On a February morning, everyone was crowding, waiting for the opening ceremony of the new and only diamond shop in town. My name is Jake, and I’m the owner of the shop. I was really excited for the opening ceremony, because when I looked out, I saw a huge amount of people waiting for it to open. But then I got this feeling. I thought, If many people are here today, that means that I will have to be sure that no one will try to steal any of my precious diamonds.

On July 14th, in Napoli, Italy, I inherited a jewelry store in the city center. The store was owned by my father, who, sadly, had passed away about a week before. I was extremely sad, and yet I was happy.

I was happy that I was going to continue a business that was owned by my father. Another reason that I was happy was because I was going to have the experience of being a shop owner, which was new for me. The reason that I was sad was because it made me think too much about my father, whose name was Jake, just like mine. Well, my name is Jake the Second, so, technically, it is not the same name.

At 9:00 am the next day, I woke up, and it was my first day being the owner of the shop. I opened the doors and stepped into the store, and, far back behind the counter, I could see a small motion. I walked further into the shop — I took a peek behind the counter and saw nothing. Eh, it was probably just something that I was thinking about, I thought. When I dropped off my backpack behind the counter, I saw all of the employees walking in. After I saw the security guard walking to the front door, all of the people came flooding inside. Then I saw an employee named Ali walk to the security guard. They both whispered to each other, and then Ali walked off back to his counter. I walked to the cashier to see if there were people there.

I took a look and saw a line that went all the way to the exit. But soon I got the suspicion that someone was going to walk outside the door with a diamond, and I would not know about it. Then, I saw a guy walk out of the store with a small bag and little case. 

“Hey, security guard, follow that guy,” I said.

The guy started to run and so did the security guard. Since I was a track and field runner when I was younger, I started sprinting to the guy. We turned the corner, and I heard my voice huffing and puffing. I almost had — 

“Ah, I got you,” I said.

 I turned back and saw the security guard making his way over. 

“Call the police,” I said.

 I took a look at the case that he had in his hand and got a sudden flashback.

***

I was peeking through the keyhole in the door, and saw my dad putting one of the most valuable diamonds inside this case. He closed the case, put it inside his backpack, zipped it up, and put it in the corner of the room. Then he made his way to me, which was near the exit. I started to run away from the door. I rushed down the stairs. As soon as my front foot hit the ground, the door upstairs opened.     

***

The guy who was trying to run away from us had the exact same black case as my father. I heard the sirens of the police cars in the distance. My heart was still pounding from when I had chased the guy all the way here to where we had caught him. I knew the policemen were going to be here any second, so I grabbed the case and started sprinting to the jewelry store. I felt my heart pounding so hard, like it was about to explode. All I had to do was make it to the top room without the police getting me and asking me what the case had in it, and all these other questions. Come onnn. I am almost there. Just two more steps. One — two. I sat down, and apparently there was no one in the shop. Everything that I saw was getting blurry, and I felt my body falling to the ground. I put all my effort in, and I was just barely able to tuck the case under the desk.

The next time I woke up, I was in the hospital bed with a lot of doctors around me. 

“He is alive. Are you feeling okay?”

“Yes,” I replied, still wondering why I was there. “Excuse me, I have a quick question. Why am I here, and what happened?”

“Okay, so this morning when one of the employees who worked at the shop was coming in, they found you laying on the floor with your clothing from the past day still on. So they called us, and now we are making sure if you are okay,” the doctor said.

“Okay.” I said, acting like I was listening the whole time.

I had this feeling in me that they had taken the suitcase and did not tell me about it. I tried to get up, but then I felt this thing that pulled all of my chest hair off. I started screaming at the top of my lungs. All the doctors turned around with a shocked face.

“Why were you moving so much? We were trying to see if your vitals were okay.”

I didn’t want to end up having to pay so much money to the hospital for nothing. Meanwhile, as the doctors were talking, I slowly detached all of the vital cords. At night, when all of the doctors were gone, I slowly got out of my hospital bed, put my shoes on, and made my way to the front of the hospital. I thought that it was going to be super easy to get out of the hospital without getting caught by the security guard, who was probably sleeping, like always. Instead, the security guard was wide awake on his phone. On the side of the desk, there was a water jar from a hookah. Somehow, I managed to grab the jar. I threw it on to the other side of the desk, where the security guard was sitting. He ran over to the glass jar. Meanwhile, I snuck my way out the exit. 

Outside, I saw a person who looked familiar smoking. I took a good look at him. Then, I suddenly realized that he was the guy who attempted to steal my father’s case. As soon as I saw the guy, I also noticed the black suitcase that looked like the one he tried to steal from me. For some reason, he still did not see me, probably because he was in the distance. I tried to creep my way up to him. I made no noise at all. When I was so close to him, my foot crunched on top of a leaf. In the guy’s hand there were some broken pieces of glass. They looked so familiar to the ones that were part of the hookah, and he also had a green tube in his other hand. I grabbed his hand. Since I was so amazing, I had pepper spray in my pocket. I grabbed the pepper spray out of my pocket, and sprayed it directly into his eyes. The guy screamed in pain and fell to his knees. 

I was still confused why he had a green hookah in his hand. I walked into the hospital to see if the security guard was there. But he was not, and not even the green part of the hookah was there. I was so confused, but then realized that it was the security guard. I turned my back to the thief and tied his arms behind him. Then, I picked him up and carried him on my shoulders to the bus, throwing him in the luggage space underneath the bus. When it was our stop, I got off and brought him to my very big house. Once we got inside, I laid him down on the couch and slapped his face to make sure he was awake — since he had passed out due to the pepper spray. 

He suddenly got up and asked, “Where am I?” 

And then I came out from a corner to scare him and said, “You’re at my house.” 

“Wha, wha, wha — I’m — what?” he asked.

“Yeah, I pepper sprayed you and then you fainted, and then I brought you here using public transportation,” I said.

“Well that’s stupid,” he replied.

“Shut up and listen to me. Now tell me why you stole that suitcase from my store, then why you attempted to run away with it,” I said.

“Because as a little child, my mom and dad would always come to the store and admire how beautiful all of the diamonds and gems were. As I got older, I realized that I could be crazy rich if I stole some of the diamonds and sold them. One day, when your father was still working at the shop, I saw him bring into his office a black suitcase that had a mold of a really big diamond. On it was labeled ‘122 carats.’ I was shocked. So when he left the store, I snuck in before the store closed and waited until everyone was gone. I went up to his office and looked for the diamond. Then when I had found it, I closed the drawer and left the store. Before I got out the store, I checked the time and I saw that it was 4:30 am. I was so tired that I sat down on the bench and fell asleep. In the morning, when the store opened, the people saw me laying down on the bench. So I went to jail for two years for committing grand larceny. Your dad, the owner at the time, got really mad at me. So I went to jail and also got banned from the store.” he said.

After a while of explaining, I finally understood everything. I eventually called the police on him and the policemen took him away. 

When the policemen were about to put him in the car I said, “I hope you have a good time in jail.”

“Ohhh I will come for you” he said. 

That night I heard the guy’s voice repeating and repeating in my head, “I will come for you.”

But after that night I was all fine.

And then I lived a happy life with no more people stealing from my shop.

The End