The storm had been threatening to break all day, heavy clouds hanging low over the ramshackle rooftops of Ajegunle, soaking the air with that unmistakable weight of something that is about to snap, and by the time it finally did, lightning sliced the sky in jagged veins and thunder growled deep like an ancient beast. The streets were already empty, save for the boy crouched beneath the rusted aluminum awning of a forgotten kiosk, his arms wrapped around his knees, he watches his mother fight the wind for control of her faded wrapper. Her name was Amara, a woman who was once envied and feared in elite circles, now reduced to begging the bakery boy for leftover crusts, and she did it not for herself but for the boy who looked nothing like the filth around him. His eyes were too sharp, too calculating, and even at twelve, he carried a silence that unnerved people, like he was always listening, watching, and storing everything away for later use. Zayn, his mother calls him, though no

The first time Zayn stepped into the towering glass edifice of Maduako Holdings, he felt nothing but only a hollow silence that stretched through his chest like the echo of something long buried and returning to life, because this wasn’t just a building to him, it was a monument to everything that had been stolen from him, his name, his bloodline, and his place at the table. The reception smelled of imported jasmine and marble polish, and the air-conditioning hummed with indifference as men in tailored suits and women in pencil skirts marched past him. Everyone's eyes were glued to their phones, and their faces carved into stone by years of wealth and control.None of them knew that the eighteen-year-old sitting across from the elevators in a grey suit too sharp for his age was a ghost in their machine, the bastard son of their god was here not to seek permission, but to plant his first flag. The invitation had come from Kelechi Onwudiwe, whose venture group had agreed to incubate Z

They didn’t run that night, not because they lacked courage, but because they knew better. Zayn and Adanna weren’t naive lovers swept away by passion, they were children of dynasties, forged in fire and deception, taught that the world did not forgive rebellion easily, especially not when it came wrapped in forbidden love and political consequence, so instead of fleeing into the night like desperate fugitives, they met in silence beneath the baobab tree that stood on the edge of the Maduako estate, shielded by darkness and the sound of waves crashing beyond the gates, their fingers interlocked like broken promises holding each other together, and whispering fragments of plans and stolen futures while pretending, for a few stolen minutes, that the world beyond them didn’t exist, “I want to disappear,” Adanna whispered and Zayn, who had built his entire life around the concept of emerging, not disappearing, looked at her and said, “We won't vanish, Adanna. We will take everything,” and

The letter sat untouched on the wooden desk for two days, its envelope neatly slit, the contents spread like an autopsy report. It had legal jargon, paternity clauses, veiled threats masked as procedurebut it wasn’t the bold crest of Maduako Holdings at the top that made Zayn pause, it was the signature at the bottom, inked in a steady, deliberate hand, Alaric T. Maduako. His father’s name not just printed but written, alive, and undeniably a name he’d heard only in whispered curses and childhood nightmares now staring at him like a mirror he had spent his whole life avoiding. Though he had once dreamed of this, fantasized about this exact confrontation, imagined storming into the Maduako estate with truth as his sword and justice as his crown, now that the door was open, it didn’t feel like victory, it felt like a trap.Adanna watched him silently, curled on the sofa in their Calabar hideout, the ocean air drifting through the open shutters, her fingers tapping against her thigh rhy

When Zayn stepped out from under the shadow of the Maduako name, stripped of legal recognition, family inheritance, and media favor as quickly as he had been given it, the world waited for him to fall, but instead, he expanded like a force that had only just begun moving, and it started with silence. Three days of vanishing from headlines and conversations, during which the world speculated his defeat. The Maduakos celebrated their restoration, and Tobe threw a lavish party in Banana Island featuring influencers, champagne towers, and a not-so-subtle performance of legacy reclaimed but Zayn was nowhere near the coast. He was in Enugu, sitting on cracked cement steps with Obinna Ede, an 80 years old community leader and former petroleum engineer whose small co-operative of landowners had, decades ago, been tricked out of mineral rights by a Maduako subsidiary now defunct on paper but still draining the land. Zayn listened, asked questions no Maduako ever had, and when he left, he did s