by Jamie Knight
It was too bright even before I opened my eyes. Light footsteps brushed the carpeted floor of my bedroom, and I knew instantly who they belonged to, after a light cough escaped through the musky air.
“Good morning, Master Alex,” drawled Jonathan, my steward, butler, driver, and the highest trustee of my estate.
Not to mention my friend and father figure for a very long time now.
He drew the blinds and opened a window, letting the cool fresh air sweep in. “I believe it is time for your weekly attendance at church.”
Damn.
It was Sunday.
Where had the weekend gone?
It was that time of the week to be humble and head off to the weekly party of forgiveness. Don’t get me wrong — I am a man of faith with all levels of respect to the Big Man up high, but growing up around thieves and liars who stole cars and broke into houses while at the same time being a part of the church choir did not bode well with me.
I did not like hypocrisy, even in myself, and some members of my current church pushed my limits of respect. Nevertheless, I tried to attend regularly.
“It’s too early, Jon; come on, just a few more minutes,” I pleaded, while tugging at my duvet.
The cool air was getting quite chilly.
“Six a.m. as always, Master Alex. Today is no exception,” he insisted, placing the tray of my breakfast on the mahogany table next to the old wall.
Jon had a way of making me look up to him as a mentor, and sometimes, the type of father I never had.
“Hurry, Master Alex,” he breathed, as he walked away to give me privacy in which to change my clothes.
Jon knew I was a sinner in need of redemption just like everyone else in church was. He particularly knew my bad boy, womanizing ways. He’d seen the worst in me, yet was always there for me, anyway.
Recently he had thought it a good idea for me to attend a local church I had long donated to. He said it was for publicity purposes, for my business, but I also was able to see that he wanted me to stop my playboy ways and find some meaning in my life.
He also had happened to find out through town gossip that a certain someone had started attending that church. It turned out that there was someone even better there, who I loved seeing and who was the secret reason that I continued to go every Sunday, when otherwise, I would find it boring and old-fashioned.
But more of that later. For now, I was focused on my relationship with Jonathan, and feeling grateful for all he had done for me, including putting me in touch with a good friend from my past and unknowingly putting me in touch with that same friend’s beautiful, yet forbidden, young daughter.
Most folks would tell you it was the strangest thing to fathom, our relationship. Some whispered behind my back that Jon was my estranged father, but that simply wasn’t true.
Let me put it plainly. I have no intention of answering to any false accusations. I had my dignity and so did he.
For close to twenty-five years this man, Jon, had stood by me through all adversity and had channeled his energy through me in times of need. Only the two of us know of how we met, and it is a story to behold. It won’t hurt letting it off my chest this once, anyway.
It was summer break, and I was what some would call a street rat. I suppose that title befitted me at that time in my life. Feeding off of trash cans and garbage dumps in the city of Detroit, I became accustomed to being a fifteen-year-old ghost in almost everyone else’s eyes.
I was never homeless before then, oh no. I grew up in a family of five. I had a mother who had shifts at the community center working as a life coach, a father who was a doorman at a reputable building, and one older brother and sister.
It was a quiet life growing up; up until my dad discovered the bottle.
No one could tell me why he became so abusive all of a sudden. He would come home late most nights and sit down on the front porch for hours on end, disregarding the cold or the unforgiving stares of the neighborhood gossipers.
In the middle of the night, I would know of his arrival in the house by the chaos that entailed the rest of it. I would cringe under my covers as my brother Sean would hunch over Celeste and me, begging us not to make a sound, as Dad whopped my mom with his belt; and that was when he was lenient.
He had anger issues that not even church could resolve. I suppose it was one reason I came to dislike the hypocrisy of churchgoers – the fact that my father could be abuser on Saturday night and saintly-seeming parishioner on Sunday morning, and no one seemed to know or care.
On many Sundays, though, he used the church pews to go and nod off; to the disapproval of everyone else of course. I remember being so embarrassed of calling him my father, for I was the target of bullies at school.
I mostly wondered why my mother had always stuck by his side. I knew it was foolish of her to keep pretending “it’s for the children”, when even we were suffering.
My siblings and I would stick together no matter what, though. Celeste was the prettiest girl in the neighborhood and at school. She got my mother’s eyes and my father’s robust attitude, making her the girl who every boy wanted.
She was the one who got me through those turbulent times, when father beat the crap out of Sean for being born. He always blamed my brother for the state of poverty he thought we were in, and Sean took it bravely.
Years passed, and the toll finally achieved a breaking point.
Chapter Two
Alexander
It was a cool day all those years ago in my past, but one that I still remember vividly today, and I was walking back from school. Celeste and Sean had walked ahead to dissuade the bullies and to make sure there was no violence at home; but I had a feeling they had something planned for me.
It was my fifteenth birthday. My mother and siblings had always thrown in a few coins to save up for my special day. Father was always bitter about it and he never showed any interest in his children.
The bright slashes of sunlight on the square path lit up my evening as I walked past the few unused cars that had had their wheels stolen and sold off by the gangs around the neighborhood, and they stood defiantly amidst the silence of the wind.
It was a bit awkward when I went around the corner towards my house, hunched up with a heavy bookbag on my back. The door seemed ajar. I stepped gingerly onto the porch and walked past the tattered couch that my father found comfort in, and pushed the door open with my thumb.
“Celeste? Sean? Mom?” I remember calling out, to no response.
I stopped in my tracks as I recalled the couch did not usually sit at that angle. Looking onwards, I realized there had been a scuffle of sorts in the living room.
There was a pool of red liquid seeping through the kitchen door.
I knew it was blood, but I had to know where it came from, despite already sniffing my tears back. The creaky black door would not budge until I gave it a heavy push. The images that I saw in that kitchen made me run and never look back.
The days to follow were painful and hard. I had no family to turn to and I was scared. Out of fear and despair, I ran. Running can only get you so far in this life, and one way or the other you’ll have to either stop to rest or get tired and quit.
I stopped at a gas station, thirty miles east. My stomach was rumbling, and all my thoughts were on food. I had no money and I knew I would have to dive into a dumpster to the side of the building and see what I could find.
Luckily for me, the gas station was also a café, so I had hit the jackpot. As I filled my mouth and belly with meat that was way past its due date and some unfinished fries, something caught my eye and made me pause for a while.
A man was sitting awkwardly on a stool inside the cafe facing the window. In his brown khaki pants, I could see the outline of his wallet peeking at me, as if begging me all the way through the glass window to come take it.
I knew it was wrong, for my momma had raised me right, but there was no way I was going to die hungry.
I dropped the garbage in my hand and waited. He was done in a few minutes. He walked out of there looking content and sated, and I remember feeling jealous as I ran past him with as much strength as I could get and picked his pocket.
I did not get too far, for strong hands caught me. The man who had me in his grasp was thin and pale with a thick, gray mustache, but no one would have imagined him to have been that strong.
He looked at me straight in the eye and told me words that resonated with me to this day.
“Don’t scream. Surrender with dignity.”
Looking back at how I met Jon that day, I laugh at those words. It was the first mark of his sarcastic nature. He wasn’t the man from whom I stole the wallet. No, that was the sheriff.
I spent a week in jail before Jon bailed me out. Of course, in keeping with my character at that time, I never thanked him, and moved on with my life and forgot all about him.
Crime was my forte. I reveled in the gang life, stealing and selling drugs. I was actually doing great for myself. By the time I hit twenty-six, I had my own block in the hood and was quite content with my life until one night in particular.
Jimmy was a poor boy I had grown accustomed to as a brother. He was short and plump, and you could never tell if he was part of a gang or not. He reminded me of a racoon who had an innocent face — until you found out how sneaky he could be.
He was one of my most trusted allies and unfortunately, he reminded me of myself when I was his age. Trouble was what he was used to, and three days after the New Year celebrations, he got into a scuffle with another gang member.
Jimmy was shot in the head and died.
That brought back some suppressed memories of mine, of my past and what I saw through that old creaky black door when I was fifteen. Sean had died protecting our sister, and mother had tried to dissuade father from killing her children.
In his last act of cowardice, my dad had hung himself. I had always wondered how I was never looked for by the police, even after I was caught stealing that wallet and saved by Jon.
My entire crew was distraught over Jimmy’s death, and we knew the cops were coming for us. The sirens were in the distance, and I knew someone had to take the fall for that murder. I just hoped that it wasn’t me.
I ran again, but not far. I remember being knocked out with a huge plank and waking up in a different side of the country with a nasty bruise at the back of my head.
Jonathan Moore.
It’s the name of the man that stood at length, surveying the California land before him as I woke up from being hit in the head; a name that I would soon hold in the highest of esteems later in my life.
He promised me that it was all taken care of. That the killer of my best buddy Jimmy had been caught, and that my crew members were paid off for their silence.
“Don’t worry, you’re in safe hands,” I recall him reassuring me.
“But why would you help me?” I snapped at him, feeling a nasty headache cropping up.
“My, oh my. We will need to work on that temper of yours, young master. In due time, all of your questions will be answered, but for now, I believe we are not in the best of scenarios,” he drawled, with his superior southern accent.
He walked me out of that field like a father, and I had my suspicions. This man had supposedly “taken care of things”, but I did not trust him. How ironic that he would become my best friend and mentor in the years to come.
It turned out, rather surprisingly, that my mother was the last heir to an old estate down in the south. She had not known, as she was raised in an orphanage and had died before her living relatives found her. But Jon was able to locate them while taking care of her estate, and that’s when we found out how fortunate she – and now I – really had been, when it came to finances.
Jonathan was entrusted with the duty of care towards my family, as someone in my lineage had saved someone in his lineage and all that honor crap that is so entwined in history.
Bygones being bygones, he put me through college. He always pointed out that “a man with no knowledge is as dead as a knight with no sword”.
I felt I was too old to get into school, but Jon got me through. He molded me into a man worth being proud of and trained me in the art of business and building companies.
By the time I was forty, I had become a tech mogul and one of the few billionaires in the world, due to owning several groups of companies. I was now a man of respect, but if it hadn’t been for Jon, I would still be pushing drugs through a one-mile block in the hood and undervalued with no sense of planning or direction.
His words of wisdom always came marked with sarcasm, and I loved it. It kept our bond alive and a sense of humor was always prized in our house. By the time I was around forty-one, Jon suggested to me, nay, nudged the thought into me about having a family.
“Sir, if I may, your body is not getting any younger, and it would be wise to find a good lady to settle down with,” he once brought up.
“Can it, Jon; I’m too busy for that,” I would retort, as my secretary scheduled another meeting with investors.
“More bimbos it is then…” he whispered, with a roll of his narrow eyes.
“What was that, Jon?”
“A bit of nothing, Sir,” he replied with a smirk.
I was not a man to have a relationship. I hated the thought of connecting with someone and then having my heart broken, or even worse, having them hurt because of who I am and what I own. Hence my playboy ways that Jon disapproved of so much.
One day, right after my forty-second birthday, during which Jon and I took a trip to the homeless shelter in the town, he came to me with a look of contentment and cheek.
“Jon?” I asked, confused by his unusual expression.
“Sir, tomorrow we go to church,” was all he said, with a tone of finality. “I have someone I think you should meet.”
So, I did as he requested and started attending church every Sunday. At first, I wasn’t quite sure who he wanted me to see, but then it became obvious.
Although I was happy to meet the person he wanted me to reunite with, I was even happier to meet that person’s daughter.
Chapter Three
Alexander
I hated it, at first.
The smiles, the color, and even the hymns just got to me. Jon drove me to the church in the town early one Sunday morning, amidst my protests.
“Do you really think this is the best way to spend my time on a Sunday morning? Aren’t my monthly donations enough? I could be on a yacht with a blonde-haired girl right now,” I argued.
Jon was silent all the way, humming to his favorite tune of an old English band. The limo came to a halt. The stony slabs that led towards the church seemed old; older than the tree that stood proudly at the edge of the paved parking lot.
“Sir, I shall wait outside in case you decide to leave. Today feels special enough to have dragged you here. Perhaps you will find yourself a dove to call your own,” he cheekily smirked.
Then he popped open his Kindle and continued reading a comical story from where he had left off.
Annoyed, but also curious, I walked in carefully, not wanting to distract the worshipping of the seemingly silent Creator. He chose my family to die so that I could be elevated, but for what?
A male usher was kind enough to ogle at me like I was a potato with a wig on and rushed to the front of the altar. The preacher was just about to finish his prayer, and then the stupid usher whispered something to his ear that made the preacher pause.
He looked at me with wide eyes, and the congregation followed his gaze.
I was not embarrassed, not even a little. I was the CEO of a huge multinational company and was used to giving interviews and being at the heart of people’s stares, as well as donations to this church and other charities, all of which gave me the reputation of generosity.
I figured it was the least that I could do, since I had come so far in my own life.
“Hallelu
jah!” the preacher cried, when I walked in.
“Amen,” the crowd strongly answered.
“Brethren, it seems that today we have been blessed immensely by the presence of a man who has come physically to our fold. Brother Alex has joined us once again! Praise the name of the Father!”
I stood and smiled and waved. Little did I know of the curious, small eyes that were eyeing me from the front of the church. Those curious eyes would mean an interesting future for me in the days that would come to pass.
During the service, I was a little off my game. Ladies in the choir who were obviously looking for a man of the house flirted shamelessly in my sight, and the talk was vague.
It was during the hour of reading Bible verses that my senses and curiosity were peaked. The voice that resonated through the church halls was so immaculately fluid and angelic; I had to see who it was.
A woman much younger than I was stood defiantly at the altar and read out the Psalms. I don’t even recall her words – only her face and its intricate beauty.
I felt something that I had never felt before blooming within me.
Was it instant attraction?
Love at first sight?
Or just fleeting, temporary lust?
I didn’t know. But it was something – that was for sure.
By the time she had sat down, I had been so distracted that I had not caught her name.
The service ended and I looked for the young lady. I found her seated with two adults, whom I assumed were her parents. The mother was clearly the source of the young woman’s beauty and she had obviously inherited her fierce eyes from her huge and burly father. The mother sat next to a younger boy, who was probably the beautiful girl’s brother.
As I walked up towards them, the father looked up at me and smiled. He stood up and shook my hand strongly.
“Alexander! How long has it been?”
I was a bit confused and startled, but the slight scar at his left ear flooded me with memories of how I knew him.
James Silva and I had been in college together. He was a former boxer. I was in a bar fight once, and he had come to my aid.