Ty

*Jake POV*

I have just settled into my corner, ready for a much needed sleep, but a familiar voice shouts from the streets.

“Hey! Jake!”

I sigh and crawl out. That’s my foster brother, Ty. He is standing outside an exquisite sports car and looks like a million bucks.

“Ty.”

I am not very excited for this meeting because it always ends the same way.

“Come on. Is that how you greet your big bro?”

I shake my head and hug him. He is only a year older than me but never lets me forget it.

Ty holds on to my shoulders and inspects me from head to toes.

“You look like shit, what happened to you?”

I explain my ordeal and he is fuming by the time I finish. “Mr Smith, you say?”

I shake my head. Ty is very trigger happy, I should have known not to mention any names. “Ty, let it go.”

I hope my stern voice does the trick because I can’t afford to be caught up in his criminal activities.

“Look at you Jake. No rich asshole does this to my little bro and get away with it,” he says with clenched fists.

I am touched. Ty is the closest to a family I have. We meet at the last foster home I had. The old man, Bra Joe was our foster parent and the nicest one we both ever had, except he was really suspicious. Ty and I even tried searching him through the internet at school because Bra Joe’s garage had machine guns I have not even seen the cops carrying, not to mention the bombs he made at night when he thought we were sleeping and unmarked vans which came to collect them. Then there was those weird meetings in the middle of the night.

“It was his people, not him.”I say firmly. I am still pissed about everything that happened to me today but I have to make myself very clear to Ty if I don’t want to end up in jail.

“Same difference,” Ty says dismissively.

“Let it go,Ty.” I intentionally emphasise each word to make my point.

He shakes his head. “I don’t believe you, man. You would be a big shot by now if you stop being so righteous and come with me.”

Ty and I both became homeless when Bra Joe’s house was ransacked by the cops and he disappeared in thin air. Ty now has four mansions and a collection of sports cars because he chose to join the mafia after two weeks on the streets.

“I can never join the mafia, Ty. It’s not me.”

I have accepted his choice but he does not want to accept mine. He shows up every month to try and convince me otherwise, but I can’t.

“What’s you, Jake? Sleeping in the streets being a punching bag for assholes you can defeat in a fair fight? Bra Joe trained us to be able to fend for ourselves, not this,”

I look at him, at how he is twisting our past to fit his choices. After Bra Joe realised that we were on to him, he decided to train us. That man pushed us to our limits and back. For what? To this day I have my own theories but we excelled in martial arts and aiming from very far. I guessed that he was training us to be secret agents, snipers or terrorists. Orphans with no family, we fitted the profile. Ty on the other side now believes that Bra Joe knew that we would be stranded when he is gone and trained us to climb the mafia ranks, like he has done.

“Why are you here, Ty?”

I had painkillers but my whole body still hurts. I really don’t feel like doing the usual back and forth with Ty today.

Ty’s expression becomes serious. “I heard that someone was found dead in this street and came to check if you were okay. Is that a crime?”

“Thank you, bro. That was Q, I am fine. ”

“Jake, please come with me.”

“You know the answer to that.”

The last time I visited one of his mansions, I swore to never go anywhere with him again.

“Come on Jake, you are hurt. You need a comfortable bed to sleep and a physician to take care of you. You can come back when you are better,” he pleads. I know that I sound stupid and ungrateful to turn his offer down, but past experience thought me better.

“Ty, you kill people in cold blood in order to assert your dominance. I can’t be around the person you have become.”

“You still on that? Those assholes deserved it.”

His response is enough to prove my point.

“They forgot to call you, Sir!”I remind him. That’s the day I accepted that him and I have different paths, but he can’t accept it. He is the boss but someone is always waiting to strike and take that position. He needs someone he can trust. I love him like a brother but I can’t be that for him.

“Okay, I admit that was extreme. I was still climbing the ladder back then. Its a dog eat dog here, Jake, but I am the boss now and I promise you that’s a rare occurrence.”

I shake my head and back away. “Thanks for stopping by. I love you.”

We do this every month. He does not kill as much as before because he gets to instruct his subordinates to do it on his behalf. It’s the same to me regardless of who pulls the trigger but he will argue that I won’t get to see any of it. He will then offer me money I can’t accept, which will lead to a full blown discussion of money is just money while I feel his is blood money.

I crawl into my corner without looking back and hear him driving off a few minutes later. I am homeless, far from being a saint, but I sleep everyday with a clear conscience. It’s a trivial thing to many, a little price to pay for the benefits that come with having money. It should to me too, but somehow it is worth being homeless to me.

I wonder if I inherited this from my parents. I was eight-years-old when they died in that car crash and my life turned upside down. I get a lot of flashbacks about them recently. I still don’t get how that crash happened. I recall the first responders all saying everything looks really suspicious but the investigation never yielded anything. I wonder how I would have turned up had they lived to raise me.

I wake up the following day with my body still feeling like lead but with less pains. The first thing I see when I crawl out of my corner is a paper posted on the wall.

“Hey kid. I am deeply sorry for your injuries. The Asherway race club is looking for a handyman, if you are interested. I asked the manager to hold the position for you but it’s only valid for the next 24 hours. Mr Smith.”

I pull down the paper and instinctively look around because it is a few feet from my corner, yet I did not hear a thing.

I am usually a light sleeper, the painkillers I took before going to sleep must have knocked me out.

I look at the paper again before crawling back to my corner, get my backpack and head to the racing club.

The place is a few kilometres from the downtown I stay in, yet the difference between the two places is evident. Besides the deafening noises of million dollars engines flying through the race track, there are exquisite cars in the parking lot and the members all look wealthy.

I am standing in front of the black building, wondering which way to go when I get roughly pushed out of the way by a men probably about my age.

It’s easy to tell by his designer pants, limited edition golf shirt and sweaters loosely tied around his neck that he comes from wealth.

“Watch where you are going, idiot,” he sneers and walks through the glass sliding doors.

I sigh, bite my tongue and follow him inside. All eyes turn to look at me. I guess I do stand out with my faded almost thinned out t-shirt and faded jeans that are almost shredded around the knees.

“Hello. Can I help you?” an average height, caramel- skinned woman probably in her early twenties in a secretariat attire asks.

“Hi. I’m Jake. I understand your manager might have a job for me.”

“Jake Anderson?”

I nod my head, surprised that she knows my name.

“I’m Leticia, Mr Reed’s secretary. We have been expecting you and sorry about the incident outside. George Spencer can be..” she shrugs her shoulders.

That’s when I realise that everything that happens outside is clearly seen from the inside of the building through the glass doors.

I shake her hand and can immediately tell by the calluses that she is not from wealth. I strangely find that comforting.

“Thanks. Nice to meet you, Leticia.”

“Mr Reed is away on a business trip. Follow me, I need to show you your room.”

Her heels click on the black marbled tiles as she walks towards the elevators, but I can’t get myself to follow.

I am frozen and stunned. “I have a room?”

She stops and looks at me, but I can’t help it. I have been homeless for almost a year now. I suddenly have a job I did not apply for and a room in a luxurious elite racing club.

It’s all just too good to be true and life has thought me never to be naive, because nothing is ever free in this life.

A thought suddenly comes to me.

“Is Ty paying or threatening you guys to pretend to hire me?”

It’s not unheard of for factories, shops and clubs to be fronting for syndicates.

All along I assumed that the rich guy whose men beat me up was the one who left me the paper, but I told Ty his name. He could have just signed his name to throw me off and before I know it, I owe him my soul.

Leticia looks at me with a confused expression before the elevator doors open. I follow her inside and she selects the basement.

“Mr Smith recommended you to Mr Reed. You must be connected.”

She does inverted comas with her fingers when she says “recommended”, suggesting that it was not quite like that. I can hear the envy in her voice at her assumption of my connection to the man I don’t even know.

“And Mr Smith has a lot of influence?”

Leticia laughs. She is not the most beautiful woman I ever met, but her warm smile and the way her almond eyes dance when she laughs make her the slightly above average girl next door.

“That’s an understatement,” she says the moment the elevator opens at the basement. She unlocks the middle door and gives me the key.

“Anyway, this is your room. It’s not fancy but it has all the basics. You get employee meals at the coffee shop in the front. Apparently, you need to rest for a while. You start work next week.”

I shake my head, trying to process and make sense of everything she just said. I have so many questions, I don’t even know where to start.

“What exactly is my work here Leticia?”

She narrows her eyes at me. “Mr Smith did not tell you?”

I shake my head, tempted to tell her that I only met the man yesterday, but I don’t even know much about her. It seems this Mr Smith has a lot of influence here, that might be advantageous. I will keep them guessing until I know exactly who he is and why he is being so generous to me.

“You are a janitor, handyman, security guard and unfortunately, the water-boy for the racers.”

“Why unfortunately?”

I am desperate for any job. Somehow I don’t think supplying water to anyone can be any stressful. Hell, just having water to supply is a luxury.

She flashes with ‘just wait and see’ kind of a smiles and I already know there must be a story there.

“See you, Jake. Let me know if you need anything. You know where to find me.”