Chapter 2

• “Miss Jasmine” her house help Juanita called from behind, “Your meal is served”
• “Thanks, Juan, I will be in shortly,” she said then proceeded to call Josh her boyfriend.
• Cory Adams hummed slowly as he came inside the little house that served as his house and his martial arts school. He had been training kids from the streets in the beautiful art of Silat, a martial art technique from Malaysia. Cory feels with the right engagement and philosophy, Street urchins whom society sees as useless and unwanted lots can get a better life, better than what society had destined for them.
• “Hey Mum” he hailed his mother, “How was your day?” he asked as he proceeded to drop his huge bag.
• “I am good, just a little tired. Had a lot to do at work today, and my body feels like I have been.
• Lifting bags of stones all my life”
• Cory felt bad; his mom had been toiling like an ass since his dad died to ensure he finished high school. She wasn’t growing any younger and he has got to stop her from continuing. He is all grown now and he needs to get a Job to fend for her.
• “Mom, I have been thinking. You should stop working. I can get a job now, either as a bodyguard or a driver or as anything that pays. Please this has to stop already before you develop something terminal” he said almost begging.
• But Juanita laughed. She felt it was a ridiculous idea that she would fall sick because of work.
• “Don’t be such a silly little boy, I’d sooner die of idleness and bother than I would die of work. Stop being a whiner, get your silly behind off my door, and get yourself a table. Your food is in the kitchen” she said and made him move out of his way. But he held her hands tenderly.
• “Mom please, you’ve got to listen. We have no other choice; you are stressing more than you should and I feel so guilty every day in school that you are going through hell on my account. Please Mum, I’m fully grown now. People pay good money these days…….”
• “Oh, you prick me with all these silly talks,” Juanita said, her expression saying nothing of whatever she was thinking. She had the strength of a doting mother bear, the strength gotten from the thought of seeing her wonderful human cub hungry or lacking.
• “Mom……”
• “Don’t go all ‘mom mom’ on me like some mama’s boy. Very few people pay as much as the Grants do. If you feel so sorry for Mama, go and have your brunch”
• Cory knew his mother; she would go in and that would be the end of the matter.
• “At least I can join you tomorrow to assist, maybe that’d help a bit?”
• “Suit yourself, young Man. The food is getting cold. Aaron came in today; he was bleeding this time. He said he watched his mom get hit by his dad but he said he gave the man a reason not to anymore’
• “I heard; he gave his father a whoop that he would live to remember”
• “Maybe you should exclude him from training for a while lest the rumor start flying around.
• That you trained him to fight his father”
• “Alright Mum”
• “Come in, I got you something from Dylan’s store, can you guess what it is?”
• Cory was not in the least taken by surprise; he had read about the magnificent suburban house Mr. Grant gifted his daughter. It was all over the news and pictures had flooded the internet. He was not struck by the supercars he saw outside, he tried to focus on his job. His mother, bent on sending him home and breaking his strong spirits had mapped a large portion to be cleaned and he chuckled, she seemed to have forgotten he is a Martial artist, a warrior versed in the acts of perseverance and endurance. Cleaning a large house doesn’t make any difference. He had his Bose headphones with him and quickly started work as Avicii’s ‘The Nights’ flowed into his head.
• Then he saw her. She was chatting with her friend and seemed to be in a very good mood. She was lacking the usual haughtiness natural with super rich girls. She looked 21 but she chatted like a happy 12-year-old.
• Sure, she was not the most beautiful girl ever, but she looked like the most angelic lady he would ever find. Cory felt like he had never felt before; his heart pumped harder than it had ever done, and her laughter was like the distant sigh of a waterfall.
• Cory had never felt this way for any lady. “Shame dude, you are going head over heels for a lady you barely know” he chided himself. There was a huge class difference. She is Jasmine, the famous billionaire daughter and she probably is worth over a billion dollars, while he is just a boy from the streets. A normal boy with nothing to offer except his good heart and his athletic body. A boy who runs a small martial arts school in front of his house with a mission to change the lives of street urchins.
• Cory continued cleaning, but this time he was overly distracted. Jasmine’s face kept coming to him like a persistent ghost, out to haunt Macbeth. He decided he would grab any chance, if given, to talk to her. He kept taking furtive glances at the back, almost certain she was coming back that way.
• But alas he was wrong, for she already left with her friend for a party.
• Cory didn’t see her after that day, he went there persistently, hoping to catch her shadow at least. He went there in the early hours of the morning, optimistic about seeing her maybe before she left the house or resumed her life of solitary confinement.
• He thought about her when he went about his daily activities; when he did his push-ups, he felt her hands on his shoulders, when he lifted his dum-bells it felt like she was there, laughing usually in her high-pitched laughter. He saw her in every policewoman, he saw her in every lady he came across each morning on his way to the subway, and every college girl seemed to wear her face. Soon he was fantasizing, he would imagine her holding him in a warm embrace and they would talk in his mind till he was sleepy.
• One day, a news flash appeared on his TV screen, Brown-Link corporations was going to have a new CEO. Avram Grant was stepping down from his position as CEO, and his daughter was taking over. Then pictures of both Father and daughter in business suits were displayed. The reporter went ahead to read out the remarkable educational achievements of the beautiful young CEO. But Cory was not interested in all those, he needed to see her badly. She rarely came home these days, and when she came home, she barely noticed him. All the same, he was still okay with seeing her.