Page 31 of The Right Garza
When I get to the conference room on the third floor, Guy, our head of tech, is setting things up for our virtual meeting with Torin. Tripp, surprisingly, is already here, his feet kicked up on the table as he dicks around on his phone.
“Hell has frozen over,” I say as I shove his feet off the table. “You’re actuallyon timefor a meeting?”
He points his phone in Guy’s direction. “Only because that four-eyed, suspender-wearing prick lied about the start time.”
Guy shrugs unapologetically but focuses on the task at hand.
“Don’t blame him.” I throw my weight down in one of the chairs. “You’re a lousy fucker.”
He flips me the bird with one hand and continues scrolling on his phone with the other.
At twenty-five, Tripp is four years younger than True and me. He’s still in the youthful, booze-party-sex phase of his life and hardly takes much seriously except this job. Which, to us, I guess is all that matters. No matter that he’s late for every meeting and hates the office, he delivers one hundred percent on every task assigned.
“How do they let you fight with those locs?” I ask him.
“‘Cause I’m good at getting my way.”
We’re all baffled about Tripp’s golden hair, considering both his parents have jet black hair. Our dad had—Italian— an insatiable appetite for black women. Where True and I are fifty-fifty on both genes, and Torin’s black genes are stronger, Tripp’s an anomaly. His hair—much like his complexion and his eyes—is a burnished gold that grows faster than he can trim it. He gave up a few years ago and started wearing it in groomed locs.
“Did you win your last fight?”
He shoots me a glare. “If you came to see me fight, you’d know.”
“Told you, I can’t stand and watch you get pummeled in a cage,” I say. “I won’t be able to stop myself from jumping over the fence and beating the shit out of your opponent. Don’t even know why you do that shit. There are better recreational activities, bro.”
“Then don’t fucking ask.”
“Okay, I think we’re all set here,” Guy interrupts. “It’s about one AM in Russia—the time he thinks is safer to call—so we’ll just wait for him to connect.”
Torin’s the head of the company. Red Cage was the thing he’d always wanted, and what the rest of us didn’t know we’d be good at.
Back in Colorado, his stepdad, a vet and a hero to him, ran a small private investigation company. Taught him a lot. He told us he always knew it’s what he wanted to do.
His stepdad died, then his mom less than a year later, and that’s when he came to live with us. Torin and dad never got along well though, but when dad died just a year later, he took it hard. Probably from suffering so many losses.
He joined the army, did two tours, then came back and started Red Cage.
By that time, True and I were both just going through the motions in college. I was majoring in business only because True was, but really, I’d had no fucking clue what I wanted out of life—except her.
Until Torin pitched Red Cage to us. True had laughed it away, but I was all in. It was the first thing I showed any real interest in, since her.
Joining Red Cage meant going to a secret camp for eleven months in Virginia for training, which included learning hand-to-hand combat, tactical firearms training, at least two languages—I chose Russian and French—tech, weapons, artful breaking and entering, detective skills, interrogation skills, problem-solving skills, laws and regulations…the works. I remember the pressure of having to learn so much in a short space of time, but it’s one of my most epic experiences to date.
True finished college, and after I returned and when he saw how jacked and sharp I was, a whole new person, he came on board.
Tripp went off to train straight out of high school, skipping college altogether, much to Mom’s rage.
As Red Cage Investigations grew and became more and more successful, we expanded to private security when our affluent and famous clients started asking for the service.
Then, just over a year ago, we launched our cyber security software, thanks to our in-house genius, Guy. Now that’s bringing in twice as much income as the investigation service and the private security service combined.
We’re doing pretty fucking good, not to brag.
Dad would be proud.
Torin is currently in Russia on an international job. These kinds of jobs generally go directly to him since it’s his area of expertise. He has mastered almost every language at this point and has the kind of patience and connections that the rest of us don’t, which is imperative for jobs such as this one.
He’s been there on this job almost two months now, so we have virtual meetings twice a week to keep abreast of his progress.
