A Dynasty of Deceit

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 one really knew where the name came from, not even Amara, who often whispered to herself in languages no one around here spoke.

Her lips were always trembling with guilt, fury and with memories she never dared to share, not even with her son who deserved the truth more than anyone.

They lived in a one room shack behind a mechanic shop, the kind of place where rats ruled at night and heat smothered every breath by day, and yet Amara kept it spotless. She sweeps the sand floor twice every day and arrange their few belongings like they were treasures.

Amara was not like the other women in the slums, who were defeated by the world or hungry for a man’s presence. She was quiet, elegant in a way that didn’t belong here, like someone who had once worn perfume and silk, who had once walked through halls where air-conditioning hummed and people bowed out of respect.

Respect was a currency long spent, and what remained was a broken woman clinging to the child she had nearly died bringing into the world, a boy she had vowed to protect not just with her body, but with every lie she could weave, every secret she could bury and so Zayn grew up surrounded by half-truths and sharp looks, by men who spat on the ground when they saw him and women who pulled their daughters close when he walked by, not because he had done anything but because they sensed something dangerous in him, something that didn’t fit the poverty he was born into.

It was the way he spoke when he did speak, the way he read old newspapers out loud like they were scriptures, the way he asked questions no other child asked, like he already knew the answers and was just testing you. Even the teachers at his overcrowded public school didn’t know what to make of him. One moment he was acing every exam without notes, the next he was suspended for fighting older boys with a calm violence that left them bleeding and him unbothered.

His knuckles were raw but his eyes colder than they should have been for a child. They said he was cursed, that he saw things, that he wasn’t born right and they were almost right, because Zayn wasn’t just any boy, he was the result of a union that had never been meant to exist, the shameful product of lust, the illegitimate child of Chief Alaric Maduako, the most ruthless and revered billionaire in the country. A man who built his empire on blood and silence, who discarded Amara like a toy when she told him she was pregnant. A man who paid her to disappear and threatened her into silence when she refused to abort the child growing in her womb like a ticking time bomb.

And Amara took that money and vanished into the shadows of Lagos. She raised her son with trembling hands and a mind sharp enough to teach him everything he needed to know about surviving a world that had already decided it didn’t want him but she never told him the truth, not until that night, when the storm broke and the streets flooded and they had no more bread and no more hope, when she finally sat him down on the cold floor of their tiny room and looked at him like she had waited twelve years to say what now burned her throat, “You were never meant to be poor,” she whispered.

Her voice trembled like the candlelight between them, “You were born into gold, Zayn, but gold can kill as much as it can save”, and she told him everything. How she had met Alaric when she was just nineteen, working as an intern in one of his hotels. How he had seduced her with soft words and expensive gifts. How she had fallen too fast and too hard and blinded by his charm and unaware of the monster beneath his tailored suits. How she had kept the pregnancy a secret until she couldn’t anymore, hoping against hope that he would accept them, protect them, and love them. And how he had laughed in her face, handed her an envelope of cash, and said, “Disappear, and don’t make me clean up another mess”.

Zayn didn’t cry, he just sat there, absorbing every word like it was a blueprint. His mind was already working faster than his mother could speak, already calculating years ahead seeing the face of the man who had given him life and denied him identity. He was hearing the whispers of the dynasty that had pretended he didn’t exist, and for the first time in his young life, he felt something close to clarity, a raw purpose that wrapped around his heart like barbed wire.

He was going to take back everything that had been stolen from him not just the wealth or power, but his name, legacy and respect.

He would make them remember him, make them kneel, and make them choke on the blood of the lies they had fed the world.

As the rain battered the roof and lightning lit the cracks in the wall, Amara reached for him with shaking hands.Her eyes were wide with something between terror and pride “You are his son, Zayn, but you will be nothing like him,” she said, and he took her hands in his, and replied with the voice of a boy who had just been born again, “No, Mama, I’ll be worse because I’ll win,” and in that moment, the storm outside seemed to pause, as if the gods themselves were listening. It was as if destiny had just changed direction and the world didn’t know it yet.