THE SHAKE-UP

Expectedly, following my ascension at the company's apex position, there was a major shake-up: an overhauling that didn't essentially depart from, but aimed to consolidate the legacy and achievements of my father. It ultimately brought changes in the necessary departments.

Now that I got to call the shots, I didn't have a second thought before I sized down the number of the domestic staff by relieving some tired hands of their duties.

First of all and as you would have predicted, I decongested the buzzes in the home, shipping quite a number of the staff away from the farm.

The relief was inexplicably soothing. I was glad I didn't have to sack anyone, my father never did that.

Rather, In line with my father's decades-old philanthropic gesture, I retired them to rewarding paychecks which pleased me greatly having finally given those aged folks more time to rest as I had always dreamed.

Relocating the winery away to a whole new site was all that it took to rid the house of the obnoxious traffic without a sack to any staff.

Furthermore, It importantly redirected those who came to the house for genuine businesses with the winery away to the new site.

That implied that the visitors were reduced by half, leaving me with the headache of figuring out how to manage those who came for the auctions.

It made no business sense to relocate the farm away from the house where there was a worthy facility for the auction - my biggest business card.

Therefore, I leveled some portion of the site vacated by the winery into a beautiful plain landscape like the rest of the compound, making the penthouse stand elegantly aloof.

Then, I expanded the other part of the farm in preparation for inbound farm consignment.

I wanted more space and I got more than that after the reconstruction. As I had hoped, it guaranteed that I saw visitors from the two entrances from any point in the farm while they were still far off.

I beefed up the security by twice the original number and shrewdly, decentralized the system and appointed several heads over the departments.

This ultimately, took some pressure off Scott after I localized him to the security department and nothing more. I needed his best and even though he had proved he could be efficient as the head of operations, I needed him to give priority to our safety.

However, unlike the heads of other departments, Scott reported to me, alone. Again, now that I called the shots, he got rewarded for what he had been rewarded for...no, motivated again I should say.

Liberally, I gave a whooping check capable of motivating them optimally to him and his boys and upgraded his work apparatus.

He was happy, his boys were happy, the entire staff down to those who could only give moral contributions were happy and so was I, too.

It's noteworthy that it wasn't everyone happy with the wind of change at Albert Farms.

Again, it wasn't everyone that the change brought some gains- there were complementary losers whom it gave some pain, as there were winners.

Yes, your guess is as good as mine, the press! Although, in my leniency, I didn't shut them off completely, I only sent them where they would find some job to do, at the winery, instead of snooping on our private lives.

Moreover, there were no more dollars to throw in the wrong direction. In the weeks that followed when the memo floated about an impending fight at the farm and we needed to hasten preparations, the call for all hands to be on the deck came a little bit late as the staff self-motivated staff had taken initiative long before I gave the charge - a proof that they were happy.

Meanwhile, I had been meaning to make time to listen to Scott's full eye-witness version of all that happened to me but have been divided between so many things.

I had informed him a few weeks back about my desire to hear it.

"If you wish to remain around here we have to take our seats at the table ASAP, Scott," I had threatened him jokingly that day during a walk about the farm.

It's safe to say that he had warmed his way into my heart with his diligence and dedication to duty and that was not about the role he said to have played in retrieving me from the abductors. I still didn't have the full details of that.

Baffled by how thin the line between love and hatred is, I sought a way to spend a little more time with him, took him for a walk that day, and threatened him poignantly to talk shortly before duty call and we had to shift.

So, today, in line with setting the pace for a prosperous future for all, I needed to sever all the ties with yesterday. I approached his office and tapped on the door.

His booming voice invited me into the most pleasant surprise of my entire existence.

The broad back that I saw when I walked into the office can never be mistaken even in my dreams.

"Jimmy," I harped, forcing the body to go a 180° turn pitch me face-to-face to the one I lived for.

"Light, what are you doing here?" He yelped back, springing to his full gorgeous length just in time for me to fly into his arms in a passionate embrace.

"How did you get here," I countered the first second I detached ignoring his question in obvious spilling excitement.

"You two know each other?" Scott ejected out rhetorically from across the dark neatly upholstered table, contributing to the chorus of not-replied questions. He was clearly at a loss seeing Jimmy clinging so tightly to his boss's favorite person on the planet.

"Where do these two know each other?" he rephrased the question, addressing us in the third person with both hands bared in a curious shrug.

We ignored him as if he didn't matter. Honestly, nothing mattered to me at that moment and you could take that as me speaking for Jimmy too.

I buried my face into his towering self and it hit my nose again!

The scent was the same. It was as sure as death the same I inhaled at the seashore. The exact one I drew greedily to fill longs while I chased after my Harry.

Do not forget that I have been suspicious of the broad back since I pasted a gaze on it at the sea.

They all appeared to be coming together now as if they were scraps of metals being pulled together by a piece of magnet.

"Goodness! Could this be him," I let out in a shaky exhale released in several short breaks.

"I came to see my favorite cousin, the same steps I followed to join the military," he cleared as though he read the confusion in my head.

"Hmm...that made some sense," I agreed, nodding as each word came out.

"What about yo...

"Jimmy, you should meet Light, my boss," Scott encroached.

"Your boss!"

I could tell he meant for that to come out as a question but the shock in his voice which has donned on him like a garment influenced it to come out as a statement, exclamation.

"Gentlemen, let's wrap this up in my apartment," I proposed, gesturing them towards the exit.

With each of the two men ensconced to a treat of hot bacon and iced Soda, I returned to the purpose of my visit to Scott’s office and nudged him to spit it all.

“Alright, on arrival here that afternoon following deployment, I swiftly, drafted out a counter-offensive team of seven thoroughly bred men who were perpetually in a killer mood who took to the field with me immediately the Alpha team.

There was also a reserved, red-alert backup Beta team equally equipped to the teeth awaiting deployment orders.

And the last Hawk team was airborne on the helicopter going ahead of us in the direction of the assailants.

Instantly, I floated the Alpha team to the location suggested by the hovering helicopter which had ascended higher in the sky at my order, to have better surveillance of the environs after establishing the port the attackers used to gain access into the forest reserve.

Following my order, the team Hawk lowered some men from the air with a simple task of tailing the abductors and leaving traces for the Alpha team who were bound for the location since the target used a shield, making it impossible for them to take a shot.

The Alpha team inched closer, but the team Hawk remained in hot pursuit.

With their new orders to take a shot when the target was out of danger of possible injury, Hawk neutralized one of them and the information deduced from his wallet presented him as hired Caribbean machinery owned by a certain Max Osborn.

Max was a seasoned Caribbean soldier who now ran private security operations. When I first met him, it was in a special military Ops camp of a twelve-man elite team hand-picked by a company's management to carry out a rescue mission.

It was a high-risk operation to rescue a billionaire CEO of an oil company and his officials trapped in the facility by a rebel group on the coast of Barbados. Still in active service, Max was in the rank of a lieutenant, my last office before I retired a couple of years back.

He was a skilled brute killer with unmatched sheer physical strength and frightening speed- quite a handful of a man he was when we would eventually collide. I only managed to edge him out tactically.

Without playing down my skill whatsoever, I still think it was by serendipity that I had one over him.

He was a hostile expert, well versed in the sharp ends of unconventional and high-risk operations it didn't come as a surprise that he found a way to consolidate killing with documents backing it as a business after he retired.

Therefore, given his qualities, it was difficult for him to come to terms that any other would lead the charge.

However, I was given a go at leading the team, buoyed by my experience of many years as an ex-naval seal from a superior military service.

Moreover, the terrain of the operation was riverine, my domain.

Max didn't hide his dissatisfaction with the decision of the management of the oil set up and in unconcealed contumacy, he questioned my orders a few times until we opted for a combat to settle the supremacy tussle.

I felt Jimmy’s right palm interlocked in my left palm constricting into a fist at the instant it was obvious a fight was imminent. I squeezed it still and rolled my eyes to force a smirk off him.

"Scott you've got to earn it, man," he bit out, shoving me roughly. I exhaled audibly to take it in, ignoring his cocky effrontery. Scott continued.

"Aren't we better off with a united front that focuses on the task at hand, big dog?" I said diplomatically, springing to full length from my initial sitting position- an action with an attitude that contrasted my words and how softly I let them out.

I could barely let out the last word when he slammed me hard in the chest with both hands, claiming I was unfit for the position if I backed down, and insisted I ate up the bait and challenge him to a fight.

"Beat me and have my unalloyed loyalty," he quipped, following it with a hard push that caused a clatter as I fell over many chairs inside the tent temporarily serving as the war room.

I may not have been as belligerent, but that didn't mean I was not capable of some chaos. If I wasn't a pushover, I had to set aside my gentlemanly disposition and show it to elicit the respect of every single onlooker in that tent.

I sprang up adroitly, molded my fists into hard blocks of weapons, and powered a few combinations of punches in spilling anger. He caught and held both hands in his powerful hands, incapacitating me from further moves.

I reacted well in arching my head backward and slinging its weight squarely in his face and the point the head contacted thrived instantly and incised into two well-divorced halves below his right eye.

When he was forced back in an obvious stagger, I gave a vicious smirk celebrating my luck for drawing some blood off him first. He was bleeding profusely at the same pace his eye bag was fattening into a sizable humph until the eye closed shut.

"Come on, Max, you’ve just got served!" I sneered in utter mockery.

I saw the pupil of the unaffected eye darkened in rage as he braced for full-blown violence. He dashed sideways for one of the knives lying idly on the table but was left to mourn his fate as he was denied a chance at revenge by a party of soldiers who had decided against sitting and looking on and seized him.

Subsequently, the operation was dotted with strings of incidents where he squared up at me when I openly frowned at his variant behavior.

He insisted that I didn't win the duel and consequently wouldn't have his cooperation as he had promised before the dugout.

The contention notwithstanding, the operation was a success: the rescue was aptly executed, and the captives were all retrieved. However, the success would create a fresh problem between Max and I which we didn't iron out and would be brought to the day his team abducted you.”