A Dynasty of Deceit

Chapter Nine: The Kingdom He Built

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 so with a thumb drive full of signed testimonies, environmental damage reports, and decades of unpaid royalties buried beneath falsified books, and with that, he knew how he would build his kingdom.

The very next week, he launched DYN Holdings, an acronym that on paper stood for “Dynamic Yields Nigeria,” but everyone knew it was shorthand for dynasty and its mission was clear. It was to disrupt legacy monopolies, empower local ownership, and redistribute value from the center to the forgotten edges of the economy. The idea spread like wildfire, fueled by Zayn’s raw credibility and the silent hunger of a population sick of waiting for permission to matter, and within six weeks, DYN had signed partnerships with six disaffected communities, secured funding from three foreign equity firms impressed by his dual fluency in tech and tradition, and began rollout of a decentralized platform for landowners to monitor resource extraction and receive direct payments, bypassing the middlemen who had always spoken in riddles and stole with smiles.

Media, previously skeptical, began to pivot, with headlines shifting from “Bastard Prince” to “The People’s Billionaire,” and youth across the country adopted him as a symbol, not because he was perfect but because he was real, because he had been wounded publicly and refused to bleed quietly, and because in every move he made, there was no arrogance, only a message.

Within two months of DYN’s launch, Alaric orchestrated a smear campaign through a network of political allies and media puppets, spinning false allegations about corruption, offshore accounts, and even human trafficking. They were all carefully designed to bury Zayn beneath suspicion and when that didn’t work, they turned to sabotage. Court orders started coming in, delayed permits, anonymous threats to investors, and at one point, a break-in at DYN’s Lagos office that left nothing stolen except the hard drive that stored the original land ownership smart contracts,but Zayn didn’t break. He simply adapted by moving his servers to cloud storage based in Switzerland. He created redundancies in Ghana and South Africa, and hiring former cybercrime investigators to protect his infrastructure, all while continuing to show up in the places his enemies least expected.

Even kings in motion need rest, and one night, weeks into his expansion, he returned to Calabar exhausted. His body has become thinner, his eyes got older, and found Adanna waiting in the kitchen of their seaside apartment barefooted. Her hair was messy while she was stirring egusi soup like it was her sanctuary and when he walked in, she didn’t say anything at first, just handed him a bowl and said, “Eat before you forget who you’re fighting for,” and that night, they talked like lovers who had survived a thousand endings and still chosen each other and she told him about her foundation, how her latest article had exposed three elite forced marriages that were now being legally challenged, and how girls from all over the continent were writing her letters, calling her sister, their saviour and Zayn, who had faced down billionaires and criminals, felt something ache in his chest at the sight of her glowing in purpose, not just beside him but with him, and he whispered, “I’m going to marry you someday,” and she smiled with full knowledge of the fire they would have to walk through to reach that day, and replied, “Then you better survive this war first”; and war, as if summoned by their honesty, arrived the next morning.

Amara showed up at their doorstep bruised and silent. Here eyes were hollow while she stretched out an envelope filled with photos and a single message: “Leave Nigeria or bury your son” the photos were of Zayn, taken from rooftops, hidden alleys, even one through the window of his car and though the message wasn’t signed, the implication was unmistakable.

Alaric had stopped pretending, and if he couldn’t bury Zayn legally, he would do it literally. Amara panicked, but Zayn caught it before it consumed her, he held her hand tightly and said, “This is how you know we’re winning” and though she wanted to scream, to demand he leave, hide, retreat she nodded, because she understood that retreat now would be the final surrender.

Zayn responded by organizing a press conference in Abuja where he publicly revealed the threat, showing the photos, the note, and ending the address by saying, “If I disappear, let this be the proof. If I die, let this be the beginning,” and the nation erupted in fury, with student protests, viral campaigns, and even a rare parliamentary session called to investigate dynastic interference in independent enterprise. The Maduakos were now not just losing control, they were bleeding power, and in desperation, they made one final move. Alaric himself appeared on national TV, flanked by lawyers and board members, announcing a merger between Maduako Holdings and a foreign conglomerate, an attempt to move capital offshore, consolidate influence, and strangle DYN through economic dominance, but Zayn was ready. He had already traced the shell company, tracked its funds, linked its directors to three corruption scandals in the EU, and within hours of the broadcast, he leaked everything through his platform. This triggered a federal investigation that finally pierced the Maduakos’ armor for good and in that moment, Zayn stood not as a son claiming a seat, but as a man who had built his own throne not from inheritance, but from ashes.