" Hans spat. He dragged a desk chair across the room and fell into it, gun and eyes still trained steadily upon the other man.

"No guesses?" Hans asked. "Oaken, my assistant back in New York. He said your shares came through."

"I told you they would," Al gurgled.

There was blood at Al's lip as well.

"I don't know what you think, Aladdin," Hans said, as if the name itself could harm the man across from him, "but in the grand scheme, that transaction means I own you. Or better yet, I own your stocks, which is much better than owning someone as incapable as you."

"That's not how this was supposed to go down!" Al rasped from a bloodied jaw. "You fucking prick, that's not how any of this was supposed to happen. We were in this together!"

"You really think you can make something of yourself without your gifted oil shares?" Hans asked, hunching over his knees. He always did like to impart his wisdom before he broke his marks. Anna had once called it, unnecessary and insecure baby-of-the-family monologue. But now, she had never been more thankful for Hans's long-windedness.

"Allow me to enlighten you, Aladdin. You wanna know why A got you so fucking worked up?"

"Who the hell is—"

"The woman who punched you in the face and laid you flat like the shit you are," Hans said, and Anna was filled with a twinge of pride, which rapidly diluted to gurgling disgust in her core.

"You have zero foresight," Hans said. "You do not plan, you cannot think more than a single jump ahead, when the course of action requires fourteen, fifteen steps, one, two, five years into the future, you pissant. She played you."

"I hardly see how some Islamophobic English whore has anything to do with—"

"She's not Islamophobic! She's not English! The whore part I can't really attest to, but this is why you were never good at the long game. You were good for pick-pocketing, and one-off jobs. That girl? She's one of us. Kurt and Ulrich and Robert and the rest of us, we all trained her. She read you for the pompous little wannabe you are, and played you. You think you can't get any respect from Western businessmen? So you change your name. Notice no one else in the royal family wants to change theirs, and they get plenty of respect. They think you're an uptight Arabian conservative, so you squander your best investment on a gambling enterprise?! No one else from Riyadh went and threw away their source of income on some risky endeavor. So, newsflash asshole!" Hans got right up in Al's face, the other man's eyes drowning in fatigue, or possibly tears. He was clearly out of his depth, never having pegged Hans for the sociopath he truly was.

"You want to make Riyadh the next Dubai? Vegas of the Middle East? God, read a fucking newspaper. The top five percent of earners who can actually afford to vacation there are your Islamophobes, the ones who give money to politicians that vote for drone strikes on civilians in Arabian nations. Long story short, you should've just invested in Dubai."

Hans continued relentlessly. "You've never known your mark, Al. You just take something at face-value, because hey, there was never anything more to that melon in the market place, was there? And this is where you faltered: you stole the meal, not the meal ticket. Why would you ever think ahead? Probably why you stayed homeless until you conned a starry-eyed princess and married up."

"I don't understand what's happening—"

"That's not surprising. All you need to know is… I. Own. You."

Al eyed him closely and took a deep breath.

"What are you going to do with that gun?" the darker man asked.

"I'm going to make a point," Hans said calmly, and approached Al.

"No, please don't— sweet Allah, no, don't—!"

"Pity, I don't even like guns," Hans said, as he lodged the barrel into the joint at Al's right shoulder.

"Hans, please, don't, why would you—"

Al was crying now, and he kept eyeing the window like it might provide some sort of escape. But at twenty-four floors up, a leap like that was fatal. Hans blocked the exit, and backed the trembling man against the far wall. He was clutching that patterned throw pillow like some security blanket. There was murder in Hans's eyes, such that Al didn't know whether he should attempt a struggle, or just continue trying to reason with the man he once called a friend.

"I already had to put two men in the Hudson for disobeying my orders about guns. Then again, it doesn't really matter if I shoot you—"

"WHY HANS?!"

"Because you are a pawn, and always have been. I'm after a queen. This should teach you not to cross me."

"No Hans, don't, fuck, you're fucking insa—"

The shot was not completely silent, not as Anna saw in Casino Royale and all the other Bond flicks. The gun banged, but it was more thud than pop, muffled even further from the pillow Hans had lodged against the other man's shoulder.

In the nanoseconds it took for the bullet to exit the chamber and enter Al's flesh, there were tears, gasps, and frigid fear, not just from the man who had endured the shot. He screeched, and Hans wrapped a hand over his mouth as the Saudi prince slumped, a broken marionette discarded on the floor. He moaned, clutching his right arm, rose red blood spreading over his light suit jacket. Anna dared not even move to wipe the tears from her face.

No one deserved to be called nothing and then shot point blank…

Hans rose, and it seemed he took a grim pleasure from watching the man writhe before him on the floor.

"Listen now, bro," Hans said. "B4 was, and always has been, a sham. You were nothing more than funding for a much larger scheme. I needed you in my good graces, but now that you've gone and blabbed to those two, I couldn't give two shits what you think about me. You will do as I ask from now on," Hans said, pressing a slick leather shoe to the wound and applying enough pressure Anna was sure the man on the reddening carpet was seeing blotchy fireworks in his vision. "Or I will go for the kneecaps next."

"Hans—" Al coughed, then winced as tears kept rolling down his cheek. "I thought we were friends."

"Friends?" Hans recoiled, as if snake-bit. "Maybe you and Ulrich, but we were never friends. Our relationship changed years ago the second you told me you fucked a girl with her own energy signature."

"HER?!" Al gagged this time, crying out as his back hit the floor. "This whole fucking thing because she can work a computer?"

"That is none of your concern," Hans said, unscrewing the silencer from the handgun. He kept the handgun on his person, and started dressing.

"What—are—y-y-you doing?" Al asked. "Can't you at least c-c-call s-someone?"

"You won't bleed out. Someone will find you soon enough. Just remember this feeling."

"F-F-Fuck… you!" But it was more broken whisper than shout.

"I won't hesitate to take a few fingers," Hans threatened, malevolent smile creeping over his features. He returned to the desk and opened the other black case. Anna saw him remove a smaller gun, a model she was unfamiliar with. He inserted a dart into the chamber, and shoved the piece into the back of his pants at his waist line. "Now, if you'll excuse me," he said, wiping a thumb over the toe of his boot.

Probably blood-stained.

"I have to go pick up my commodity."

"You mmmean the g-girl?" Al asked, only semi-coherent at this point. "That other one will t-take you down before she l-l-lets you get to Blondie."

"I don't need a dart for the other one," Hans said softly, moving toward the door. "Sometimes you come across pyrite in the search for gold, you know?" Hans said, riding the moody carousel and hopping from threatening to joking to bleak in seconds.

Al grunted from the carpet, dazed.

"I only mean I have nothing to fear from the other one," Hans replied, as if the grunt was a question for him. "She is completely ordinary… in the worst way. She'll be harder to take uninjured. Although…"

Al wasn't listening anymore. Anna was sure he had passed out, or was at least on his way to shock. Hans, loving the sound of his own voice, was thinking quickly and vocally, and Anna once again stalled her breathing to catch every word.

"If the security gets here soon we'll be able to lay some sort of ambush and spook them into a corner, no matter what type of electricity is shooting through…"

Oh god, the security.

Anna couldn't chance a glance at her phone, but it had to be past ten, and at eleven the number of men she and Jane would have to avoid would double, triple possibly.

"— and Doc wants A in one piece, but that doesn't mean I can't incapacitate her—" Hans said, subconsciously touching the Baretta tucked into his jacket pocket. He was pacing a bit, back and forth over the threshold of the bedroom, in and out of Anna's vision. The rattling breaths coming from the man on the floor were likes nails on a chalkboard; the air in the duct stifling; the walls pressing closer and closer upon her with every step Hans took, with every imagined bullet he had tucked away in that semi-automatic. There was an obvious bulge at his side pocket, and Anna wondered if Hans was either too cocky or too far gone to think he wouldn't be caught traipsing around with two armed weapons at a casino.

"— then again, force never really worked that well with A, emotional manipulation, however—"

Anna heard Hans's footfalls stop. And it was less the man bleeding in her fragmented line of sight than the idea that Hans was so aware, so knowledgeable of Anna's vulnerabilities that had her silently whimpering. She had pushed for this, had thought this would lead her to the answers she had been looking for, for Jane, for herself, for them, together, forever.

But now, it all seemed much too complicated, and hardly worth a mangled shoulder with a bullet lodged in the socket, bones splintering and tendons mangled. The walls of the ducts, she was certain, were now inches from her face. She wasn't holding her breath anymore; regardless, Anna was having trouble sucking oxygen into her lungs.

The walls of the vents shifted closer in her mind's eye.

"—I'll just have to get the Queen first," Hans said. "A and her fucked up abandonment issues, she wouldn't let her sister go so easily."

Wait…

Sister…

Sister?

SISTER?!

Hans popped back into her sight line and grabbed his phone from the table, dialing hastily. "Change of plans," she heard him bark. "I've got a bleeding body in my room we need to get it taken care of. Half of the team on that, pay them four times the fee not to ask questions and dump him in the desert… Close to a highway, I don't want him dead. The other half with me, but I don't want to have to wait on all of them before we make a move. I think I might even get the girls to come willingly, if my aim is any good."

The door slammed shut, taking Hans and his conversation along with it. As Anna rolled over the air ducts pressed in on her mouth, her trachea, her lungs, and she vaguely wondered if she would ever be able to breathe again.

So. There's that melodramatic mess. Thoughts? Concerns? 'WTH did you do's? Thanks for keeping up with me despite my absence. We'll roll merrily (or not so merrily) back along, now.