When he finally went back to bed, Angelo dreamed of kittens.

In his dream he was back in Sicily, empty-handed, and his mother was chewing him out. Except his mother also had a cat's head, and so did the employees; and when he went back to his house to sulk, he opened the door to his bedroom to find his bed replaced with a giant cat tree. He returned outside, and the street was full of cats; but they ran away when they saw him; and there was that kid with the blue hair again, and he was carrying a suitcase, and when he opened it, another cat jumped out that he recognized at once.

"Hi, Princess!" he said, dropping the suitcase and walking off with the beautiful white Persian cat. "I think this guy lost you, so you're mine now."

Angelo ran after him, but the guy disappeared, and suddenly all his men were trying to reach every hotel and airline in the area trying to figure out where he had gone. Nothing. Muttering curses, he trotted back to his parents' house and let his mother scold him again. Except, this time around, she was shouting at him for losing the cat, and when she was done with that speech she whacked him with a broomstick for not feeding her treats.

Gasping and sweating, he opened his eyes.

There were no kittens in the room. That was the good news. He was still at the hotel instead of at home, which was also good news, because his mother would definitely give him hell if he came home empty-handed, and she wouldn't have the head of a cat while she did it. The less good news was that, according to his phone, he had apparently slept a grand total of two hours.

Groaning, he sat up and discovered that he'd somehow managed to screw up his back in his sleep. It was about half past seven in the morning, disgustingly cloudy outside, and his men were probably still passed out in their beds. Well, except for the kid, who had passed out in his chair in the lobby after a long night of thinking of a solution. In any case, they had slept enough; it was time to keep working. With every minute they spent lazing around here, their targets with the suitcase weren't getting any closer.

Sighing and yawning, he padded over to the bathroom, got ready, threw on his freshest set of clothes (a relative term at this point—he hadn't packed for such a long trip) and marched out into the corridor, banging on the doors to his men's rooms. "Wake up, lazybones!" he called, his voice still slightly raspy from the everything going on for the past few days, but this was what he had to work with. "We have a long day ahead of us!"

There was a shuffle of footsteps, then a very old lady opened the door in a nightgown that looked almost as ancient as she was. "What do you want?" she said sharply. "I didn't order room service! Go away!"

Angelo took a step back. "Sorry, madam," he said in his best English. "Wrong door."

"And speak English! Has your mother not taught you any manners?" She moved to close the door. "Bother me again and I'll file a complaint."

"Yes, ma'am. Sorry, ma'am."

The door closed with a slam, and Angelo cracked a smile. That old lady strongly reminded him of his own grandma, back before the devil had taken her.

Striding down the corridor, he scanned the doors, trying to remember where his men had gone. He couldn't recall. Last night he'd been too tired and stressed to remember, and then he hadn't bothered to ask. Oh well. Good thing phones existed.

A few minutes later, they were all holed up in Luca's room, Luca and Pietro still in their pajamas, the kid still in the same clothes he'd been wearing since yesterday. All three of them were staring intensely at Angelo's clothes. His form had, admittedly, suffered a little; his suit had wrinkles and his tie was slightly askew, which never happened without a serious reason, but honestly it was still pretty bold of them to stare like that when they themselves looked like they'd just gotten out of bed. The fact that they very much had done that was irrelevant.

"Now, boy," he said, addressing the kid. "Have you come up with a plan for catching our runaway birds?"

"Birds don't run, signore," the boy muttered. "They fly. At least, most of them. But…yes, I do think so," he added, lighting up. "I've managed to get their contact data from our man at the car rental."

Angelo raised his eyebrows. "And?"

"We need someone to pretend to be a staff member," he continued. "Someone with good English, or they'll get suspicious. We pretend we're calling in the name of the previous customer, who just noticed he left a suitcase in the car, and have they seen it? If we play our cards right, they'll tell us where it is and we'll know where to look." He offered a smile. "Maybe they'll even agree to hand it back to us if we're lucky."

Angelo furrowed his brow. "What if they've already turned it in to the cops?"

"Then they'll tell us just that, and we can deal with the police," the kid replied. "For now, we need someone who can sound like a car rental employee without raising suspicion."

They all looked at each other. The kid himself couldn't do it, Angelo had heard him trying to speak English enough on this trip to know that. Luca could sound amazingly trustworthy, but he also had a thick accent he couldn't get rid of, and he occasionally stumbled over the grammar. Pietro was an idiot and therefore out of the question. And Angelo…well, he was the most fluent one out of the group, but he didn't think he was biologically capable of not sounding like a mob boss.

"I could do it," Pietro spoke up. "I'm good at English."

They all stared.

"No offense, man," Luca retorted, gesturing vaguely at his entire being, "but you're barely any good in your mother tongue! How easy do you expect this to be?"

Instead of an explanation, Pietro pulled his phone out of his pocket and pretended to take a call. "Hi, this is Tim from the car rental speaking," he said in perfect English. "I'm calling about a problem with the car you rented—the previous customer just called, and he thinks he left something under the backseat of your car. Could you turn around and check for us if you can spot a suitcase?"

The others stared at him like he had grown a second head.

"Where," Angelo said at length, "did you learn that?"

"What? My fiancée is American," Pietro replied, shoving his phone back into his pocket. "I've worked a lot of terrible customer service jobs to afford my visits to her."

Angelo rubbed both hands over his face. This was getting ridiculous. First losing the money, now Pietro revealed himself to be smarter than expected. What was next, flying pigs? Rattlesnakes under the bed?

"Fine," he said with a heavy exhale. "Go and call them. The worst they can do is ignore it."

"Or call the cops on us, Signore," the kid piped in.

"Rhetorical statement. Just call already!"

Saluting, Pietro pulled his phone back out, only for Luca to take it from his hand. "I'll just make sure they can't track back the call to your number," he said, tapping through a few menus. "There. Go ahead."

Pietro nodded, dialed, and put the call on speaker.

It rang.

And rang.

And rang.

And kept on ringing right until it switched to the mailbox.

Pietro hung up.

"They did do the worst, Signore," he said. "What do we do now?"

Angelo exhaled slowly. Again. Damn it, he hadn't slept nearly enough for this.

"That's all right too," he muttered, adjusting his tie. "Get ready to leave. We'll hunt them down in Vegas."

~ ~ ~

Neo woke up to raised voices outside, shouting and arguing right behind his door.

Groaning, he buried his head between the sheets, trying to cover his ears. Not again. Please, not again. Would they ever stop fighting right next door? It was too early. He wanted to sleep. But if he got up and told them to be quiet now, they'd either involve him or pretend they hadn't just been screaming insults at each other. Better to pretend he wasn't here. Cover his eyes and ears, drown out the noise with music, pretend to be oblivious until the inevitable separation and divorce. Again.

But they were too loud. He didn't have his headphones…he couldn't ignore them.

Neo sat up with a curse, and reality sank into his sleep-addled brain like a blueberry sinking into thick syrup. Wait a minute. This wasn't his childhood bedroom. He didn't know the people arguing outside, had never heard their voices before, couldn't even fully make out what they were saying. Whatever it was, it seemed to be in English. Of course it was. He was a grown adult now, thousands upon thousands of kilometers away from home, in a whole different country, and the arguments of random strangers were aggressively not his problem.

Taking a deep breath, he scanned the room, trying to tune out the arguing. There were no posters on the wall, no battered electric guitar in the corner. Just a standard-issue hotel room, the morning sun peeking in through the closed curtains, headache-inducingly bright. In the bed across from his, Zeke was fast asleep with his phone still beside him and the covers half on the floor, his wavy hair sticking every which way and a peaceful smile on his face.

No, he thought. He wasn't home.

Sinking back down on the mattress, he let his gaze linger on Zeke's sleeping form, then got back up to pull the covers back over him. They'd have to get up soon, he knew. But not yet, it looked like. He could close his eyes for five more minutes before he woke up the peacefully sleeping dog and disrupted the calm of the morning.

Five more minutes. That was all he'd allow himself. After that, they really needed to get going, or else they'd never make it to L.A. in time.

Neo just blinked, and when he opened his eyes again, he had no idea how the hell three full hours had passed.