Chapter 2

It’d been six months since the final burial of my late father, after which mysterious things began to happen to the entire wealth my father and his immediate family members possessed. The last time I bothered to check (a week after his final burial), my father’s estate stood at a whooping seven billion naira (₦7,000,000,000.00), but as I sit in this empty church auditorium, that same estate is not even up to a million naira (₦1,000,000). This is after all the remaining tangible assets had been liquidated and stashed in a savings account in my name.

For more than an hour that Tuesday evening, I sat quietly, staring at the pulpit, while allowing my mind to stray to past events of the last few months until I decided to check the time on my wristwatch. The time showed five-thirty, as I stood up slowly, rubbed my head with my palm, and began to head for my younger sister’s apartment where I was presently ‘squatting.’ 

Although I felt ashamed to be ‘squatting’ with my younger sister, I felt that the only advantage it had was that it ‘hid’ me from unwanted friends and acquaintances of my parents who might desire to visit their late friend’s children.

I knew that in thirty minutes, people would begin to trickle into the church for a weekly Bible study known as ‘Digging Deep,’ where a particular minister led the congregation to dig deep into the word of God – the Holy Bible. I smiled at the thought of the name while thinking of how best to dig into the Holy Bible, which had never provided answers to all the questions that presently troubled my mind. 

Buttoning my jacket while walking briskly to the gate, I was stopped by a male security guard who was also referred to as a ‘holy policeman.’ He recognized me due to my mother’s commitment to the church and its growth.

“How’re you doing?” he asked with a look of suspicion.

“Just surviving, sir, just surviving,” I replied with a forced smile.

“Aren’t you staying for ‘Digging Deep’?” he pressed.

“Today’s fifteenth,” I answered impatiently, “the doctor wants to see me concerning my mother’s condition,” I lied.

At the mention of my mother, he quickly discontinued the conversation and bade me farewell while I kept walking to the main road, hoping my sister had not left her apartment. 

Walking down in the July cold that penetrated my body, the jacket notwithstanding, I regarded the entire situation as funny; that I, Tio Ibierembo Abbey-Hart, who once gave out huge donations, and awarded multi-million Naira contracts, was now jobless and presently ‘squatting’ with his younger sister. I swore to get to the bottom of the whole mystery with the last drop of my blood if the need arose. But minutes later, that didn’t matter. My tired frame stood a few meters in front of my sister’s apartment door, unable to wade off the brutal feelings of hunger that ravaged my stomach.

It was exactly ten minutes past six when I knocked thrice on the door. Two seconds passed, and I was about to repeat the knocking when I was stopped by my sister’s countenance. She must have applied some oil to the door hinges because no sound emanated when the door swung open. The temporary deafness caused by hunger…

“Good evening, big brother,” she greeted.

“May I come in?” I whispered after responding to her greeting. 

“Sure,” she replied, stepping aside for me to pass. I entered the apartment and sat down dejectedly on the small settee in the sitting room, unbuttoning my jacket. Thoughts of my late father and sick mother, which were seeping into my mind, were soon interrupted as my eyes met my sister, who came to sit with me after bolting the front door. I had known my sister to be a big fan of skimpy dresses, but I didn’t expect something of the sort she presently wore; to me, it made her look like a cheap office bitch.

The grey suit she wore had a very low V-neck with a tight white camisole that pushed out her breasts. The heavy make-up she wore, on the other hand, only aggravated the situation, as she resembled a vampire who took a break from drinking blood from a bucket. I always tried to avoid trying to caution her about her skimpy mode of dressing because it always led to her being manhandled by her elder brother. She looked at me with her legs crossed as she twisted her lips slowly.

“How’s Mum?” she asked, trying to adjust her shoulder-length ‘hair.’

“You know how things are for me,” I began, “you should’ve dropped by at the hospital to see her as soon as you finished in the office.”