A Dynasty of Deceit

Chapter Two: Fire in His Veins

Three years had passed since the night the truth shattered Zayn’s world and rebuilt him from the inside out. His purpose grew strongerv and It sometimes scared even Amara, who watched her son evolve from a curious boy into something far more silent and more dangerous than she had ever imagined.

He no longer asked why they were poor, why he looked nothing like his peers, why people muttered behind their hands when they saw them. He no longer wondered what his father looked like, or whether Alaric Maduako ever thought of him, because he already knew the answer. Men like Alaric do not think of consequences. They only think of power, and consequences like Zayn were meant to be erased but Zayn had decided that erasure would never be his fate, and so he began preparing slowly and building himself in the shadows the way a soldier prepares for war.

By fifteen, he had memorized every detail about the Maduako family birthdays, properties, investments, political allies, scandals, offshore accounts, and rivalries using internet cafés and stolen library access, printing files and keeping them under the floorboards at night, even learning to forge signatures and write in corporate shorthand while his mother slept three feet away. She was always too exhausted from cleaning rich people’s toilets to ask what kept him awake.

He taught himself how the stock market worked, how businesses moved money to avoid taxes, how companies absorbed or crushed competition, and more importantly, he learned the languages of the rich, their gestures, their guarded smiles, the code behind every phrase that sounded kind but meant control.

In school, he stopped fighting when they insulted his mother or called him cursed, not because he was afraid, but because he realized anger gave them powerand he would no longer waste energy on anything that didn’t build his future. Instead, he focused on winning, and he did it with quiet brilliance that scared his teachers and stunned his classmates. He became the boy who knew everything but said nothing, the boy who never looked anyone in the eye too long but always left them feeling seen, as if he knew what they were hiding even before they spoke.

When a scholarship came from an elite Lagos boarding school, it was funded by a foundation he knew was owned by one of Alaric’s subsidiaries. Zayn saw it not as a miracle but as a challenge from the universe, a test to see how close he could get to the fire without burning, and he accepted without hesitation. He packed his few belongings and kissed his mother’s forehead like a promise before stepping into a world that did not know it was about to be infiltrated.

Royal Pillars Academy was a fortress disguised as a school. It gates was taller than trees. The guards had automatic rifles. Children were dropped off in armored SUVs with government plates and from the moment Zayn walked through those doors, wearing his patched uniform and borrowed shoes, he became the ghost among princes.

He was unnoticed yet but always watching, learning how to speak like them, walk like them, and think like them without ever becoming one of them. He studied not just math and science but facial expressions and body language. He watched the children of senators lie with ease, watched heirs of oil barons cheat and still be praised. Watched girls cry quietly into napkins while their names were being sold in arranged engagements like cattle and he took notes, not because he pitied them, but because he understood that the world was a game of thrones, and every player wore a mask.

He joined the school clubs not to socialize but to network. He sat beside the son of a Supreme Court judge during lunch, tutored the daughter of a tech mogul in exchange for whispered family gossip, and slowly, the guards around him began to lower not because he belonged, but because he made them believe he could belong and that was all he needed.

Ad then came the name, Maduako, casually mentioned in a class debate about dynasties and legacies, and every head turned to look at the golden boy of the school.

Tobe Maduako, first son of Alaric, captain of the debate team, future CEO, the one whose smile was all teeth and whose kindness was sharp enough to bleed, and Zayn, seated two rows behind him, clenched his pen so hard that it snapped in half but he didn’t move. He stared at the back of Tobe’s perfect head and etched every detail into memory. The way he laughed at his own jokes, the way people leaned in when he spoke, the way even the teachers pandered to him like his surname was a crown and Zayn knew then that this wasn’t just about revenge anymore, it was about reclamation. That everything he had studied, everything he had built inside himself was leading to this moment, and the boy who had once slept on a torn mat under a leaky roof was now breathing the same air as the heir to the empire that had discarded him, and no one knew over the next two years,

Zayn mastered his surroundings, built alliances without friendships, learned from the privileged without ever envying them, and all the while, he waited for his opening, for the moment he could step out of the shadows and into the light with a truth too heavy to be denied.

He forged a relationship with a computer science teacher who noticed his brilliance and offered him access to private online lectures and coding labs, and Zayn devoured it all. He learned how to build apps, traded crypto under anonymous profiles, launched a discreet freelancing service for small businesses, and by the time he turned seventeen, he had quietly made his first million naira, and then ten. He saved it in an account under a fake name. He reinvested every kobo and watched his empire grow from behind a screen while still pretending to be the scholarship boy grateful for leftover sandwiches.

He attended networking conferences in borrowed suits, learned to pitch startups in three minutes or less, and finally, at a local tech contest, he stood on stage in front of a crowd that included investors from Maduako Holdings none of whom knew that the quiet, brilliant teenager explaining an AI-based logistics platform was the very blood their empire had tried to erase and he won, of course, not just the prize but the interest of a venture capitalist named Kelechi Onwudiwe, who offered him mentorship and a meeting with a private investment group. He was unknowingly handing Zayn the key to the front gates of the kingdom he had been circling for years. He accepted with a bow, and his eyes gleamed with the cold light of purpose.

And that night, alone in his hostel room, he looked at his reflection and whispered the words his mother had said three years ago, “You were born into gold, Zayn, but gold can kill as much as it can save,” he smiled and he whispered back to himself, “Let it try.”