Sitting at his desk on the seventh floor of the G4S Secure Solutions headquarters in the City of Tokyo, Japan, Dwayne Lucien looked at the nighttime skyline of Tokyo, and smiled. What's a humble brother from Fayetteville, Georgia, doing around these parts? Dwayne privately wondered. The Capital of Japan, while superficially similar to many other world-class cities such as Johannesburg, Toronto, Lagos or New York City, was definitely a world of its own. A worthwhile challenge for a man of his caliber, to be sure...
In the worlds of business, politics, finance, et cetera, it took a unique combination of brains, good looks and savvy to succeed. The men and women who reached the top didn't get there by accident. The world was a shark tank, and the weak got themselves devoured early on, leaving only the strong. Dwayne's old football coach, an old Jamaican-American crone named Adrian Jackson, taught him that a killer instinct got a man far in life.
"Dwayne, my friend, if you want certain things, in football, in school and in life, you need to take them regardless of the risk," Adrian Jackson told Dwayne, the summer before his final year at Morehouse College. Dwayne, who'd come by the coaches office in the Morehouse College Department of Athletics after practice to discuss his NFL aspirations, was surprised by his coach's words, but took them to heart.
"I agree, Coach Jackson, I want to go far," Dwayne replied heartily, and the old football coach smiled and nodded. Dwayne, the only son of Matthew and Nancy Lucien, a pair of poor African American farmers from Fayetteville, Georgia, possessed that in spades, and it took him from the old country town where he was born to Morehouse College, and now, a fruitful career with G4S Secure Solutions, the second largest company in the world.
Dwayne remembered his halcyon days as a regular patrol guard with G4S, having joined the company mere months after graduating from Morehouse College. When every NFL scout passed on him, Dwayne thought about trying his lucky with the Canadian football league, but didn't make it there either. Delaying his dreams of success, Dwayne threw himself into the world of private security, thinking it was just a gig to make ends meet. In time, it actually became a career.
Dwayne Lucien enrolled at Georgia State University while working at G4S, and earned an MBA. That's how he became the manager of the Atlanta branch of G4S. After a few years at that post, he faced a dilemma. Harun Habib, a Lebanese-American executive who'd been Dwayne's rival for years was appointed the new branch manager, and Dwayne was contemplating leaving the company when his good pal Erica Louise Larouche offered him a golden opportunity.
"Dwayne, I'm going to Japan to work for G4S, and I need people I can trust as part of my new team, what do you say?" Erica asked Dwayne, on that fateful day when he found himself demoted and working for Harun Habib, the man he'd despised for the past five years. Dwayne and Erica were sitting inside The Spice House, a Haitian restaurant which was popular with working-class Blacks all over the City of Atlanta. Dwayne introduced several of his friends, Erica included, to Haitian cuisine, and since then she was hooked.
"I'll check it out," Dwayne said absentmindedly to Erica while sipping his Pepsi. Erica Louise Larouche, a six-foot-tall, blonde-haired, thirty-something White woman with frosty blue eyes, had been Dwayne's friend and co-worker for the past five years. They'd come up together as patrol supervisors with G4S, and then working for the branch office as site managers. Now they were executives, and at a crossroads...
As luck would have it, moving to Tokyo was the best thing Dwayne could have done. Shortly after he left Atlanta for Japan, G4S upper management restructured the Atlanta branch, firing much of its executive team, including Harun Habib, and bringing in a new management team from the outside. Dwayne embraced his new career as much as he embraced Japanese culture. The Far East was upon him, and he welcomed the challenges that it posed...
"Anything I can help you with, Mr. Lucien?" Nagisa Michio asked slyly, leaning over her boss desk with a wicked gleam in her eyes. Dwayne was startled out of his daydream by Nagisa's voice, but kept his cool. As an executive with G4S Secure Solutions, Dwayne hadn't risen to his position by being obtuse. He knew damn well what Nagisa Michio was up to, but he continued to play dumb. The lady was seductive, but he didn't fool around the office...