Prodigal…

AARON ANSAH-AGYEMAN

PRODIGAL

A ChrisEffe Bliss

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The Author

“Chris…” Stanley Adu began.

His voice trailed off because Chris drew a huge Luger from his waistband and a bullet clip from his pocket. Casually, he pushed the bullet clip into the gun and fed the first bullet into the chamber. He raised the gun and put it near the steering wheel.

His cold eyes then bored into Stanley Adu, who looked at the gun and licked his lips rapidly with fear.

“Prodigal, don’t be stupid!” he said in a voice that he hoped was firm and authoritative. “I’m the Director of Field Operations of the Special Palace Forces! Kill me, and the whole Kingdom of Eden security force will come for your neck. Murder has never solved anything, and will solve nothing now. We can talk as two professionals, as I said earlier. No need to threaten me.”

“Don’t worry about that,” Chris Bawa said coldly as he leaned back in the seat. “You lied about me in court. Tell me why.”

Stanley licked his dry lips, and he looked at Chris with fear, and as sweat suddenly formed on his face, he wondered where the rescue forces were. His Body Tracker had been activated for enough time now, and he expected them to have gotten a lock on his position and be circling them now with planes and boats to neutralize Prodigal’s threat.

“Look, kiddo, that thing went far over me!” he cried earnestly. “You should understand, Chris, fuck it! The king and queen also stated categorically that you tried to assassinate the king. So, may I ask why your sole interest is in my testimony?”

Chris Bawa leaned forward slightly and grabbed the Luger. Without a word, he leaned back, angled the gun, and shot Stanley in the right foot.

The loud report of the gun startled Stanley for a moment before he looked at his foot with horror as the blood began to fill his shoe. He screamed and hobbled out of his seat, floundered on the deck for a while, and then grabbed his foot as his frenzied eyes rested on Chris’ cold face.

“Prodigal!” he screamed. “You bastard! You fucking bastard!”

“Next bullet goes to your brain,” Chris said calmly. “You lied that you caught me with a gun in my hand pointed at the head of the king. Why?”

“Fuck you, I was made to say it!” Stanley screamed. “I’m bleeding to death, man, fuck it! Get the First Aid box, man, and stop the bloody blood before I bleed to death.”

Chris raised the gun.

“You have approximately five minutes to bleed out,” he said coldly. “I don’t give a fuck whether you live or die, Stan. Choice is yours. Why did you lie about me?”

“They told me they had intel about you!” Stanley screamed as blood covered his hands. “Said it was irrefutable, that you were working with the damn imperialists to assassinate the king! I wasn’t given any leeway, damn you! They wanted you out of the way, and I was just a small fish in the pond whose testimony added to that of the royal family!”

“Who’s ‘they’ Chris asked softly.

“C’mon, Prodigal, damn it!” Stanley screamed.

Chris shot him in the left shoulder.

The bullet pile-drove the man backwards and slammed him on his back. He screamed and clutched his bleeding shoulder as pain lacerated through his body. He watched with horror as Chris stood over him with the gun levelled at his head.

Stanley Adu held out a blood-covered hand with horror on his face as he shook his head violently. 

“They told me to lie about you!” Stanley screamed. “The damn army Commander, the damn Air Marshall, the Navy General! They were all there! Said it was imperative I said exactly what they asked me to!”

“Sir Lance was a part of them?”

“No, no, he wasn’t part of it, damn it!” Stanley screamed as he looked desperately into the sky, wondering why the place was not swarming with helicopters, speedboats and the coast guards! Surely, his signal might have gone all over by now. “Sir Lance always believed in you; thought you were innocent even when he was presented with irrefutable evidence!”

“Then why is he hunting me down? Why did he agree to send an assassin to kill me in prison? Why? What convinced him that what you idiots said was true?”

“The testimony of your sister!” Stanley shouted desperately. “Your sister Dinah spoke to us, Sir Lance, me, a few guys, including the judge, the jury! Fuck, she was weeping and all, but she said she heard you speaking to white men, having conferences with them! She showed us communication evidence, emails you exchanged with them, accounts numbers of monies sent to you, secret codes of contracts between you and some shady men in the USA. Yes, Prodigal, your own sister gave the dose on you that convinced Sir Lance!”

And Chris Bawa’s face was filled with indescribable pain as he took a step back, his expression dazed even though he fought to steady himself against the shock.

“No!” Chris whispered hoarsely; his eyes were filled with disbelief as he pointed the gun at Stanley’s head. “You lie! Dinah wouldn’t lie about me, not in a million years! Now you’re making me angry, Stan, and believe me you don’t want to do that!”

“She fucking did!” Stanley screamed. “That’s what convinced me and Sir Lance, you asshole! That was what went down, and if you’re telling me she lied then this thing is deeper than you think, and you’ll be better off out of KOE! A week ago, Sir Lance had intel that you were still dealing with the imperialists, using your connections to organize another assassination attempt, and again it was irrefutable, the said correspondence was intercepted by the Ministry of Power! Chris, if you stay here in the kingdom, they’ll eventually find you and kill you!”

Chris dropped to one knee beside the man, and his face was so mean that Stanley began to weep pathetically.

“Don’t kill me, Chris, please!” he groaned as tears fell down his face. “I don’t wanna die, no, no, Prodigal. They showed me evidence of why they wanted me to lie! I could not say no! That’s the whole truth, man, that’s the fucking bloody truth! Now help me, man, please! Get the first aid box. I’m bleeding to death here!”

“What do you know about the three Ts?” Chris asked softly.

“What? Three what?”

“The Taipan Trajectory!” Chris said grimly. “Are you part of that?”

“What the fuck is that?” Stanley wailed in agony. “I don’t know what the fuck that is!”

Chris raised the gun and pointed it at the man’s forehead.

“What do you know about Taipan?”

“I don’t know shit!” he screamed. “You’ll kill me for nothing, Prodigal. I don’t know anything of that crap, I know nothing!”

Chris held his stare for a moment, and then he lowered the gun.

“Who ordered the hit on my brother?” Chris asked softly.

“Chris, Chris, what the fuck are you….”

Chris pressed the gun against Stanley’s forehead.

“Five,” he said.

“Chris, don’t be an idiot!” Stanley screamed. “Your brother died in a bank robbery!”

“Four,” Chris said.

“Chris, fuck it!” the man screamed in anguish as his tears fell. “Your brother was an accident! Accident! Robbers broke into the bank and shot him!”

“Three.”

“Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!” Stanley screamed.

Two.”

“Chris, hold on, hold on, you don’t…”

“One.”

“Okay, okay, okay, okay!” Stanley said and held up his hands. “Roland was asking questions, man! He wanted your case made public; your trial made public! He was getting stronger, more vocal, making people uncomfortable! He spoke to journalists, to international pressmen about his junior brother who had been accused wrongly, jailed for life wrongly, and no one knew what was happening to you. He just wouldn’t quit, Chris, and we had intel that he had started petitioning the African Union and the United Nations. I tried to warn him, man! I tried, as a friend and as a rep of the SPF. But he would not listen! Kept making too much noise about your fucking case!”

“I’ll ask only once,” Chris said coldly, his voice shaking. “Who put the contract on him? And what team carried out the hit on him?”

“Carl Acquah put the contract on him!” Stanley screamed. “And the team was external! Four-man mercenary gang from the Zero District. I don’t know their protocols, man, only heard the name Zinga, or something like that… yeah, the Zinga Gang!”

Chris’ face was screwed up with passion as he put a hand across his mouth and pressed the gun harder against Stanley’s forehead.

“You bastards!” he said with feeling. “You murdered my brother! Damn buzzards! Carl has no bloody authority to order a hit of that level! You bloody knew about it! You and Sir Lance!”

“Not Sir Lance, Chris, not Sir Lance!” Stanley screamed as tears mingled with phlegm and blood fell on his face. “Yes, Carl ran it through my desk, and I okayed it! There was no other way around it, Chris. You know how these things work! Kingdom security first! I didn’t want the death of your brother on Sir Lance’s conscience, so I didn’t inform him. Secondly, I didn’t want to be a part of it, so told them to keep it away from me. I informed the Council of Elders, and they agreed that Roland should be shut down. When their permission was given, I gave Carl Acquah the go-ahead, but told him they should not use SPF squad, to make it look like an accident. Just saw the brief in a flash! Please, I beg of you! Don’t kill me, I had no other alternative!”

Chris’ face was blasted with pain and grief as he sat down on the deck and dropped the gun. Tears blinded him for a moment as he moved back until his back hit the port side of the powerboat.

He put his head back as pain washed through him with the image of his elder brother’s kind face etched in his memory!

Rollie! Oh, Rollie! I told you to lie low, my brother! Rollieeee!

Brother, friend, mentor… life!

How could they do this?

How could they kill an innocent man? Why the hell had they touched Roland?

Dear Lord, why?

Lying on the deck, Stanley looked at the gun Chris had dropped with incredulous eyes. His gaze shifted to Chris and he saw that the young man was so suffused with the grief of his brother’s death that he was lost for the moment, barely aware of what was going on around him.

Stanley Adu licked his lips with his cruel eyes narrowed.

This was his chance!

He swivelled once in a ninety degrees spin and picked up the gun with his uninjured right hand.

He pointed the gun at Chris’ head.

“Prodigal!” Stanley screamed with great hatred. “You asshole! You’ll go to hell before I do!”

He struggled to a sitting position with the gun still pointed.

“You’re going to die, motherfucker!” Stanley screamed. “You fucked up! In this business, we always separate passion from stone-cold reality! You slipped up! And you don’t get no second chances from me! Who’s the pussy now, huh, Chris? Who the fuck is the pussy now? You are the fucking, stinking, bloody pussy, Chris!”

 Then he fired at Chris rapidly, pulling the trigger eight times!

Premium Story: A ChrisEffe Bliss :: PRODIGAL :: EPISODE 18 & 19

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