“Yes baby I’m so sorry but I have to.”
Ron sat next to her in the car not talking. Laura knew that he was mad at her and that made her heart ache. She kissed him goodbye as they stopped in front of Thomas’s house. He never came outside to face her. Actually, she hadn’t seen him in over two years.
   The loud cry brought Laura back to the reality of the bank. She took her hands away and looked at her outfit. This morning her clothes were immaculate as always, black well-pressed skirt, red blouse, Hermes scarf. She even wore her golden long earrings, one of them missing now. She looked like a mess. She looked around. An old man was lying down with a shocked expression on his face. His hand was curved in a weird angle. “Maybe he twisted it” she thought. The woman who cried was black-haired and young. Her cry was starting to become irritating to Laura. There was also a man lying down, most likely in his thirties, his look quite calm in the terrible mess and shouts of the gun holder. The other people, lying down on the cold marble floor, were a middle aged blonde woman, and an orthodox priest, his cassock rolled up, revealing his black shoes and white socks.
   The masked gun holder was shouting louder now, as the clerk would not co-operate. Laura saw the man turn around. He glanced at the lying bank customers. He spotted her. In quick sudden moves he came towards her. His hand grabbed her arm. She shouted for help. No one moved. They all stared as the masked man pressed the gun on the side of her head. She screamed again and again.
“Shut the hell up!” the man said.
Laura was silenced while tears ran down her cheeks. The robber turned to the bank clerk.
“Take me to the vault or the woman gets a nice hole in her head.”
The clerk gasped in fear.    
He left his cashier.
“Please…Don’t pull the trigger. I’ll…take you to the vault.” 
The middle-aged bald bank employee, shaking, took an electronic card and held it tight in his trembling hands.
“This way.” He whispered. He walked in shaky steps towards the inner side of the bank. He went behind the cashier and turned left into a small corridor while the masked gun holder followed, dragging Laura with him, the gun aimed at her ribs. Laura sobbed faintly. When they saw the vault’s door, her cries stopped. The bald man pushed the card in a slit and typed a security code on a small screen. They went inside. Laura hung from her cruel holder hopelessly, holding her handbag closely to her chest as if it was bulletproof.
“Leave the room”. The masked man said in a demanding tone. “If you call the police, she dies. Got it?”
The man left.
The robber took off his mask.
“Baby, you amaze me with your acting abilities.”
“Well, what can I say, I’m a natural.” Laura said to her accomplice and lover. She touched his cheek and gave him a kiss. She looked around and smelt the familiar, sexy aroma of money. She smiled as she gazed at the small square departments filled with the reason she was there. Stocks. Every department had names of the companies’ names and stock titles. She opened her large handbag. She picked the most prominent company names and opened their steel compartments.
“Baby what about money?” Her lover said.
“Stocks are nameless and cannot be detected.”
She sighed.
“God, do I have to tell you everything?”
She filled her bag with the bonds. 
“Now, I’m taking you back as a hostage, and we are leaving filthy rich.” The man said.
“Laura smiled at him.  Take the rest of the Ramon bonds and put them in your pockets” she said.
As the man turned around she pulled a small bottle from under her blouse. She took off her scarf and soaked it in chlorophorme. Her now unmasked lover turned around. “What is that smell?”
Laura pushed the scarf hard into his mouth. A second was enough to make him unconscious. The gun fell as he fell on the steel floor.
Laura put the scarf in the side pocket of her bag and left the vault. As she stepped out she started running. She cried:
“Help! Call the police! I’ve escaped!”
She ran through the still lying down customers, and reached the bank’s door. She left the bank as the alarm went off. She turned into the corner of the street and unlocked her Mercedes with the remote-control key. She rushed inside.
As Laura was driving back downtown, she thought about her baby boy Ron.
“I am the mother. The custody belongs to me.” She thought for the millionth time.
“Only if the court hadn’t found out about my involvement in the 2-million jewellery con. What do they want? I was never convicted!”
She caressed the bag with the stocks sitting on the seat next to her as she pictured her boy’s face when he would receive his first Rolex watch.