Imelda bangs her fist on her table furiously. She feels like screaming. She wants to shout obscenities at someone, anyone, but she is all alone in her office. What is she going to tell her father and her husband? Her father will cut her off from the family altogether now. This was her last chance to redeem herself in his eyes, and she has blown it. He will be furious, and he will probably never speak to her again. Daniel, Imelda’s father, can keep a grudge, as he has proven many times in the past. Her siblings don’t have much value for her, and now they will look down on her even more.
Kingsley, her husband, is another story altogether. The man is as volatile as anybody can get and he will probably kill her. Literally. He is a criminal, and she knows that he has killed people before. She even suspects that people hire him to kill their enemies. He often beats her over minor things. Just last week, someone rammed into her car and took off. Kingsley beat her up, even though it was not her fault, and even though it was not his car. It was her car, which she bought with her own money. And which she later fixed with her own money.
Now she has cost him his beloved clubs. Kingsley has become something of a social media celebrity and identifies himself as the owner of two of the most popular clubs in the city. He associates with other celebrities and often alludes that he owns the restaurants as well, although Imelda is the one who calls the shots on that side of the business. Together, they operate two clubs and three restaurants, all of them very popular in the city.
But now there is trouble in that paradise.
Imelda got into a deal, a deal she has just learned that has gone south, and now she has lost everything. That fool Thomas, or whatever his name is, has conned her. But the biggest problem is that she not only hid the deal from Daniel and Kingsley, but she also forged their signatures to access the money through the company.
The only way she is going to stay alive is if she can access fifty million shillings urgently. But that is not going to happen, so she is a dead woman walking.
*
When she first got into a deal with Thomas, Imelda remembers, she was on this very seat. And when the first round of profits hit her account, she was also on this same seat. He called her and told her to check her account, and she opened the bank app while seated on this very seat. She can remember the thrill she felt when she saw that she had, cumulatively, more than doubled her investment.
She remembers contemplating telling Kingsley and her father what she was doing, but holding off. She wanted to inform them after she had hit it big. That evening, when she got her second principal investment and profits, she remembers swiveling on this very chair absentmindedly, a smile plastered on her face. Her problems were about to end. She was about to become a rich woman, and her siblings would start respecting her.
Imelda was not brought up in poverty. Her father Daniel is a wealthy tycoon who has been in business for decades. His interests span construction, real estate, hospitality, and transport industries. Daniel is a civil engineer by training, and after being employed for only two years, he set out to establish his firm. That was the foundation of his wealth.
Daniel has been engaged by the government to construct numerous roads, bridges, and houses. He has deep connections within the government, and some have argued that he gets his tenders by giving kickbacks. Whatever the case, he managed to grow his firm into a respectable industry player. He is a retired chairman of the Kenya Association of Building and Civil Engineering Contractors.
Daniel used his early earnings to buy a matatu and put it on the road. That business has grown to a fleet of seventy 14-seater matatus plying different routes, 34 minibuses as well as 15 64-seater buses. He formed his own transport company even before the late Michuki came with the rules requiring matatus to be organized into companies or Saccos. Daniel is a past chairman of the Matatu Owners Association. As his wealth grew, he got into real estate. He started by buying and selling land, then started building houses for sale, and in the recent past has even added rental houses to his portfolio. Ten years ago he bought a struggling hotel and turned it around, and now he has three hotels in his conglomerate.
Imelda and her siblings attended international schools. Her siblings pursued their undergraduate studies abroad, but Imelda was the black sheep of the family. She was the rebellious one, and she was constantly having fights with her father. Eventually, when she got to the age of 18, she eloped with a man called Kingsley. Eloping meant that she did not get to study abroad like her siblings. Bradley, the firstborn in the family, went to Princeton University in the US and is now a heavyweight on Wall Street. Daisy, the second born, did Civil Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and is now the Managing Director of their father’s construction company. She also manages the Real Estate business. Bildad, the lastborn, is two years younger than Imelda and went to the University of Liverpool. He manages their father’s transport and hospitality businesses.
*
When Imelda ran off with Kingsley, he had nothing. He was a bar hopper with a smooth tongue. They had met at a club in Westlands. He was with his boys, and she was with a group of girls. She was 17 then, but she was already wild, playing truant in school so that she could go clubbing. Anyway, that evening Kingsley and his boys invited them over to their table and shared their alcohol. She doesn’t remember much else, except that she woke up on his bed. She doesn’t remember much, except that she woke up in his house the following morning with a blinding headache.
That was the beginning of a stormy fifteen-year relationship that will most likely end when Kingsley kills her after he finds out what she has done.
In the early months of their relationship, they used to go clubbing and he would flaunt her to his friends because she is a stunning beauty. Many times he was broke, but she always had a little money because she was getting an allowance from her father. And she had ways of stealing too. Daniel often had loose cash in his office, and she would pinch a little that would go undetected. This was the old man’s entertainment money and he did not audit it so closely. When Imelda completed school, her father threatened to send her to a university in Saudi Arabia, Iran, or some other radical Muslim country where she would not get access to alcohol or loose sex. She was scared enough that she told Kingsley that they would have to elope.
Kingsley was hesitant, because, as she came to learn later, he did not want to take responsibility for her. But when she told him she could get some loot from her father, he jumped at the idea. Previously she had been pinching small amounts, usually between five thousand and ten thousand shillings. But when she made up her mind to run, she sneaked into her father’s home office and took his briefcase, where she had been pinching money. This time she put the whole briefcase into her backpack and walked out of the house without the intention of returning.
When she and Kingsley counted the money later that evening from a hotel room in Naivasha, they discovered that she had managed to steal six hundred thousand shillings. They agreed that it would be too risky to stay in Nairobi, so they moved to Nakuru and rented a one-bedroom house. At Imelda’s insistence, Kingsley paid six months’ rent for the house. Then they started exploring Nakuru clubs.
Within no time, the money was gone. That is when the violence began. Kingsley would beat her at the slightest provocation. The first time he did it, it was in a club. She had seen him kissing another woman and confronted him. He beat her up right there in the club. After that the beatings became routine, but Imelda could not leave him because she had nowhere to go.
Other men were hitting on her, of course, but none of them would have dared to take her away from Kingsley. They just wanted to sleep with her secretly. Kingsley had joined a criminal gang in Nakuru, and that, coupled with his volatile temper, made people fear him.
But Imelda and Kingsley were struggling financially. They were always lagging on rent, with the landlord threatening to evict them, and food was not always available. In clubs, they relied on Kingsley’s friends to supply alcohol. Imelda wished she could make peace with her father, but she was afraid. Not only had she humiliated him by running away from home, she had stolen over half a million shillings from him. He would not be sympathetic to her. So she put up with Kingsley for nine years.
When she turned twenty-seven, she discovered she was pregnant. She had been careful all those years because she did not want to bring a human being into her world of suffering. But her birth control pills must have failed. Or maybe she forgot to take them. Whatever the case, she was pregnant.
The pregnancy made her realize that she now had to grow up. She could not continue running around in bars like a twenty-year-old. One morning she told Kingsley that she wanted to go back home.
“Your old man will kill you.”
“Let him kill me, then he will bury me. But I cannot continue to be separated from my family forever.”
“I have been separated from my family for years and I have no desire to ever see them again, yet I am okay.”
“That is okay. But that is you. I am me.”
“You are not going anywhere. Just get that into your head. I am your husband and I am not going to let you go anywhere.”
“Okay,” she said, but her mind was made up. She would leave without his permission. That evening, when they went to the club, Imelda went and sat on a stool at the counter as usual, while Kingsley joined his friends and went to find other women to flirt with. When she saw him moving to a dark corner of the bar with some bimbo, she slipped out of her stool and went to the washrooms. And then she left through the backdoor and took a boda boda to the matatu stage.
She found the very last matatu about to leave. It had only one seat remaining, and she took it. She wanted to be as far away as possible from Nakuru when Kingsley realized she was gone. She had no idea what she would do if her father refused to allow her back home. But she had to go. She only had fifteen hundred shillings when she left the house that evening, money she had stolen from Kingsley’s pockets the previous night when he blacked out. And she had paid the boda boda rider a hundred shillings, and the matatu three hundred shillings. It was 8 PM when the matatu left Nakuru, and she hoped she would find a matatu to Thika, where her family lives when she got to Nairobi. She was down to eleven hundred shillings, and she knew she could not afford to spend the night in a guest house.
They got to Nairobi at 10.30 PM, and Imelda was fortunate once again to find a matatu to take her to Thika. From Thika town, she took a motorcycle to her house. Her father is well known in Thika so she did not have to give the rider a lot of explanations. When she got to the gate, she had the option of ringing the bell. A guard would open it and ask her a million questions. Having been away from home for nine years, she was sure that none of the guards would recognize her. They would probably call her father, who would tell them to send her away without giving her a chance to explain.
She opted to call her mother instead. She had the number, but having not used it for nine years, she was not sure whether it was still working. But when she called, her mother picked on the second ring. Harriet was very excited to hear from her daughter and was even more excited to learn that she was at the gate. She came to pick her up.
It was a happy reunion between mother and daughter. They cried and hugged. As it happened, her father was away on a business trip, and her siblings had all moved out and had homes of their own. Harriet took her daughter to her old bedroom and told her to shower. Her room seemed to have been left untouched since her departure. Her old clothes were there and they could still fit her. She was nine years older, but her body had remained small. She was actually thinner than she had been when she left home.
Harriet gave her food, and they talked the whole night. Imelda apologized for her behavior and told her mother that she was ready to change. She even told her about the pregnancy. But she did not tell her about the beatings she had been getting from Kingsley.
Harriet spoke to her husband, and by the time Daniel returned home, he had agreed to let Imelda stay. But he told her that she would have to abide by the house rules even though she was now an adult. She would not be allowed to go drinking, she would dress decently and she would not be out of the house later than 7 PM without permission. She would also be required to go back to school and complete her degree. She agreed to all the terms, and her father enrolled her at the University of Nairobi to pursue a Bachelor’s degree in Commerce.
Her father hired her at one of the hotels. That is when they started realizing that she was a brilliant girl. That should have been evident from the fact that she completed High School even though she was rebellious and her focus was not really on books. Her grades were horrible, but she made it through.
At UoN she started getting As right from the first trimester. And her abilities at the hotel were evident. Not even the pregnancy and the subsequent childbirth slowed down her reform. Before long, she became a star in her father’s eyes, and this brought friction with her siblings, especially Bildad, on whose turf she was working. Daniel was thinking about taking away the hospitality business from Bildad and giving it to her, and Bildad was not happy about that. He and his siblings felt that she was “getting rewarded for her rebelliousness”. Imelda completed her Bachelor’s degree in two and a half years and graduated top of her class with first-class honors. She enrolled for her Master’s degree immediately.
*
Kingsley inserted himself back into her life gently. When he called her the day after her escape, and she told him she had reconciled with her parents, he hung up on her. She did not mention the pregnancy. He called her back three months later, asking for a second chance, but she told him to get lost. But he was persistent. Eventually, six months after she escaped, she agreed to meet him for lunch. That is how he found out that she was pregnant. She could not hide her bulging belly. Kingsley insisted on being a part of his offspring’s life. He told her that he had reformed and that he was managing a bar along Thika Road.
Imelda told her mother everything, and Harriet told her to be careful. But Kingsley inserted himself in their lives, especially after baby Daniel was born and Imelda’s parents agreed to allow him to visit the child. A year later, Imelda moved out of home and moved in with Kingsley. This time round though, she had the approval of her parents. Her parents were not convinced that she was making the right decision, but they respected it and it did not affect their relationship.
Life with Kingsley was good for a few months, until one day Imelda went out with her friends and stayed out until 9 PM. When she got back home, she found Kingsley fuming. The surprising thing was that he was home when she arrived. He often staggered home after midnight. That evening he was stone sober, and he beat her up like a bag of beans.
He insisted that there would be ‘order and discipline’ in his house. That day marked the return of regular beatings for Imelda. She would have told her parents, but she was embarrassed. They had warned her not to move in with him because they did not believe he had changed, but she insisted that he was reformed, and they respected her decision.
*
The idea of opening a bar and restaurant was Imelda’s. She explained to her father that she did not want to continue the cold war with her brother Bildad. She felt she had gained enough experience to run her own business. She had been managing one of her father’s hotels, working under Bildad, and she felt confident she could manage a restaurant. Kingsley was managing a bar, so that would not be a problem.
Her father agreed to give them money to start the bar and restaurant, on condition that he would be on the board and have a say on the management. He would not interfere with the day-to-day running of the business but he wanted to be consulted before any major decisions were made. Imelda and Kingsley agreed. It was his money, after all.
For the past few years, the business has been running well. Everything seems to be on course. Until Thomas showed up in her office one afternoon.
*
Thomas did not just walk into her office. He was a regular customer at the restaurant, and often hosted groups for lunch. Imelda often engages her customers, and in one of the conversations she had with him, he told her that he was an investor who helped business people raise capital and get passive income.
“I don’t know whether you have heard about Globealth International. That is the name of the global association of wealth generators. I am the President of the Kenya Chapter. How it works is that you invest with us, and we invest your money in the global financial systems and you get guaranteed monthly returns. You get your capital back after the fixed period, usually not less than six months, together with 50 percent profit.”
Imelda began by investing fifty thousand shillings, the minimum allowed, for six months. Every month for five months she got ten thousand shillings. And on the sixth month, she got seventy-five thousand shillings. Intrigued, she wiped out her savings and invested half a million shillings for a year. Without fail, she got a hundred thousand shillings every month. At the end of the year, she got seven hundred and fifty thousand shillings as her capital return and interest. Thomas told her that there was a special international bond coming up, similar to government bonds, but bigger. The minimum investment required was fifty million shillings with guaranteed returns like the other investments. She could invest for a year, two years, or five years if she was interested.
This is the time she thought about telling her father and husband about the investment. But deep down she knew her father would not agree because he is a conservative investor. As an old man, he would only invest in traditional avenues that he understood. Kingsley, on the other hand, would most likely accuse her of having an affair with Thomas.
So she decided to go ahead without them. She applied for a loan of fifty million shillings in the company’s name. Both Kingsley and Daniel are directors of the company, so she forged their signatures on the loan application forms because she did not want them to know. The terms were that the company would be paying eight hundred thousand shillings every month to the bank for six years until the loan was paid in full.
Imelda was not worried about that. Globealth guaranteed her ten million shillings every month for a year and seventy-five million shillings at the end of the year. She planned to repay the loan within the first six months, using all the money she got from Globeath. By the time auditors came around, the books of account would be clean. In fact, if she pushed the audit back for a couple of months, her father would be super proud of her when he saw her smart investment.
Except that that will not happen now.
She was supposed to get the first ten million three days ago, but Thomas has not been answering his phone. She went to the Globealth offices yesterday, but she found a salon and spa there instead. That is when she began to worry.
A few minutes ago, while watching TV on the small screen in her office, she saw a news item to the effect that DCI detectives are looking for a man called Michael who allegedly conned people using aliases and fictitious company before going to the wind. The face plastered on the screen is Thomas’s.
Imelda closes her eyes as tears start rolling down her cheeks. She knows she is ruined. How could she have been so stupid?
(Next Friday I will tell you about Thomas and his scam in the story ‘The Financier’ and the Tuesday that follows I will tell the whole story about Thomas, Imelda, and the drama that followed the scam in the novella, ‘Root of all Evil’).
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