AWF - Skye and Montana, New Financial Recruits
How life can change in but a mere 6 hours. Is Las Vegas the place to be when your world is turned on its head?
Background
Skye and Montana are lifelong friends living in Houston. They started school together, did college and graduated from university together and got their first boyfriends at a frat party on the same day. Each never needed to compete for boyfriends because they had the same basic genes, very tall at six feet, slender hour-glass figures, chiselled sharp high cheekbone faces, flashing green eyes, glossy brunette fine bob cut hair and thirty-four C perky boobs. So often they were thought to be twins or at least sisters, but they were not and glad they weren't. As a result, they were able to work their way through university as models, supported by hefty loans to fund their fees. Men always chased them and in the past years they were happy to be caught, regularly and often together. Both were gym junkies, tennis aficionado and sports tragics.
Skye now lived with her merchant banker boyfriend Terone and together they spent every dollar they earned before it hit their bank accounts. She was high maintenance, wanted to keep that reputation and was well known in the party scene for that reality.
Montana married her husband Zak, a construction engineer, after a whirlwind courtship. Within two weeks of the ceremony, he was shipped off to the middle east in the army to establish vital infrastructure for the US forces in the region. She is a down to earth manager type of person, who loves the high life while realising someone must pay the bill sooner or later.
Montana had been struggling to motivate herself to get her life under control after such a whirlwind courtship, with her hunk husband now in the middle east and locked in for at least a six-month tour of duty located in a region where communication was limited for days on end.
Skye was having problems with her boyfriend who was normally hyper energetic and a driven person, but he was refusing to explain what was troubling him.
After another argument with Terone, Skye phoned Montana and they agreed to go off and have a holiday on their own, getting away from their men and their problems.
The solution to their need for personal space could only be one place, Las Vegas. Each just grabbed a roll-on bag large enough for the in-cabin holds, filled it with bikinis and necessaries and within 6 hours they were in Las Vegas sipping their favourite mojos using Skye's overworked credit card.
The Problem Starts
It was 11.00am on the third day of their vacation, when the first sign of trouble raised its ugly head. The girls had been staying at one of the major hotels on the "strip", living the highlife, drinking champagne, dancing the nights away, gambling at the tables, flirting with the many men that showed interest, sunbaking the days away around the pool and enjoying the fabulous food. Now was brunch.
The two had taken themselves to a local restaurant, dressed in very short white frayed shorts, pink almost see through blouses open to the boob line and sandals. Nothing else was required or in place, barring their purses. The men they passed did not attempt to hide their looks of interest as the two strode past and through the door of the restaurant. Each smiled at the other as if to say "we have not lost it, so flaunt it."
"I am sorry madam, but your card has been denied against this charge. Do you have another card or maybe cash please?"
This was seriously embarrassing to Skye who had taken Montana away for an all-expenses paid holiday, no expense spared girls break.
Fortunately, Skye had enough cash to meet the cost of their brunch and tip, but that left her and Montana rather bereft in the cash department.
Once the waiter had left Skye started her calls.
First to her boyfriend to find it went through to voicemail and timed out because of too many messages clogging up the storage. This was followed by a call to their rental unit, where the call went to a deadline.
Next was to Terone's central desk where he and the brokers worked. Marcus answered and when Skye identified herself, the horror came across her face to the reality of what was happening. "I am sorry Skye but Terone has been terminated as of yesterday. He was involved in a Bitcoin scheme that went wrong badly leaving a lot of our investors losing millions of dollars and him being chased by our Bank to pay out his margin loans. He was ushered out of the office and told not to come back. The Feds are wanting to talk to him and the best information I have is that he has gone overseas on the first plane out to Cuba. There is no extradition treaty there with the USA. His company cards have all been cancelled and whatever cash he was entitled to here has been frozen." With that Marcus terminated the call with not the slightest form of sympathy.
The last was to her mother. "Hi mum. Have you heard anything from Terone? He has skipped to Cuba and left me in the lurch with no money or credit."
"I have been trying to call you. I went around to the unit this morning. Terone was gone with all his clothes, laptop and phones. There were several unopened letters there, all asking for money including your current month rent. Please don't ask us for any money. We have enough of our own issues with losses we copped from closing out our Bitcoin account that Jerome set up for us."
"OK mum. Got the message. You always warned me that Jerome was a slick bastard and you have been proven right again. We can talk about that Bitcoin account when I get home. Talk later, bye."
Skye sat down and took stock of her predicament. She got out a piece of paper and started jotting.
Virtually no Cash.
Owe the hotel over $5000 now and growing for the rooms, food and drinks to date.
Four more days here to pay for food etc, maybe an extra $5000.
Invited Montana down here for free trip on me.
No credit available.
No man to pay the bills.
On vacation so no help from employer.
Deep bills to pay at home.
How do we even get home.......
It was time to confess the situation to Montana. They sat together back in Skye's room drinking coffee from the inhouse bar. She handed Montana her notes.
