A/N
Here it is,Chapter one. I'm so happy that you're reading, thank you. Vote, comment. As usual criticism and compliments are welcome.
Xoxo,
Stacy.

Like clockwork as David stepped out of his two bedroom apartment in Pangani every morning at 7am, so did his neighbour Maureen. Today she was closing her door just as he was locking his.

The look on her face was one of total exasperation. She massaged her temples and drew several deep breathes. He cleared his throat, uncomfortable that he was intruding on a personal moment, but also not wanting to embarrass her by witnessing it. He startled her terribly.

"Davie," she exclaimed, "buchere." She rubbed her hands on her skirt nervously before extending it to him. David shook her hands. They seemed to be slightly trembling.

"Buchere, mkhana wefwe, nini mbaya, ulimulamu kweli?"
He rarely spoke to her in English. It was always a mixture of Kiswahili and Luhya, their shared native language. She was the only other Westerner he had met in this apartment complex. He was one of those people who could spot his own, and treat them with a sort of kinship induced compassion. Some people called him a tribalist, but if the descendants of Sela and Mwambu did not take care of each other who would?

Also his father, back in the village had been thoroughly promiscuous, any person he met from Western Region might be a brother or sister. He was the kind of man who avoided sleeping with Luhya women. Because if he did, he had to ask about their fathers first, see how this was uncomfortable.

"I'm fine, Davie. It's not sickness, it's anger. I am so vexed I can't stop trembling," she whispered, he figured she probably didn't want whoever was in the house to hear. She picked up her bag from the floor and begun walking as he followed her.

"What did the Kikuyu do?" He asked. David was not the kind of Kenyan who pretended that that Kikuyus were not to blame for all the country's problems. He did not hate them for it. He admired their ambition. The country they live in was based on natural selection.

It was not their fault that all other Kenyans were not willing to unite and elevate their people's status, they were too busy throwing around words like ethnicity, corruption and nepotism as they languished in poverty. The Kikuyus had woken up earlier, they understood hard work was only half of it, connections and getting your hands dirty was the rest. In fact, David thought himself to possess a Kikuyu's mind.

"Can you imagine, he is trying to pick a fight with me again. I don't know how much longer I can hold my tongue," she explained to him.

"At work, my father in law is my boss. You understand how hard that is. I don't want anyone to say I'm disrespecting my in laws, especially, God forbid, my kind father who has given me a job but the man is insufferable."

"This is why you should have waited just a few more years, "he joked. He had always told her that she had married too soon. The first few months after he had moved here, after making sure they were not related, he had asked her out for a drink. She turned him down saying she was married, her ring had fallen in the toilet and another one was taking a little longer than expected to be made. At first he had thought she was just politely rejecting him. True to her words, after almost four months, she had a band on her finger. It had taken all his will to relent on pursuing her. He had found the woman to take home to meet the parents but he was two minutes too late.

She laughed and said that even if she was unmarried, she would never date a Luhya man. They always brought home a second and third wife. He agreed, after all, he was his father's son.

"So you just walk around all day angry at the world?" He asked her. They were on the last flight of stairs to the basement, where their cars were parked.

"The other interns call me Lucy Kibaki behind my back," she mused, "I've worked there for a year and they still treat me like I'm given preferential treatment because of the father in law. Actually, I'm just really good at my job. Every bonus I get is legit. Most of them are rude and condensing. I have released my frustrations on Jeffrey and Agnes so many times. I once slapped Jeffrey right in the face for taking my stapler." It sounded so petty. David could not stop himself from laughing.

"I was angry my father in law had asked me to do a job I loathed and no amount of begging could change his mind. Then I walk to my desk and I can't seem to see the damn stapler. I ask around and no one is talking. I spot it on Jeffrey's desk and grab it alafu can you imagine he says that not everything in the company is mine because I'm sleeping with the owner's son. I snapped and slapped him. Even HR saw it. I told Jeffrey if he didn't clear the issue with HR himself, I would. "

Maureen did seem tough. It was the way she talked and her good manners that made you mistakenly assume she was subdued. Just a few minutes ago she had been trembling because of anger. David could only imagine what she was like when she completely lost it.

"Now I see where your problem is. You're misplacing your passions. Joseph and Agatha... "

" Jeffrey and Agnes "
"Oh, yes Jeffrey and Ag... Forget it, they have a very insignificant part in your problems. Spare them. In fact if you ignore them or be nice to them, you will no longer get a problem from them. They will leave you alone. But your father in law is bullying you and taking advantage of the fact that you are morally and culturally obligated to obey him. Just don't mix work and family, stand up against that man. Keep it professional and avoid anything that will get you before some elders, slaughtering goats and appeasing Kikuyu ancestors.

As for your husband, I am a man, trust me. If he married a woman who was not afraid to speak her mind or to slap a coworker in the presence of Human Resource, that is the woman he is trying to get back. He wants a blood bath, just to see his Mekatilili or his Lucy Kibaki. Give the man what he wants."

*********************

It was all over the news. The foster father who had beaten his son to death. Maureen walked into the firm to find at her desk the very man on the front page of the news paper. Why wasn't she surprised. Time to grow a pair, she thought. She walked right past him,guns blazing,straight to the office of her managing partner also her father in law.

He was looking out through the glass window at the city below. His office overlooked KICC ,the great big magnificent tower of Nairobi. Although she could tell he heard her come in, nothing in his gait gave him away. He stood in silence, scotch in hand, meditating or simply staring at KICC .

"Sir, what is that man doing here again?" She had come here for war, she had to make that clear. Etiquette would give her time to change her mind. She saw his stance stiffen. He clenched his glass a little tighter and straightened his back, raising his nose further into the air. Was he surprised, irritated or both, she wondered.

"He needs a lawyer, we are a law firm..." said the father in law.

"Sir, with all due respect, the man is an animal," she was disappointed at how strained her words came out. She had come in here for a fight and now, staring at his aristocratic back, she was cowering in her knickers. The confidence was vanishing and she didn't have enough abra cadabra to reverse it.

"Even animals have rights daughter in law." The amount of emphasis on the daughter in law was so apparent. It was like a text in bold italics, underlined, throw in capslock, red colour, futura font in size 48 in a standard times new roman, 11 font document.

That was it. She snapped. She kept quiet for a moment, composing herself before she could continue. Stand up to that man... Keep it professional.

"Sir, I understand that he is your friend, but a child is dead. Can't you see the blood staining our hands?
Six months ago I did not want a part in getting the man off the hook after he beat up those kids so brutally. You promised that you would personally ensure that the children are taken care of and that Samuel will never so much as come near any children again. I did not realise how long term your plan was. Because now the closest he can get the boy is six feet huh.

I was going to ask my friend from Hamilton to handle the children's case pro bono without getting that animal in prison because he was our client but you refused, said it was an in house matter we could handle... You'd make sure they got a better home. Well done Sir, well done, what better place that heaven right? "

Maureen was trembling, she could never understand how this callous man had sired her sweet, compassionate Philip. It was beyond her how he could separate business from humanity. He was the kind of lawyers equally hated and admired. The kind that could bend the law as far as it could possibly go without breaking or break it without appearing to have done so. He represented the scum of the elite. Maureen had wanted to leave the first week she was here. Two things had kept her here, loyalty to family and an air tight contract made to secure the aforementioned.

It aggravated her that he did not bother to turn away from the window. Surely, he was also obligated to treat her with love. Wasn't he her father now? She remembered how he had been the only one not bothered that his son had married outside their culture. He had stood by her when Phillip's aunts had decided the wedding would not go on. That was before she insisted on having a career and refused to get pregnant. Before she encouraged his son to follow his dreams by trading his best court suit for an apron and a chef's hat.

"Please just get to work, before I forget that you're my daughter." It sounds like a plea from a tired old man and at the same time like a threat that was far from empty.

"He touches them, those little boys, they told me how he gets in their beds at night and... and he... he... You made me promise those children that we would take care of them if they did not testify... That is called witness tampering and to what end. I won't do it again... Murder... of a little fatherless child."

Maureen was only now beginning to register the graveness of the situation. She had set a man free to kill a little boy. She did not know at what point she had sat down and begun to cry. She hadn't even realised that Nyanga Senior had walked to her until he handed her a handkerchief he pulled from his pockets old fashioned gentleman style.

"I gave them a lot of money,how was I to know they would squander it all away. I'll put somebody else on this case, you can handle the Omondi merger for now, "he said finally. She registered that it was not because he understood.

Rather because he was acutely uncomfortable with her in this state. She could hardly believe it. This hardened ex military man could not stand a woman crying. He was terribly put out of countenance and his face showed it all. At a complete loss on what to do, he picked up a random file and existed leaving her in his office.

She was still not satisfied. But she knew no amount of tears would get her anything better. He would probably just bolt again. Mr Nyagah Snr had made up his mind. He wouldn't let his former army buddy rot away in jail no matter how many children he molested or killed, it was neither good for friendship nor for business.

The client, Samuel, was a former military priest that had served with Mr Nyagah in the Kenya Deffence Forces. He had retired in 95' and had shortly afterwards been expelled from duty as priest due to complaints about brutally beating and sometimes sexually assaulting the boys at the various stations he had been posted over the years.

His military pension had been enough for him to live by but he won the lottery when he inherited quite some money and real estate from a mzungu friend who it was rumored was the cause of Samuel's odd sexual proclivities. The mzungu had lived with Samuel at the coast for almost ten years. He had picked him up from the streets when he was just ten, taken him to school, clothed him, fed him, the works.

Samuel had gone to live a quiet life at the coast and took four of the numerous desperate impoverished beach boys whom he promised to educate and take care of. He became to them what the mzungu had been to him.

A few years later, he rushed one of the boys to hospital with severe head injuries and a series of other wounds. When asked what happenned ,Samuel told the doctors that the boy had fallen down the stairs. This obvious lie alarmed the doctor... She reported the matter to the police.
Samuel rushed to his old military buddy who was a partner at a successful law firm in town. His only problem was that the children was willing to testify for the prosecution. His enemies had gotten to the children first. Through thick and thin, a lot of money exchanging hands, a lot of threats flying around, Samuel spent less than a day behind bars. Maureen had convinced the children not to testify and had emerged a heroine. The bonus after the victory she had spent on her first car.

The system however had overlooked the welfare of the boys. They had gone back to the beach or the streets. Now Maureen knew Nyagah Snr had given them a lot of money. That was his understanding of taking care of twelve or there about year olds. Only God knows what the little boys did with that kind money without adult guidance. For all she knew, maybe they lost it or were swindled out of it.

When he got out, Samuel sought his "sons" who having been accustomed to the life he had given them,could hardly survive in the streets as they once had. At his mercy once more, he continued to abuse them.

One day, he showed up at a different hospital with the same boy who had "fallen down the stairs." It seemed now he had fallen from a longer flight of stairs. He stayed in the ICU for a few days before succumbing to his injuries. Here was Samuel again, with a legal problem,murder, bigger this time,and a boat load of cash,double this time.

**********

Maureen walked to her little corner cubicle just as a paralegal ushered Samuel to another interns desk. She sat down and decided to make lunch arrangements with her friend and recently her unpaid marriage counselor Diana.

Jeffrey, initially on the Omondi merger walked to her desk and threw the file on it. He walked towards Mr Nyagah's office. Maureen could see the steam coming out of his ears. Diana could not make it to lunch so instead she called Laura, her friend from Harold and Associates.

The Omondi merger was supposed to be smooth. They were two auditing firms owned by two brothers one Omondi Auditors Co Ltd ,the other Omondi Co Ltd. The two brothers had taken the matter of the confusion that came with the name to court but eventually a family intervention had come through and the brothers had decided to merge the firms into a family business. Since the modus operandi of both firms was significantly similar, the merger was expected to go by swiftly.

What Maureen had not expected going in was the endless bickering and arguing the brothers did on every little point. The other partner, Nyaribarichache was trying in vain to take the reigns on the discussions. Each firm wanted to maintain their name,logo ,constitution and CEO. Negotiations were at a stalemate as years of sibling rivalry unfolded. Maureen could tell it was not about business anymore,it was that the younger brother wanted to be recognized as an adult and was simply not prepared to abandon the mind of a spoiled child when his brother walked into the room. The other Omondi was to Maureen the most imposing, arrogant and patronising man she had ever met. Her boss was a saint in comparison.

When Nyaribarichache thought he had billed enough hours of meaningless chatter, he finally gave a solution. " listen, this is not a family reunion, we want business... I will ask that both sides draw up a list of demands and an equally long list of concessions you are willing to make. Each demand be supported by reason. Send me your respective lists by close of business exactly a fortnight from today. A copy will also be sent to the other party. We will reconvene as agreed earlier on November 6th. I will expect each party to have a final list of demands and concessions which will be negotiated then. If that does not work, we'll go straight to the next step or we could go back to court and forget about the merger gentlemen. "

Nyaribarichache was known for being authoritative but Maureen had never seen him in action. He ordered clients like he was the caring but stern father. His big belly ,grey hair and folded brows went a long way to ensure you were reminded of your high school deputy principal, the one with a cupboard dedicated to canes ,switches and whips. His eyes conveyed the ,this is for your own good, it hurts me more than it hurts you jibby jabber of a mother. He did not guide them or put suggestions to the table, he told them what to do and warned them of the consequences or disobeying him. When he was done speaking each Omondi and their little infantry of auditors were nodding. Hands were shaken, suits were buttoned again and the room deserted.