The call replayed in Luiz's head long after the line went dead.You have two kids.The words chased him, cornered him, refused to let him breathe. He lay back on the thin mattress, staring at the cracked ceiling, phone pressed to his chest.He tried to redial. Switched off. Again. Switched off."Damn it!" He threw the phone beside him.Who the hell calls you with world-shaking news and just hangs up? And that voice… smooth, controlled, dripping with the kind of calm you only hear from people who've lived their whole lives above the clouds. Not a hustler. Not a scammer.
Luiz had heard voices like that before—on TV. On music channels. On interviews where women in designer gowns waved at flashing cameras. Could it be? No. Impossible.He laughed to himself bitterly, "Of all people, me? A broke campus boy who owes the hostel caretaker money? Yeah, right. Maybe next week Beyoncé will text me to pick her kids from school."
The laugh was short-lived. His stomach rumbled loudly, dragging him back to the reality he'd been ignoring since morning. He had no money left. Not for food, not for data, not even for a bar of soap. The little pocket money he got when he joined campus had evaporated into class handouts, a secondhand pair of sneakers, and emergency phone calls home.
Home.The word itself was heavier than hunger.He hadn't called in days. Every time he thought about it, he remembered his father's voice on the last call—weak, defeated. Problems at home were always heavier than the ones he faced at school. And back home, problems never ended.
Luiz sighed and rolled onto his side. When life cornered him like this, memories came uninvited. They slipped in through the cracks of his mind, dragging him back to places he wished he'd forgotten.
Flashback: High School
He was sixteen again, standing in a too-big uniform at the gates of the Vallentine Grand Hotel. His uncle's hotel. Not that his uncle gave him the job out of kindness—no, it was more like punishment disguised as opportunity.
"Housekeeping," his uncle had told him, with that cruel smirk. "If you want to learn about life, start by cleaning after it."So Luiz scrubbed toilets, polished marble floors, and changed bed sheets for guests who treated him like furniture.And then there were the nights.
The wealthy guests. The drunken laughter spilling from suites. The women—some younger, some older—who pulled him into their games. Sometimes it was a flirtatious dare, other times it was something darker. They made him drink, they whispered promises, they laughed at his innocence.
He hadn't planned for any of it. He hadn't even known how to say no.By the end of that summer, Luiz wasn't the same boy. He had learned too much about desire, power, and shame. He learned that in the Vallentine world, people like him were toys, disposable and forgettable.
He shook the memory away, pressing his palms to his eyes. That was years ago. He was in campus now. He was supposed to be building a future, not drowning in the past.But then the call. You have two kids.
Two.His chest tightened. His thoughts spiraled. Was it possible? He remembered faces, touches, the smell of perfume mixed with alcohol. Things he tried to bury. Could one of those nights have followed him here?
He reached for his phone again. Still switched off.Luiz lay back, staring at the shadows creeping across the ceiling, and whispered to himself with a dry laugh:"Problem after problem. And me? I don't even own a crib."