"Blaze, I'm really sorry we weren't of much help earlier," Ali said to me on the way home as he stared at the floor with his head down.

"Yeah, that won't happen again," Brian added.

"You've both apologized enough already. Besides, it's not your fault. Scott was clearly exaggerating," I said. They've been behaving like this for 10 minutes and they keep apologizing. I don't blame them for running away from Viktor. After all, that was almost everyone's reaction. I should try to find out more about this Viktor. The fear everyone has of him shows me that he must have some skeletons hidden in the closet. Suddenly I noticed that Ali and Brian had stopped in front of me.

"You say it wasn't our fault, but you still came to help us and we shouldn't have run away," Ali said.

"He's right. You're our friend Blaze and we both promise you that we'll always stick by you from now on," Brian added.

I've only known them for two days and yet I have to admit that I already like them. I smiled and said as I walked past them, "What are you idiots getting sentimental about now?"

"Hey Blaze, wait a minute. I'm not being sentimental, it's just Ali," Brian shouted and ran after me.

"Me? That looked different after Scott's punch, I saw you holding back your tears" Ali replied and followed him.

Now that Scott's not here anymore, you're suddenly starting to talk again," Brian said with a laugh. The two of them were practically just beating each other up the rest of the way and didn't stop talking.But I realized that I much preferred this to the mood before.

When I finally arrived home after having to reassure them both that I didn't really think they were sentimental, I got straight to work. I started to get a better and better overview of the people working with AJ. But the biggest surprise today was my encounter with Scott and the fact that AJ is his and Jane's uncle. If I could get Jane to convince her uncle to give me a job I would have already achieved my goal. But that's much easier said than done. For one thing, Jane hates her uncle and for another, I wouldn't know how to explain to her that I really need this job. According to her, Scott has changed since he started working for AJ and she made it clear to me several times that I should stay away from AJ. If I just go to her and say that I need to get a lot of money quickly, that won't be enough of a reason. I can probably forget about the option of getting Scott on my side either. I should be glad he doesn't want to see me in the ground right now.

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AJ knows I need money and that I'm looking for work. He also knows some of my skills from fighting Alex and talking to me. There's only one thing missing and that's his trust. I tried to win it in a roundabout way, but maybe I should reconsider that. But how can I gain his trust without arousing suspicion? The question reminded me of something I was told a long time ago.

"Trust is a long process that has to be worked hard for. You have to show empathy, patience and respect for your counterpart. But in our business, it's also sometimes important to gain a person's trust in the shortest possible time," said Benjamin.

"And how exactly did you do that?" I asked curiously.

"It was actually quite simple, Blaze. We solved a problem for them" he replied.

"So you just helped the person and that made him trust you"

"Yes, that's right. You can build trust by helping. The more help you give, the greater the gratitude - and with it, trust grows.

Even now you are answering all my questions Benjamin I thought to myself. I hope you are doing well. If I manage to join Trident, I'll have to go looking for him too. Maybe some people in the organization already know where he is. But I decided to put these thoughts away for now and concentrate on the goal in front of me.

Solve a problem for AJ? It might be worth a try. Now I just had to find a problem. I could watch some of his workers and help them if something unexpected happened. But I found from my observations that those from the club were mostly just hauling packages from one place in Brixton to another. And here in Brixton, nobody is stupid enough to mess with AJ. That's why so many people want to work for him. From what I've heard, nobody knows exactly what's being delivered and they don't want to find out. They know that it is most likely illegal but the pay is worth the risk for most of them. After some thought I had an idea. If there's no problem at the moment, I'll just create one.