by Newbiel
"Peasant? I mean really? You know we are in two thousand twelve right?" Nathaniel shook his head.
"That doesn't change what you are! I want to know how I got there and I want to know it now!" He demanded it.
Hearing that, Nathaniel shook his head in reproval before picking his book back up and resumed his reading. Not liking to be ignored, Alexander starts yelling and insulting Nathaniel who seems unfazed by it. Ultimately tired of being ignored, Alexander starts to look around them.
"Leon Bryan? Where are you?" He shouted, gathering the attention of a couple of parents walking with their children in the park.
"Your Secret Service escort is not here. There is only you and me for the day." The voice of Nathaniel chimed in.
"Bullshit, they have never left my side since dad became President! And mom would never let me go anywhere without someone to protect me!"
"The last bit is true, she would never, that's why I'm here. For the first one, it's clearly not since you are here and they are not." Nathaniel answers, not bothering to look up from his reading.
"You protecting me?" He laughed mockingly, looking at Nathaniel critically. "Even I could beat you up without breaking a sweat. Yeah you are tall but you look even less muscular than I am!"
"Do it then."
"Euh, what?" Alexander asked dumbfounded.
"I said do it, hit me. If you succeed you can walk away, I will let you go but I'm warning you it will be quite painful for you if you try."
"You are too arrogant!" Alexander shouted angrily, getting to his feet. "Take this!" He said, trusting his fist forward to Nathaniel's face.
From Alexander's perspective, what happened next was extremely troubling. One second, his fist was second away to hit Nathaniel head and the next he was sprawling on the ground, not remembering how he got there and not seeing Nathaniel move from his reading at all. His back, leg and hand was hurting and he was short of breath from the violence on the impact on the ground.
"You hit me!" Alexander wheezed out.
"I warned you Alexander. At least now you can be sure that the Secret Service are not there because they would have arrested me by now. We really are all alone. You know I'm really surprised that you did not ask who took you from your bed without even waking you up, put clothes on you and then get you here. You really should get your priority straight." Nathaniel said with a bemused expression.
"You kidnapped me!" He realized with an horrified expression.
"Not really. Since you are underaged and your parents know that you are with me, there is no kidnapping. See this more like a day out without big brother breathing on your neck."
"I want to go home!" Alexander said once he managed to get back up.
"We will, we are going to walk to the White House. You'll see, this is going to be fun."
"Can't we just take a cab back home?" Alexander asked much less hostile now that he knew Nathaniel could beat him up.
"We could but that would undermine the fact that we are here. To answer your earlier question we are in Bellevue. One of the poorest districts in DC and one with the highest crime rate. I thought you will love it based on our conversation last night."
"What? Are you insane? Do you know what they would do to me if they know I'm here?" He said in an horrified voice.
"It's not because they are poor that they would try to hurt you for monetary gain or out of anger. It's not because they are poor that they are not as patriotic as other people, it's the exact opposite in fact."
"I don't believe that! I want to leave this place, now!"
"And how will you go about it?" Nathaniel asked, putting his book down beside him.
"Well I would take a cab out, or called my parents to send me a car and picked me up."
"You didn't notice yet? You have no money on you and no cell phone either."
Patting himself, Alexander quickly found that he had in fact nothing in his pocket. Not even an ID.
"Don't look at me that way, I didn't steal anything from you. Everything is still in your room like you left them yesterday."
"But, how are we going to get back home? I don't even have any money and I'm hungry!"
"Don't worry, I have enough to buy you something to eat. I'm quite well off for a peasant." Nathaniel laughed.
Chapter 155: :
"Why should I follow you? I could run to the first cop car I see and they will lead me back to the White House."
"You could but that would not be advisable. Like I said earlier, this is one of the poorest districts in DC and one with the highest crime rate. In an ideal world, that would mean that is one of the neighborhoods with the best police presence but this is not in fact. Quite the contrary in fact, the precinct who has the most personal is the one downtown."
"Why? That doesn't make any sense." Alexander said, knitting his eyebrow.
"It's because of politics. Since the commissioner is elected by the Mayor and the Mayor is elected by politics, you quickly see the ramification that could come from one getting robbed or worse and since the budget is limited, if a district has an abnormal number of cops, the others have to get less." Nathaniel explained.
"That doesn't seem to be fair or right in any way."
"Life is not fair but this is something that someone with integrity could easily fix. Unfortunately, integrity is less and less seen in politics on both sides these days. Just to say that if you want to wait on the side of the road for cops to come by, you should reconsider. Not even mentioning if gang members recognize the quality of your clothes and want to rob you. So, are you still deciding to go alone?"
"No, I don't want to be alone here. I don't even know which way to go to go back home and I don't want to be attacked by gang members." He said fearfully looking around and with a weak voice.
"Good, let's go then."
Starting to walk together, Nathaniel stays silent the whole way. He almost seemed careless if it was not for his eyes who kept looking everywhere in a sign of danger. Alexander on the other hand was looking like a scared kid who was jumping each time to each loud noise. Nathaniel could have reassured him but he decided not to.
"What is your name? I don't remember." Alexander asked, anxious and tired of the silence.
"My first name is Nathaniel, let's go with that for now."
"How old are you?"
"I just turned seventeen two weeks ago."
"You look older than that, I thought you were eighteen or nineteen. It means you are in High School like me?"
"Not exactly, I skipped High School. I'm a first year student in Columbia."
"What do you mean you skipped High School?" He asked, looking at him.
"Let's just say that I almost died when I was younger. I was hit by a car and I stayed a long time in the hospital. When I got out, I directly passed LSAT and I got admitted in Columbia when I was sixteen." Nathaniel explained.
"Wow. I never knew it was possible to skip High School."
"It isn't normally but my case was a little special. And you, what about High School? How are your results? Do you have a lot of friends? Do you like it?"
"I'm good, I am in the top five of my class." He said with pride, forgetting a bit of his fear. "I have a couple of friends a while back but now I have just one. He's the smartest and the most famous boy in school."
"Ah, I see. Before becoming friends, did you have a good relationship between the two of you?"
"Not really. He liked to make fun of me and there were rumors he was saying bad things about me in my back. It was only until we became friends that I learned that it was not true."
"Are you still talking with your old friends? The ones that you were hanging out with before?"
"No, not anymore. I realised that they were my friends only because I had money and I was the son of the President. Since they were of humble origin, it was time that we parted ways as we belong to different worlds."
"I get it. Alexander, are you familiar with the history of Louis the fourteenth?"
��Good." Nathaniel complimented him. "His father died when he was five and he took power and became king when he was sixteen. He's one of the kings who reign the longest in the french history with sixty one years. It was a time of great turmoil in Europe and he managed to keep his throne the entire time, do you know why?"
"He killed everyone that opposed him?" Alexander answered after thinking about it for a moment.
"No, that way of handling things does not last long and the people who used it never have a good end. No, in his court there was ducs, count and baron and some even held power that threatened his own so he had an idea. He started holding court in Versailles, inviting some of these important people to eat luxurious food, having a great party. In the meantime he also created feelings of envy and jealousy to the people who were not invited. He knew that if these ducs, count and baron started to form a faction and conspired to take his thrones, he could do nothing to stop them as they might were far greater than his. So he started using what in french they called 'Diviser pour mieux régner' or in english, divide to conquer. By isolating and putting these ducs against each other, they were too busy fighting between themselves to fight him and that's how he succeeded in keeping his thrones."
"This is really smart, hard to think that he almost had my age when he took the crown." Alexander nodded.
"Yes, he understood that by isolating someone from his friends and taking them under his wing, they became really easy to manipulate and to use. Does that remind you of something?"
Chapter 154
"You don't know him! You don't know what you are talking about! He's not like that at all!" Alexander continued to shout.
"Do your old friends ever make you pay for anything?"
"No that I can recall but that does not prove any…" He said after thinking about it.
"Do they ever try to obtain favor from you or your father?" Nathaniel interrupts him.
"Just shut up! I'm done talking with you!" Alexander shouted angrily before stomping ahead without saying anything else.
"I can show you the truth, it depends on you if you decide to accept it or not." Nathaniel adds, not in the least put out by his reaction.
They kept walking in silence for the next thirty minutes, Alexander still slightly ahead of Nathaniel. Even if he was still keeping his mouth shut stubbornly, his mind could not shake off the idea that Nathaniel had put in his head. All of the talk that he had with his old friends and Logan kept coming to him and the more he looked back, the more he realised that Nathaniel was right even if he was unwilling to say it out loud. In addition to that, he was getting tired of walking and was also getting hungry.
Nathaniel on his side was just walking with a carefree gait until something started to press on his senses. Looking around him with a sharp gaze, Nathaniel quickly found where this what he felt came from and put a hand on Alexander's shoulder, stopping him.
"Don't touch me!" Alexander shouted, trying to get free.
"Spare your childish temper to your relatives, we need to move away, now." Nathaniel said, his eyes serious.
After trying to get away but failing miserably, Alexander realized that Nathaniel was way stronger than he looked to be. Seeing his face made him stop struggling as he could see he was dead serious and he had an air of gravity to him.
"What is going on?" Alexander asked worriedly.
"You see that bodega right ahead?" Nathaniel nodded in the direction he was talking about.
Looking at the bodega in question, Alexander could not see from where he was getting at.
"What about it? I don't see anything weird, it's a bodega."
"Alexander, you really need to see past the appearance and be conscious of your environnement." Nathaniel sighed. "What can you tell me about that bodega, what can you see?"
"It's a little bodega like there is everywhere, I don't know what you are trying to make me say." Alexander answers a little lost.
"Look at the front of the bodega, the windows, the doors. What comes to mind when you look at it?"
"Everything is old and kind of dirty. It seems small inside too." Alexander answered after looking at it for a moment.
"Good. This is not surprising considering we are in a very poor neighborhood. Keeping that in mind, look around that bodega for an anomaly, anything that does not belong here."
Doing just that, started looking around the bodega until he understood what Nathaniel was talking about.
"Wait, that black car."
"Yes, a brand new black BMW SUV coasting around eighty thousand dollars parked in front of a run down bodega, weird right?" Nathaniel smiles appreciatively. "Now, what is a car like that is doing in this kind of district in your opinion?"
"I don���t know maybe someone who needed to make an errand and stop between two meetings?" Alexander supposed.
"Hum, possible but not likely. Someone who has that kind of money doesn't have meetings in this kind of neighborhood and they know to not stop here even if they have to run ten more miles to find another bodega to shop. No, in this case the only people who have the means to own a car like that are gang members, especially head of gang members." Nathaniel explained.
"Gang?" Alexander asked anxiously, taking a step back to be closer to Nathaniel.
"I'm afraid so, yes. There are only three explanations for gang members to be here. First, they are here because of an errand but it's unlikely considering that the SUV is empty. If they were here to make an errand, one of them should have stayed inside, guarding the car. Second, they are here to collect 'protection' money from the owner and in this case there is going to be loud noise coming from that bodega soon, especially if the owner fights back. And lastly, the bodega is owned by them and they use it to launder dirty money from drug sales or extortion to quote only these two. What do you think is the correct answer Alexander?"
"Why are you asking me?" Alexander asked.
"Because you are a smart kid but you lack the knowledge on how to use that in a useful way." Nathaniel answered truthfully.
Pausing at that, Alexander looked surprised at Nathaniel for a moment before turning back to the SUV.
"The second explanation?" He answers tentatively.
"No. You missed something else in your earlier observation. Look around that SUV again for something not in his place or just plain weird."
Looking long and hard at the street in front of him, Alexander could not find anything except for the black car in front of the bodega.
"I don't see anything."
"Look attentively at the third, sixth and seventh car parked across the street from the bodega. What do you see?"
Looking at the three cars in question, Alexander starts to see movements inside them, something that he had missed earlier.
"Hey there are people inside those cars!"
"Indeed, I estimate they are between eight and ten people inside of those cars. Why do you think they are here Alexander?"
"Maybe they are also gang members and they are guarding the place?"
"If that was true they would look around the bodega like where we are but they only focus is the bodega. Moreover, their positionnement is wrong as they are leaving the back door wide open. No, I believe they are to attack the place."
"What! We need to call the cops!"
"That would not achieve anything. I think they have a police scanner on hand and they are waiting for the patrol to move away before attacking. If we call the cops, they would just leave and come back later. It will also undermine the secret nature of our walk and being kept for hours by cops because I have the son of the President with me is not really appealing."
"We need to leave then!" He said fearfully.
"We have two options for you to choose from. We could turn around and take another road. We will be safe but the people walking on the street will not. Or I could go in and stop them before they know what is hitting them but in
this case, you will be without protection and could be hurt in the process. I let you choose Alexander, it's time for you to take your responsibility." Nathaniel finished, locking eyes with him.
Chapter 156: :
"Why me? You are the oldest of the two of us, you should be the one to choose!"
"Yes but I'm familiar with making decisions and taking responsibility for them. You on the other hand are not. I was made aware of the fact that you got suspended a couple of weeks ago for bullying. Some of your schoolmates even say that you threaten them using your Secret Service escort. And each time that happens, you try putting the blame to someone or something else entirely. You never took responsibility for anything in your entire life and that needs to change now."
"Who do you think you are! You have no right to judge me!"
"For someone who disliked being judged, you surely like to judge everyone around you based on nothing other than appearance. I'm going to be brutally frank here, you are not someone good but you have the unique occasion to become one right now Alexander. Are you going to put yourself in danger to save innocent people, their only crime being living in the wrong neighborhood or are you going to save your skin and the consequences be damned for the others?" Nathaniel asked, making intense eye contact with Alexander.
Forced to turn his head away under the intensity of that stare, Alexander's attention focused on the people walking in the street. There was a pair of elderly people walking arms in arms, a woman in her twenties talking on her phone and a few kids around ten who were playing under the surveillance of forty something men.
Noticing what Alexander was looking at, Nathaniel added in a soft voice.
"Yes, you have the power to save all of these people Alexander."
"I can't choose! I'm a coward! I want to save them but I don't want to die either! I can't choose, I'm not courageous like you are!"
"Courage doesn't mean not being afraid or cowardly, you know Alexander. Courage is being scared shitless but still finding in yourself the strength of mind to do the right thing. If you are not scared, it's not courage but folly or outright stupidity."