A Dynasty of Deceit

Chapter Eight: A Seat at the Table

The Maduako estate was nothing like Zayn imagined not just the size or the splendor, which were both monstrous, sprawling acres of manicured gardens and marble hallways wide enough to swallow entire lives. But the atmosphere, the way the air itself seemed thick with surveillance and memory, every chandelier looks like an eye, every polished floor echoed with footsteps of ancestors who had built this dynasty on oil, sweat, and secrets and yet, as he stepped through the gates in a navy suit tailored, Zayn felt nothing but stillness, because he wasn’t here for validation or welcome. He was here to walk into the lion’s den and let the lion see what it had spawned.

The guards at the gate didn’t stop him, they nodded once, like they had been told to expect a storm in human form, and inside, everything was silent. It was the kind of silence reserved for mourning or betrayal and then he saw them. They sat at the long obsidian dining table that stretched across the hall like a medieval altar. Tobe, the golden boy, looked at him with that mixture of fury and disbelief only siblings forged in rivalry could know.

Chika arms were folded too, and his lips pressed into suspicion. Ngozi, Alaric’s sister, dressed in ceremonial was there too

and finally Alaric Maduako, seated at the head like a carved god, he wasn't moved by his presence except for the brief flicker in his jaw when Zayn stepped forward and said, without apology, “I’m here because your blood says I am” and Alaric lifted his glass of palm wine and replied, “Blood speaks, but it doesn’t always tell the truth,” to which Zayn smiled coldly and said, “Then let’s let the table decide”.

What followed wasn’t a conversation, it was a test. A 3 hours assault of questions and insinuations, of legacy trivia and cultural protocol, of asset knowledge and corporate breakdowns, of who he was and what he wanted, and Zayn, prepared like a soldier, answered each one with precision, quoting balance sheets and ancestral proverbs in the same breath. He explained the oil futures and ancestral land ties without blinking, and when Tobe accused him of using “a woman” to claw his way in, he looked Tobe in the eye and said, “You were born with the seat. I built mine from ashes,” and for the first time, silence fell into the room.

Aaric watched him the whole time, not as a father meeting his lost son, but as a king sizing up a rival claimant, and when the questioning ended, he stood up slowly, walked to Zayn, and for the first time in eighteen years, looked him fully in the face and said, “I don’t care what blood the test proves. I see myself in you and that is what scares me the most,” then turned and walked out, leaving the table divided, the air cracked open like a prophecy no one knew how to read. Days passed, and the media circled like vultures, hungry for a headline, spinning every family move into soap opera drama, and while the Maduakos refused to confirm or deny Zayn’s seat, the rumors hardened into public belief that Alaric’s firstborn son had returned to claim his place, not as heir, but as a threat.

Zayn, now a national icon of disruption, began receiving offers from rival conglomerates, invitations to panels, and even political whispers suggesting a senate run but he ignored them all, instead focusing on a deeper game reform from within, not just to avenge his mother or love Adanna, but to dismantle the rot that powered dynasties like this. He began attending board meetings, calling attention to missing funds in the logistics arm, blocking a nepotistic land deal that would have quietly enriched Tobe’s allies, and worse, recommending transparency initiatives that the old guard found blasphemous.

Tensions rose quickly, and though Alaric didn’t speak publicly, his silence became weight, his absence now a pressure, and Zayn could feel it building like a storm in the walls. Meanwhile, Adanna, still in hiding but no longer in silence, launched a digital platform for women trapped in forced engagements and traditional power marriages, her anonymous essays went viral, her influence blooming even in the dark, and though she missed Zayn with every bone in her body, she told him over encrypted voice notes, “You need to stay visible, I’ll be your shadow,” and he answered, “I’ll bring the roof down so you can walk in the sun”, but then the attack came. A Molotov cocktail was thrown into his startup’s new office in Lekki one night after a suspicious blackout. Flames engulfed half the servers, years of data turned to ash in minutes, and though no one claimed responsibility, everyone knew who sent the message. Tobe, the brother who wore silk and smiled like a crown, had finally declared war. Kelechi visited Zayn in the charred remains the next morning, not as an investor, but as a man torn between loyalty and survival, and said, “You’ve won the story, Zayn. But they own the ending. Get out while you still can,” and Zayn, kneeling in the smoke, ashes on his palms, looked up and said, “Then I’ll write a new ending”; that same week, he called a press conference in the courtyard of his mother’s old house in Surulere. The place where he’d grown up sweeping floors and watching dynasties on TV, and there, in front of a hundred microphones, he told his story, not the version wrapped in elegance and strategy, but the raw truth. The abandonment, the shame, the anger, the rise, and as he spoke, the nation shifted again, not just seeing him as a disruptor but as a mirror, a symbol of all the sons and daughters forgotten by power, and when the speech ended, when he said, “Blood makes you related. But choices make you family,” the applause wasn’t just noise, it was thunder; but thunder doesn’t scare kings.

Three days later, Alaric made his move, a formal declaration filed with the Corporate Affairs Commission naming Tobe Maduako as the sole heir to Maduako Holdings, citing “cultural alignment and continuity” as the reason and just like that, Zayn’s seat vanished, legally and symbolically, a chess piece swept from the board with a stroke of ink, but Zayn didn’t shatter, he smiled, because now it was official. He was no longer fighting for a place at the table, he was building his own empire to make theirs obsolete and as he walked out of the commission building, reporters swarmed him to questioned him and he said, “Let them keep the throne. I’m after the kingdom.”