Chapter 1
Xavier stared hard at the documents in front of him and cursed. He wasn't used to dealing with these staff by himself but Anne Benson had meant it when she told him she needed rest off work. She was 64...it's understandable but how could she do this to him at this point in the year? Audit services were on his nerves for his cooperation in their annual exercise on Hotel Paolo. He flipped and checked the files that lay to his extreme right and realised there was a lot of work that needed his approval before the festive season started but he spent short hours in the office and roamed the city with Abena hoping Anne Benson would have dealt with it. He was wrong, Anne Benson retired two weeks ago.
Anne Benson.....Anne Benson was his mother even though he never called her that. She and her husband moulded and built his business sense in a very short while when he found him. From a motel, they raised Hotel Paolo to the 5 star hotel it was today and it had taken them a decade and half. Unfortunately, Paul Benson passed ten years ago before the hotel gained this recognition but Anne Benson and Sam Benson had been his strength. Xavier rose to his 6 feet 4 inches height and walked to his office window on the 8th floor of Hotel Paolo...below it lay the beautiful city of the region, Accra. It was the very first city that had welcomed him as he roamed the continents chasing a father who left he and his mother for dead on the cold streets of Italy. His mother had done her best; working on more than five jobs a day and hiding him from the claws of child support services. She however wasn't able to hide him for long when a concerned woman found him crying on the apron of a building close to a supermarket where his mother had entered to buy a few supplies. The woman quickly called child support services and no amount of begging by his mother allowed them leave him with her. He was five then and that had been his mother's point, she told them he was too young to live without a mama.
When he turned fifteen, all he taught of was to escape from the support system and search for his mother in their old home where he knew they'd made quite a few memories. His mother had dropped by a few times where he was sheltered and promised him she was going to get him out of there but when he turned ten,she stopped coming. No one was interested in adopting him and the pressure of the system had mounted so much on his shoulders. He yearned for his mother...for a break of the rules that guarded the system so he started planning an escape. In his mind it was easy...he just had to slip from his supposed brothers and sisters who were trapped by the system when they were out of the hostel but anytime he tried it, he was caught and severely punished. When he turned fifteen, the woman who was in charge of their welfare then decided to celebrate his birthday. No one apart from his mother has ever celebrated his birthday so she decided to throw a party to tame him. He actually overheard them talking about it in their tea room. They'd talked about how stubborn he was and what punishment to give him the next time he tried escaping but one of the few nice people amongst them suggested something different and that was to make him feel accepted to stop his rebellion. He also planned his escape and it succeeded. They took him and a few of his colleagues out to a nice place for the birthday and the rest was history.
He had taken a bus to his home but there'd been no life in there. Everywhere was dirty and cobwebs were hanging from the ceiling, a sign that no one had lived in the house for a long time. Fortunately, Mrs Caroline white,their neighbour was still around when he got there. She couldn't recognise him but when he mentioned his name, she said so much he never knew about his estranged father who run away with his mother's hard earned money and left them to suffer. That wasn't actually the part he wanted to hear. He wanted to know his mother's whereabouts and how to trace her. She tried not saying it but when he'd screamed and asked her where she was, she had no option than tell him she passed on five years ago. That'd explained everything, about her not visiting and reaching out to him but he was glad the local church in the area gave her a befitting burial. Celine Paolo was a good woman and hadn't deserved an early death but that was the part he never wanted to get into. In his mind, she died well, no struggles, no pain. Then he turned his attention to Matteo, the man that destroyed their family. He worked hard in restaurants or any work he laid his hands on for three years and saved up more than necessary to track him down and make him pay for what he'd done to them. From the little he gathered, his father was a Russian spy that fathered children in several countries and no amount of chasing got him closer to him. Anytime he got a hint on his whereabouts,he made sure he vanished before he got there. The closest he had ever gotten to him was Ghana. Then, he was in Australia when a close friend he had made in the FBI confided in him about his father. He never knew Matteo was his father, if he did, he would have arrested him instead. He thanked his dead mother for naming him after her beloved grandfather or else,he would have been in deep shit with a Matteo as his name. So he'd packed lightly as he normally did and took off to Ghana.
