Then he noticed the Filipina assistant was back.

“Ida and Lucina are waiting for you at the front,” she told him.

Henry overheard her. He said, “Well, go ’head and do your thing, Ivan. I know you’re busy. But we’re proud of you man. Real proud.”

Ivan continued to smile and nod. “Thanks.”

As he followed Lucina’s assistant to the front entrance of the ballroom, he grinned at the many well-wishers who continued to eye him and randomly call out his name.

“All right, Ivan! Great party!”

“Thanks!”

At the front entrance were Ida, Lucina, an assistant from Ivan’s camp, two girls from Lucina’s camp, and three beefy security men in black. They were awaiting his arrival with two metal money boxes and two dark leather money bags.

“We need to count everything up,” Lucina told him.

Ivan nodded and followed them all to a smaller, private room of the hotel.

“Only me, I-van, Ida, and May-ya in the room,” Lucina told them all. Maya was her most trusted friend, a Colombian woman with the dark hair and eyes and the olive-toned skin of people from her native country.

The three security men stood guard outside the closed door, while the other assistants returned to the party.

Ida opened her metal money box on an empty table and kept her poise. Maya did the same with her box. They then opened the leather bags and poured the money out onto the table.

Ivan looked down at the overflow of cash money in front of him and couldn’t believe his eyes. He had never seen that much hard cash in his life. Before the party, he had never seen twenty thousand dollars in hard cash, which the three Chargers had shelled over to promote it.

Damn! he thought. He forced himself to keep his cool like the rest of them.

Lucina, Ida, and Maya had all been around hard cash before, but not quite as much as they now had out in front of them.

Ivan took the lead. “Okay, so let’s count the hundreds, fifties, twenties, tens, fives, and ones all in separate piles, from left to right.”

“You got it,” Ida told him.

“I’ll take the hun-dreds and fif-ties,” Lucina commented. “You two girls take the twen-ties. And I-van, since you are the a-ccoun-tant in the room, you count the fives and singles, and add it all up with the cal-cula-tor,” she joked with a smile.

“Yeah, leave it up to the accountant to do all of the grunt work with the bills, hunh? That’s typical,” Ivan joked back.

Lucina had brought a calculator and a thick bag of rubber bands to group the money with. They started their count by first organizing the bills into their separate piles.