Rollo Grant lived in the south end of Sapphire City, a location mushrooming with apartments. Students, daily wage workers, and unmarried dorks mainly inhabited it. They rented places to carry on with their desperate, middle-class lives.
Rollo had usurped the entire ancestral land of the Grants, an area of twenty thousand square feet. He had already started building clumsy apartments to accommodate maximum tenants at high prices.
As soon as Tyler stepped into Rollo’s house, a pudgy-faced woman blocked his path.
“Where do you think you are going, boy?” she barked. The woman was none other than Rollo’s wife, Velma.
“Aunt Velma… It’s me, Tyler. I’ve come to see Tracy.”
The woman, instead of greeting her nephew like a relative, shoved him roughly, driving him out of the house.
“This isn’t an amusement park you can visit as you please!” she said, her voice dripping with malice. “Get lost!”
Just then, a balding, middle-aged man rushed out of the house.