Steve looked on with shock and mounting unease as Chris mutilated the arms of the metal chair. Ivy watched Chris with an expression of dismay at first that changed rapidly to horror as the huge man furiously tried to get free.

“Put the damn gun away, Steve!” she said sharply, and Steve quickly holstered his gun as he watched the hatred on Chris’ face.

“Sisi is safe, Chris,” Effe said calmly as she drew one of the chairs and sat down. “We’re not butchers.”

They all looked relieved when Chris stopped pushing the arms of the chair and fixed Ivy with the eyes of death.

“Mr Bawa, your daughter is safe and happy with children her age around her. We told her that those men trying to kidnap her are still at large, so she would spend a bit of time with us, and that you’re helping the police to capture the bad people and you would b with her soon. Now, what happens to her next depends on you.”

They all stared at Chris, still shaken by his obvious physical strength, but he kept his eyes on Ivy.

“You damn devil, Ivy Kokou! You kidnapped my daughter because I refused to go to the Kingdom of Eden to handle your husband’s appeal case in court.”

“Yes, Mr Bawa, that about sums it up,” Ivy said with a sudden burst of anger and hatred as she sat down and glared at him. “Chris Bawa, I came to you, and I begged you to handle my husband’s case! He has been sentenced to death! In a month he is going to die! Damn you! What did you expect me to do? I came to you, I begged you, and you still refused to take up his case! I told you I’ll pay ten times your usual rate! And you still bloody refused me!”

“Your husband has been sentenced to death in the Kingdom of Eden for the rape and murder of a princess and her two children! He appealed, and was represented by the best brains your money could buy! And he still lost, and was still sentenced to death! What else do you want with a second appeal? He is a bloody murderer!”

“My father is not a rapist, and neither is he a murderer!” Effe shouted, her bitterness spilling into her voice as she leaned across the metal table.

Chris finally turned his head and looked at her.

“It all makes sense now,” he said softly. “The name fooled me. Effe Kedem. I wouldn’t have put you in the bracket of the Kokous.”

“She prefers her grandfather’s name,” Ivy said softly.

“Yeah,” Chris said softly. “She’s your daughter all right, Ivy Kokou. Why am I not surprised? Ivy Kokou, a bloody devil with a devil of a husband. Of course, they will definitely give birth to a bloody witch as a daughter, and that is all that you are, Effe bloody Kedem, a turd and a skunk! I curse the day I ever set eyes on you.”

His words were uttered with such disgust and fury that it got to them again, and it made Effe gasp as if he had physically hit her. Ivy looked at him with a perplexed expression on her face.

“Such hatred!” she said softly. “It baffles me, Mr Chris Bawa! But that’s your prerogative. I’ll lay my cards on the table, Chris. I’m the Director of MOP, Steve is my assistant, and my daughter here runs her father’s engineering company as the Managing Director. As you’re well aware, my husband won a contract in the Kingdom of Eden to design another wing of the palace of the King of Eden. He was there for three months, and suddenly he was arrested, tried and sentenced to death for the death of the eldest princess and her two children. The case went to appeal, he lost again. But, the Government of Ghana stepped in for a second appeal, and the king granted it because he wanted all avenues exhausted. We believe you can help clear my husband’s name and bring him back safely to us.”

“Fuck you!” Chris said with rage. “You approached me, and I told you I wasn’t interested. Your husband was found guilty two times, with different juries!”

“He’s innocent!” Ivy shouted.

“I don’t give a fuck!” Chris said savagely.

“Then you won’t see your daughter again!” Effe cried bitterly. “What’s wrong with you, Chris Bawa? I thought you were a defender of right, a principled lawyer who hated injustice! So, why have you crucified my father without even pausing to consider the fact that he might be innocent? Why, Chris, why?”

“Look, Chris,” Steve chipped in coldly. “Ivy approached you, but you refused. But we believe you are the only one that can help Mr Ken Kokou, a man who’s going to be my future father-in-law.”

And that was when Chris turned his head and fixed his cold eyes on Effe again.

“You’re his girlfriend? And you set this whole thing up to kidnap my daughter, and make a fool out of me?”

Effe’s lips compressed, and even though she wanted to hold his gaze, she found the revulsion in his eyes unnerving, and she sighed and looked down at her linked hands.

“When you turned me down, we became desperate, Chris,” Ivy said quickly. “We investigated you, and found out your fiancée was a porn star, that he owed Mr Samuel MacBaiden – known as Big Mac – some big money. We brought him here, raised a few public hell using some of our agents as kidnappers, then took your daughter. Here’s the situation, Chris Bawa. Big Mac will be blamed for kidnapping your daughter. All the kidnapping attempts have witnesses carefully-placed. We’ve covered our tracks with concrete evidence and footages from street cameras. Cutting to the chase, you can’t pin anything on us. The story will be simple: your porn star fiancée crossed a porn star producer who came down to Ghana and adducted your kid. As we speak now, Big Mac has been picked up by MOP agents. We have the beating you dished to him and his crew on tape, showing clearly you went there for your daughter. You can raise all the hell you want, but you can’t pin anything on us. You will never see your daughter again. And I mean it, Chris.”

“But, if you agree and go to the KOE and represent my father in his second appeal, we will release Sisi to you, and pay any fee you want,” Effe said calmly. “That’s all we’re asking for. That’s what my mother offered to you!”

Chris knew they had him by the balls, and it tore his intestines and made his heart boil with rage. He could not pin kidnapping charges on them, because they had worked out all the angles, and gotten Big Mac in the fray. Chris felt deep pain. The turn of events with Elaine, Effe’s betrayal, losing Sisi, and now being tied helplessly made the emotions roil in him. He grabbed the arms of the chair and ripped them downwards again, the effort causing veins and tendons to stand out angrily on his arms and neck, the growl of rage in his voice a terrible cadence that made the people watching him glance at each other with impending fear.

“Jesus, would you stop that, Chris?” Effe cried with alarm. “You’re a lawyer, you charge for your services, the higher the better! My mother offered to pay you ten times your normal charges, but for some strange reason, you refused! We didn’t have to do this to you and your daughter!”

“You did it because you’re devils!” Chris hissed and lunged in the chair, almost crashing into the table, and involuntarily, all four of them moved backwards in reaction.

Effe, stung by his words, pointed a finger at him.

“You forced us to do this, Chris!” she said tightly. “I’m sorry I hurt you in the process. I’m sorry Elaine Boateng had to be exposed like that. Above all, I’m sorry we had to lie to Sisi and take her from you because she loves you so much, and seeing her traumatized broke my heart! But you forced us to do this! He’s my father, and I’ll do anything to save him!”

“Sorry?” Chris asked as he glared at her. “You don’t even know the meaning of the word, girl! You have no soul, no bloody soul, just like your fucking parents!”

And, for a full minute, his passion, hatred, and revulsion hung in the air, shocking all of them so that they were robbed of speech for a moment.

“My God!” Ivy whispered with dismay as she looked at Chris with sudden horror. “It wasn’t about the money, was it?”

Chris, head bent, looked up slowly and fixed her with a beastly stare.

“I would have done it for free for anyone but you, Ivy Kokou!” he hissed with great hatred. “I would have paid my airfare, gone to the Kingdom of Eden, and fought for your husband if he had been anybody else but your husband… you damn evil!”

Ivy stared at him and shook her head numbly.

“What did I ever do to you, Mr Bawa?” she asked numbly. “To the best of my knowledge, the only time I knew you personally was when I came to your office to beg you to represent my husband, and you turned me down!”

Still looking at her with that glowering fury, Chris spoke in short furious and bitter bursts.

“You don’t remember Brand Bawa, do you?” he asked softly.

Ivy gasped suddenly and jumped to her feet with a muted cry of horror.

“Brand Bawa?” she whispered.

Chris smiled.

Effe, watching him, was appalled by that smile.

It was a bad smile, and it showed all fangs of deadly hatred, showing her how much Chris really hated her mother.

“Yeah, Brand Bawa! He was my father, Ivy Kokou, you devil!” Chris whispered tightly. “He was an accountant in your husband’s company, Kokou Engineering Masterpieces! I was ten years old when my mother fell ill. She needed brain surgery, Ivy! My father wanted a loan for her surgery! Your husband approved the loan, but you – Ivy Kokou – felt that it was a bad capital flight at that particular point in time! So, you fucking cancelled the damn cheque! Do you remember Brand Bawa? Do you know what happened afterwards?”

Effe’s horrified eyes moved from the twisted face of the young man tied to the chair, to her mother’s stunned face. Ivy’s hands were trembling, and she put them to her lips as she shook her head numbly.

“Goodness!” she whispered lamely as she drew the chair and sat down again, her legs unable to hold her any longer.

Chris turned his head and glared darkly at Effe.

“You said a moment ago that you would do anything for your father, and that’s a great thing! My father also did everything he could for his wife, my mother! When your wicked mother cancelled the loan cheque, my father had no options, so he took money meant for the purchase of a new truck from the safe of your father’s company, went to the hospital, and deposited it for my mother’s surgery! But do you know what the fuck happened afterwards? Your mother, this fucking devil, heard about it and came to the hospital with the police! My father was arrested and taken to a police cell, and the hospital was forced to refund the money to your mother again. And a day later, my mother died when the tumour in her brain ruptured because the fucking surgery was delayed! My mother died because your mother, this devil Ivy Kokou, felt a new truck was more important than her life!”

Effe’s mouth was gaping as she looked at Chris.

The pain was raw in his voice, his passion bare, his control gone, only the savagery of his recollections rendering itself in the beast mode he had descended into.

“Chris…” Effe began, her lips trembling.

“You shut the fuck up and listen to me, you bloody liar!” Chris Bawa hissed. “That’s not the end of the story! They released my father from cells after they told him his wife died! He was hurting so much that he did not look when he was crossing the street, and he got knocked down by a truck! He died instantly!”

“No!” Effe whispered, shaking her head with horror. “Mama, is that true?”

And Ivy Kokou bowed her head with a pang of guilt she had not experienced in a long time.

“I grew up in an orphanage then,” Chris said softly. “I had seen the devil, and it was Ivy Kokou! Oh, yes, I planned my revenge! There was no way I was going to leave you alive, Ivy! Because of you, I grew up an orphan, but I went to school, became a lawyer, and decided I should not waste my life hating you! Then, one day, you walked into my bloody office asking me to represent your husband! You damn, evil devil! Me, whose parents you helped kill, should now defend your husband? You have no bloody shame! That was why I refused you, but you went ahead with your plans, put your evil daughter on me to confuse me, and kidnapped my daughter! That is two times you have fucked up my life!”

Chris surged in the chair again, savagely wrenching his arms so that the cords bit deeply and cruelly into his arms.

“Please!” Effe said suddenly with tears glittering in her eyes. “Please, Chris, stop! You’ll hurt yourself!”

“What do you care, you evil little bitch?” Chris screamed and looked at her with tears in his eyes. “You remember this, Effe Kedem, or whoever the fuck you are! I’ll go to the Kingdom of Eden, I’ll represent your father to the best of my abilities. But when I come back to Ghana, you people must know this is war! I decided to forgive and forget, but not anymore! You just ripped the scars off my pains and exposed the cancerous festering decay beneath! You want a fight? I’m going to give you the bloodiest war you’ve ever known!”

Ivy Kokou stood up again with a frantic expression and quickly moved towards the door. Steve stood up, alarmed by the woman’s frantic haste, and went after her.

Effe, stunned and shaken, gripped her hands and looked at this huge, gentle man who had been so full of life, so full of the zest of living, who had opened his heart to her and held nothing back. But now, looking at him, she felt the hatred washing off him in droves, pining her, giving her a blast of his agony as he had lived it.

But she had hated him!

She had been stung when her mother told her Chris had refused to help her father, and she had readily agreed to the plan her mother outlined.

And here she was, realizing too late that this man who had fallen so much in love with her, had once been so severely hurt by her own mother.

“Chris…” she began in an unsteady voice.

“I don’t want to hear your voice, or see your face, or speak to you ever again, Effe Kedem, or whoever the fuck you are. Go, just go!”

“Chris, please –”

“Get the fuck away from me!” he screamed and lunged out of the chair!

The cords tightened on his wrists, and the one on his left arm chafed his skin and split it, and she watched with horror as red blood suddenly drenched the cords binding him.

Effe stood up quickly and walked to the door.

She paused briefly and looked back.

He was looking at her, and there was nothing but pure, unadulterated hatred in the depths of his beautiful eyes.

And, at that particular moment in time, Effe felt a twist of guilt and searing pain within her that took her breath away by its unexpectedness.

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