(Continued from The Apostle I)
“I want to pray for someone today,” the Apostle says as he draws to a conclusion of his sermon. Carol braces herself. This is the moment she has been waiting for. “You are here and you know in your heart that you have not been a good steward of the opportunities that God has granted you. Perhaps you have not been a good steward of your employer’s time. Or perhaps you have not been a good steward of the employees God has placed in your care. If you have not been a good steward of any of the resources that God has placed under your care, and you are saying Pastor, I want to mend my ways; please take a step of faith and come to the altar.”
Many people rise from their seats and troop to the front, as Carol expected. But she remains seated. She wants to get noticed, and she cannot get noticed if she is mixed up in a group. She knows that her moment will come right after this. She watches patiently and with slight amusement as the Apostle prays for the large crowd that is standing at the front. There is no drama; there is no shouting, no people falling or anything like that. The Apostle doesn’t even lay his hands on each of them: they are too many. What he does instead is that he stretches his and over them and says a general prayer.
“I want to pray for a second category of people,” he says after he is done with the first lot. “You are here, and you have not given your life to Jesus. You cannot be a good steward if you are not plugged in with the Master. And you cannot be plugged in with the Master unless you have surrendered your life to Him. So, if you are here, and you are saying Pastor, I want to give my life to Christ; please come to the front.”
Carol knows that this is her moment. From her research she knows that very few people respond to this part of the altar call. She will most likely be alone, or with one or two other people. Her heart starts beating faster as she quietly rises from a seat and slowly walks to the front. There is muted clapping as the congregation celebrates the new soul in the Kingdom. In another Pentecostal church there would have been loud cheering, but this is a congregation of sophisticated people.
Carol’s eyes are firmly fixed on the floor, but she knows the Apostle’s eyes are glued at her. That also includes many other men in the congregation. She has dressed for the occasion. She is wearing a red skirt suit, but the skirt is miles above the knee, feeding the male congregation with acres of her thigh flesh. She knows she has lovely legs, a fact that is even more pronounced because of the heels she is wearing. Inside the blazer she is wearing a white top that is leaving most of her cleavage exposed. This will particularly be for the benefit of the Apostle, who will be looking at her up close.
She walks slowly to the front and stands right in front of the Apostle.
“Do we have any anybody else who wants to give his or her life to Christ?” the Apostle asks.
Nobody responds. He doesn’t insist. It is not his style to cajole people into responding to an altar call. Besides, Carol knows that he is already pleased with what he is seeing, and he really doesn’t want anyone else to come forward.
“My sister, what is your name?”
“My name is Caroline Wambui.”
“Where do you come from? Is this your first time in this church?”
“I recently settled in Thika, having lived in Nairobi before. Ever since I moved here I have been attending this church. I have been coming for about three months now.”
That part is true. Carol bought a plot in Makongeni two years ago and she completed the construction of her house about four months ago. Before that she had been living in Kasarani. She has been attending the Apostle’s church since she settled in Makongeni, but not for the sermons or fellowships like everyone else. She has been coming to study his ways as she perfected her plan to bring him down.
Carol has done well for herself financially, but not through the path she would have wanted. Her plan when she was a child was to study Business Management at the University then join her father in business. But then he died, and this man stole his businesses. And then her mother died.
Carol and her brothers were orphaned when Carol, the first born, was in form one. Sean was in class six, while Cyrus was in class four. Carol knew that her father had created a fund for their education via a fixed deposit account. He used to tell her almost everything he did, even though she was just a child. He did not trust insurance companies with his long term investments and savings, so he had not taken out an education cover.
When her mother died, Carol took herself to the bank to inquire about the money. She was just fifteen years old, but she knew that her brothers were her responsibility now. The bank manager gave her audience. Carol introduced herself by showing the manager her birth certificate and the death certificates of both her parents. She had taken the documents from her mother’s bag before relatives started poking their noses in the family’s affairs. The relatives came after her mother’s death, pretending to be concerned, but when they realized that there was no money, and that the children were in fact facing eviction, they fled. After their mother’s burial, the boys went back to school but Carol remained behind to take care of their affairs, now that they were orphaned. She never returned to school.
When Carol went to the bank, the manager, a lady, sympathized with her especially when she heard that her mother had also died. But she could do little to help because, as she explained, Rachel had terminated the fixed account after the death of her husband, and deposited the money to her personal account. Then she sent the money, two million shillings, to one Dwayne Kinyanjui. The purpose of the transmission, as stated in the forms filled in the bank, was a donation for the purchase of land to construct a church.
The land on which this church stands, as well as the original stone structure that was later expanded, were acquired using the money that was supposed to educate her and her brothers. Her mother had also wiped out all the other accounts her father had with the bank, except the business accounts, which were now held by Dwayne. Rachel did not have any savings, but in fact had a seven hundred thousand loan at the bank. The manager has no idea what Rachael did with the money, because it was withdrawn over the counter and no explanation was given. She had taken the loan against her salary, and the bank was now laying claim on her death benefits.
Carol is bitter against her mother, but Rachael is dead. Her bitterness is directed solely at the man standing in front of her: Apostle Dwayne Kinyanjui.
“What do you do for a living Carol?”
“I am a business woman. I run a tours and travels company.”
That is also true. Carol runs a successful tours and travels company which she started five years ago.
When Carol realized that the education fund that her father had set up was gone, she knew she would have to do everything in her power to ensure that her brothers completed their studies. That is why she did not return to school, even though her school fees had been paid for the full year. Their mother had paid their fees for the whole year, continuing the tradition that their father had begun. Carol knew she had about seven months before school fees for the following year became due. But she needed to find somewhere they could call home by the time her brothers returned from boarding school, because all their relatives had turned their backs on them.
She found a job as a house help. She was earning three thousand shillings a month. But she had a plan. She gave her all to the job, and made herself indispensable to the woman of the house. But she also found a way to be indispensable to the man of the house. Whenever the lady of the house was away, and the man of the house happened to be home, she always wore tiny, revealing clothes. It wasn’t long before he started making moves on her, and she encouraged it. One day he grabbed her and took her to her room. He made love to her without asking for her permission, but she did not protest either.
It became a habit. Every time they found themselves alone in the house, he would make love to her. Then he started visiting her room every other night while his wife slept. One day, about two months later, she told him that she was pregnant. He told her to abort the baby, but she refused. She told him that she wanted to keep her baby. He told her that that would be impossible, because his wife would kill both of them. She knew she had him where she wanted him.
He tried to bully and intimidate her, thinking she would cave because all along she had played submissive, but this time she stood up to him. She reminded him that she was a minor and that sleeping with a minor is a crime, and that if she reported him, his wife would be the least of his worries. She told him to give her two hundred thousand shillings in cash and she would let the matter rest. Carol knew he could afford the money because he ran a couple of popular night clubs and had several matatus on the road. He brought the money to her the following night in a paper bag. She left the house without warning early the following morning and never returned. The man would never know that she had been on a contraceptive and therefore had never been pregnant.
*
Carol used part of the money to pay school fees for her brothers for another full year. Now she was sure that they would remain in school at least for one and a half a year. Then she found a cheap two-bedroom house in Kenol and paid rent for a year. It was an old apartment, badly needing repair, and was in a dirty neighborhood; but that is what she could afford. Then she bought cheap furniture and electronics. Her brothers now had a home to come to whenever they closed school. It was a far cry from the mansion they had lived before, but at least they had a roof over their heads.
She found a job as a shopkeeper, and although it wasn’t paying much, it exposed her to men. She perfected the art of seducing men, sleeping with them and then extracting money from them. She saved it all and learned to survive on her meager salary. The only thing she took from the money she got from her lovers was her rent and her brothers’ school fees. The rest she saved in a metallic box which she kept under her bed. She always kept her bedroom locked.
When she turned 18 and got an ID, she opened a bank account and stashed her loot there. She now could sleep better without worrying about someone breaking into the house and carting away her savings. Eight years ago, she found a job in a tours and travels company through one of her boyfriends. She had always wondered how she would invest her savings. She didn’t like the idea of starting an animal feeds store, which is where she had worked the longest. But a tours and travels company made perfect sense. She worked there for three years, learning all the ropes and then quit five years ago to start her own.
She started with one tour van. She bought the van second hand, and drove it herself, having gotten her driving license while in employment. She poached several clients from her employer to start with, but over the years she has built her own client portfolio. Now she has ten tour vans and twenty-five employees. She no longer drives the tour vans but does administrative work as the CEO of the company. She is her father’s daughter, with a Midas touch in business.
She no longer sleeps with men for money. But she knows she has the seductive ability, which she intends to use one last time. She knows that the fact that she is a young woman with money will make this man weak in the knees. His lust and greed are the reason he is smiling broadly when she tells him that she has her own company. He wants her body, and he wants her money.
And that will be his downfall.
(Continued Here.)
*
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