Chapter 7

Jacob

After our little dinner date, Andrew started to let me go to the office without his guidance. Though he informed me that a girl named Wendy is watching me for any sign of trouble that I or some outside force may present. My day to day life changed drastically, instead of going home every day, I head straight to Andrew's hideout. It felt fine to me, his gang didn't actually feltlike a gang at all. They felt like family. They were goofy, funny, a lot of them like cracking up jokes. Though there are times when Andrew makes them suddenly get serious and they head out but that doesn't happen much.

My dad though has been growing more and more tired with trying to invite me over to his company, Along with that, he's gotten a lot more aggressive as well. I've never been a stranger to my father's anger issues even as I got older he still hits me one way or another. But again, people only get one father in their lives and he's the only one I got.

"I'm growing tired of this Jacob." My father stormed in with his assistant following right behind him.

"Then stop doing it, dad. " I said and glanced up to see Mr. Yu staring from the department's entrance, looking petrified as he was glued to his place. "How is Mr. Yu allowing this? You're literally trying to nab one of his directors."

"He won't dare act against me, or I'll take his whole company down,"

"Dad! No! What the hell is your problem?!" My chair clattered as I stood up abruptly, a few heads turned in the direction of my office but since the sound was muffled, only a few were able to hear my outburst.

"Shall I intervene?" I heard Wendy's voice from my ear-piece and I shook my head as a signal to her.

"You are wasting your life here, admit it or not this designing phase you are going on. Won't last long and won't earn you as much." He took a seat and I stared him down from where I was.

"Why not make Alex join your little trap company?" I said, and it was true, Dad never forced Alex to do anything, It was always me.

"Oh you know I can't force my sweet little angel to work herself to death. That's not the life for her." He said and my blood boiled, It has always been like this. I love my sister to bits and pieces too but my father and mother always favored her over me. I eventually got over it but I can't help but be annoyed about it in the back of my mind whenever I think about it.

"Ugh, I won't take this, I'm taking my break." I grabbed my bag slung it over my shoulder and walked past my father, who got up to follow me.

"Oh, and where is your little boyfriend today?" As my father and I walked by, my coworkers' eyes followed my movement towards the doors, where Mr. Yu was still standing to look at the both of us.

"I finished moving my stuff, therefore he was also finished with helping me," I said, passing Mr. Yu with an apologetic smile as my father brushed past him with no second thought.

"Well, you know, my offer for him still stands too. If he's wiser than you, he'll take it." He said as if it was a threat and then proceeded to enter the elevator as it chimed open. His secretary silently following behind him like an obedient dog. The man was shorter than the old man he was working for. The secretary was thin and lanky compared to my father's muscle body. He probably sleeps with him, knowing his past secretaries.

I took a deep breath as I walked to the cafeteria, Mr. Yu catching up to me.

"Jacob, I'm really sorry I can't do anything about your father." He was out of breath as he walked with me, keeping his eyes on the ground.

"It's okay Mr. Yu, I understand. He's always been like that anyway," I said and he sighed, coming to a stop. I stopped to look back at him. It looked like he was about to say something but then thought against it, as he smiled and shook his head.

"Have a good day Mr. Jacob." He smiled and walked away. I continued my way towards the cafeteria and saw other employees there casually, talking to each other. Others were there waiting for their breaks to end or their shifts to start.

I sat down on the farthest table and a woman with short blonde hair took a seat in front of me.

"Wendy."

"That was some tough stuff huh?" Wendy greeted me, placing her cheek on her palm. She was wearing casual clothes, a simple black shirt with jeans, and a gray hoodie.

"Tell me about it, he's always been like that though." I took out a sandwich from inside my bag and began to pick away at it.

"Always been like what?" Wendy, for some reason, looked incredibly annoyed, "Always use people to get what he wants? Placing other people's concerns below his just so he can succeed?"

"What? Wendy? Where's all of this coming from?"

Her eyes went wide as she slung her bag onto her back and took quick strides away from my table. "Nothing, I'll be close Jacob," With that, she turned and left me alone to my thoughts. My father is a terrible person, but he wasn't always like that. Especially when he was just starting out. He was caring and generous. He started out small and eventually made it big. I never heard the story of how he climbed his way to success but nobody really does. His name just popped out of nowhere and now, he's someone nobody dares to cross.

"Anything...I will do anything just to stay as rich as I am right now." Is what I heard him once said over the phone. It made me suspect that he had some connections with mafia or gangs like Andrew, hence he may be dealing with illegal stuff but my father is definitely a coward when it comes to things like that.

My sandwich slowly got consumed, and it led me to think even deeper concerning my situation. I'm alone, wendy might be near and could be keeping an eye on me, but technically I'm alone. I could text anyone, even my sister to call the police. Tell them I was being held, hostage... Am I being held, hostage? Andrew and his gang didn't even contact my parents to ask for ransom money. They're just keeping me there. Just there in their house. Without any real purpose, I'm just their living with a few people with others whos pop up at Andrew's commands.

I swallowed the last bits of my sandwich and cleared my head before heading back to my office.

The day dragged on as usual, and as I was heading out of my office, I received a text from an unregistered number.

We have your sister, surrender yourself to us or she dies.

What in the world. I didn't reply to the text, in case it was a self-indulging troll or some psycho hacker who would be able to trace me if I reply. Instead, I called my sister. She didn't answer the first few rings nor the next 5 calls that I made to her phone. I opted to call a stuck-up woman, I refer to as a mother instead of the excuse of a father that I have. Her phone rang nonstop and yet I received no answer from her. I tried ringing her again, which she thankfully picked up.

"Hello? Who is this?" She asked I was quite taken aback, as her son, she should at least have my phone number listed into her contacts or something.

"It's Jacob, mother, your son."

"Oh Jacob, yes, what do you need?" She said in a bored tone

"Is Shaina over there? She's not answering her phone."

"And Shaina is... your girlfriend?" She asked and I nearly threw my phone at a nearby window at how frustratingly negligent she is when it comes to people's names.

"No, mother, Shain Marie, your daughter?"

"Oh! My little princess! You know, just last week-" She then proceeded onto her monologue explaining how excellent her little perfect daughter was and how she's probably going to accomplish so much more than I have with the 21 years of my life. Mother and Father, they both really don't like the art career in general, saying that no money comes out of it.

"Yes mother, your Princess, where is she?" I tried to hide my frustration with her because whenever she senses a hint of anger towards her. She snaps like a dog out of their cage. The last thing I really need right now is another one of her lectures about me being a better person, where did she ever go wrong and whatnot.

"Oh, she's over at her boyfriend's place, that Brian guy," She said, Brian? My sister sure dated a lot of guys but the only guy that they ever met was Blake and I am extremely sure that they won't be getting back together in this life, or the next one for that.

"You mean Blake? Mother?" I asked and the other line went completely silent that it got me on edge. "MOM?!"

"Oh! Yes Johnson, Be good now! Tourtieres arrived!" The phone went dead after that and I felt a migraine start to accumulate. Calm down, she's your mother. I tried to tell myself, over and over again.

My break ends in a few minutes so I head back to my office to continue my work and figured that I'll investigate later when work's finished.

I parked in front of the familiar building and stayed inside my car, contemplating the life choices I'm making and what I did in the past life to ever deserve this kind of treatment. I stepped out of the vehicle and knocked on his door a few times. A fully awake, messy, and topless Blake greeted me with a smirk on his face.

"Came to join?" He asked me and opened the door further to show the mess of bodies humping and touching each other on his couch, by the quick view I got, I could sum up that there were at least 10 people inside.

"What are you- You're like 17?! and you just broke up with my sister a few weeks ago, do you really not feel any remorse?" I asked, fuming, a naked guy came behind Blake and hugged him from behind, his hands landing on top of the boy's crotch area. The guy behind looked to be around his mid-20s. I slipped my hand into my pocket, turned on the camera, and started recording, for the audio. "You! You're like 25 or something?!"

"29," The guy looked like he was high on something if the redness of his eyes weren't indication enough.

"Do you know that this kid is 17?!" I asked and he merely shrugged.

"Ass is ass man, you joining us or what?"

"Excuse me?! Who are you anyway?" I asked trying to push him into giving away more information. I don't like blake any better than the sleazy guy who often works in the market and honestly, I should just let him be to suffer in whatever he's doing. But it's somewhat an instinct, to protect those younger than me.

"Name's Brad, you'll be moaning that when you decide to join,"

I held back the shudder forcing it's way out as this Brad guy walked away without slapping Blake's covered bottom half.

"Anyways, eye candy, what brings you here? Unless you're really here to join?" He said raising his eyebrows towards me. His eyes traveled downwards as he bit his lips and honestly, what parent ever raised their kid to be like this. I mean, my parents aren't any better but at least I grew up to be respectable, somewhat.

"Shaina, your ex, my sister, have you seen her?" I asked and he took his time thinking while scratching at his messy mop for hair.

"Yeah, came over two days ago, asking to talk. Was busy..." He stuck his tongue to the wall of his mouth and used his hand to move as if he was sticking something in there. "So you know, she left, in tears, again."

I was ready to punch this guy in the face but I remembered that my phone was currently recording so I thought better of it.

"Right, thanks for nothing," I said as I walked away from his porch step.

"Offer still stands tough guy, call me and I'll be there to be your ass." He said and I drove away as fast as possible trying my best to cleanse my thoughts of the useless things that went down just now. Is that what kids are into these days, just that? When I was a kid, video games were the only thing that I could really think of. I firstly made a copy of the recording to my laptop to save it for a later date, there are more important matters at hand.

The next thing to take care of is the case of my missing sister. Sure she could be anywhere and just ran out of battery, so I decided to just head back to Andrew's hideout with the text nagging the back of my mind constantly. I pushed the humungous doors open and found Andrew by the couch talking to Wendy.

"Hey, I heard what happened, you okay?" Andrew asked as Wendy excused herself from us. A guy, on a laptop, was typing away in the far corner.

"I'm fine, it's not like I wasn't able to handle this kind of thing before," I said and just in time, my phone chimed. I checked and it was the same number from earlier, this time they sent an image. Without even looking, my heart sank, I think I know what it was and I was just preparing myself for the inevitable. I unlocked my phone and my whole body suddenly felt numb.

It's Shaina.