The day Titus went to the city was not meant to change his life.
It was meant to serve it.
Like everything else.
He had been sent to deliver farm produce—bags of vegetables, crates of supplies—loaded onto an old truck that rattled with every turn. No one told him it was special. No one warned him it would matter.
To his family, it was just another errand.
To Titus, it was just another day of carrying weight that did not belong to him.
The journey was long. Dust rose behind them like a fading memory of the village. As the road stretched forward, something unfamiliar began to build inside him.
Not excitement.
Curiosity.
The kind he had never been allowed to nurture.
When they finally entered the city, everything felt louder.
Busier.
Faster.
Buildings rose into the sky like they were trying to escape the ground itself. People moved with purpose Titus wasn’t used to seeing—like they belonged to where they were going.
He didn’t.
Not here.
Not anywhere.
The truck stopped at a luxury hotel.
Titus stepped down slowly, carrying crates through polished glass doors that reflected a version of him he barely recognized.
Clean floors.
Soft lighting.
Quiet authority in every corner.
This was not a place for people like him.
But no one said that out loud.
Inside, chaos was building in a way Titus didn’t understand yet.
Staff moved quickly. Voices overlapped. Orders were being shouted from one end of the kitchen corridor to another.
Something was wrong.
A delivery delay.
A VIP event preparing upstairs.
Pressure everywhere.
Titus was instructed to drop the goods at the back and leave immediately.
That was the plan.
That was always the...