12 Mokanla

The Kurig beeped and I glared at Ade as he went to bring me my tea.

"Is there a problem?"

"Yes. The fuck are you doing?"

"Do you want the tea or not?"

"Hoe who stops in the middle of a fucking story to get tea? The whole point is you're already spilling it!"

"Shut up you're so annoying." he mimicked me as he handed me my tea.

" You shut up"

"Really? Okay fine then."

"Bitch finish the story!"

"Ok fine. So-"

"Hurry up, are you gone continue or nah?"

"You- you know what? Fuck you. So as I was saying, I find my sister standing outside this abandoned building. I run to her. After hugging her and marvelling at the fact that she's actually alive, I tell her we must go see ma and baba and she starts full-on sobbing. At first I thought it was out of happiness, and maybe that was part of it, but then I realized it was something so much worsel. Something had died inside her. She used to be the light of the family. Always teasing somebody, laughing at something , she didn't even look like she could laugh if she wanted to anymore. The light she had was barely there anymore. When I learned what had happened to her, I was surprised the spark hadn't left altogether, but she was strong. She still had the tiniest bit of hope left. She begged me not to tell mama and baba but I couldn't even register her words because she was crying so hard. Finally I realized what she had been saying over and over again. 'I can't let them see what has happened to me. They can't see what's happened to me.' It was then I recognized the bruises and scratches all over her. I asked her what happened over and over again. I screamed until I was hoarse and finally she answered with one word.

Ximenes.

She refused to give me details, or any information whatsoever, she said if anyone found out she would be killed. She only told me my P.I. 'must have liked me' because the second the police found who they were dealing with, they stopped looking, and he didn't. She said the P.I. told her to tell me to stop looking before I was killed, and nothing else. She must have disobeyed him because before she left, she told me one last thing.

'I am beyond saving, I don't matter now. I love you and I can't let you risk your life for me. I only told you it was him because I am not the only one. There are others. Millions of others. You're a genius, you've always been. Figure it out.'

Of course I didn't listen to the first part of her statement. She was my sister, and she wanted to me to leave her, but it wasn't happening. She was too proud to let anyone know what had happened to her and was afraid 'they' would find her again, so, I bought her a private island with enough security personnel to choke her and sent her there to live until I figured out how to make it safe here for her. Then, I began digging. I always knew it was suspicious how Ximenes suddenly had millions of dollars before I even lifted the company off the ground, so I decided to start there. I hacked into all his emails back to when he first graduated high school, and found a stream to the same contact, but when I looked in to the content, it was all random words and numbers. A code. I gathered all the emails and kept the screenshots, but there was no code that corresponded with the gibberish and next time I checked the originals, they were gone. Finally, something told me to go back to the abandoned building I met my sister at and look for clues. Yet when I returned it was no longer empty. In fact, it was far from it. Now it was full of girls, of all ages. The youngest couldn't be older than 6, none were older than their early twenties. Yet all looked miserable. It seemed they were coming from somewhere in the Caribbean. They were packed against the walls side by side, most of them crying silently, all looking at a man shouting in the middle. A man Ximenes had introduced me to months before. First I scouted the building to make sure there were no cameras, and as a presumed, there were. To my horror and convenience, they used my technology, which i deactivated in a few seconds each. As I did this, one of their useless ass security guards started being nosy so I knocked him out and took his badge and gun. Then I walked in and pretended I was part of whatever was going on. Eventually he started to believe me and started joking about what price he thought some of the girls were worth as I lead him out. I started to feel sick, I knew exactly what was happening now. It confirmed my worst suspicions. I knocked him over the head with the butt of the gun and kneed him in the stomach. After, I unchained about five girls, gave them the gun, and left when they promised to finish the job and hide the body after extensive torture. Which they described, in detail by the way. Usually it would disgust me, but that day I smiled because I began to see some of their eyes light up again. The next day I began more research, my sister was not the only one to go missing that year. The stream of missing kids in that year increased at nearly same rate as X's wealth. At first I was just going to expose him and walk away from the company, but I realized I couldn't leave while thousands of people around the world were still in chains because of him. His business wasn't small. The building was probably a port for thousands . Just him going to jail would not change that, if he even was convicted, which he probably wouldn't be. Few people were convicted for trafficking and it never resulted in the actual business being dismantled. I needed to take his business down sector by sector. He has almost every politician in his pocket, and the FBI, CIA, UN, foreign governments, etcetera have done absolutely nothing. I don't want to have to be the one to change things, but I can't leave them the way they are. And I think you can help me. I get that you hate me for not being there for you, but to take X out from the inside, I have to be inside, and killing him for touching you, and keeping him from kidnapping you, would not keep me inside. I need solid evidence so there's no way to avoid a conviction without public outcry and riots. Not to mention, I have no doubt that he would throw me under the bus upon exposure, so I had to start collecting evidence to exonerate myself anyways. Most importantly, a conviction doesn't necessarily mean all the rings he put in place get shut down. I need to dismantle every part of his business." he finally finished. The pieces finally began clicking and connecting in my head like a puzzle. Ade and Ximenes' relationship, the reason why they were they way they were, and even further it answered the huge question the general public had when Xcel Technology took over the electronics market in a matter of months. I knew I was missing one tiny piece. Something felt odd. But, that gave me all the more reason to get involved and find out what it was. Now that my reason for being mad was almost illegitimate, I could never forgive myself if I didn't help him. Especially after what happened to me.

"Why would you tell me all this after only knowing me for a week? How do you know I'm not some spy he hired to find out your plans?"

"Why do you think I tested if could you figure out your way in here. I already trusted you before, but I have faith in your core morals now. You think the way I do. When you tried to escape you uttered thanks to our ancestors, you begged god for strength, and more than anything else you prayed for the people who can't escape and who didn't. You recognized the Adinkra symbol for freedom. Our culture is not one of cruelty or betrayal. As long as you stay in tune with it I trust you to some degree. Of course some people believe in all the right things and do all the wrong things, but more than that I believe in you, and I've never been wrong. Don't disappoint me"

" I guess I'm sorry for calling you Koonye 2.0",

"Did you actually?"

"Shit I forgot I said that in my head."

"You know what- I'm sick of you. Just say you're in."

I processed all my doubts, my fears, my trust issues, and my reservations.

I sorted through them and analyzed each one with care.

And then I told them all to go to hell.

"Fuck it. I'm in."