Dayo read Kunle’s message in a quiet, anonymous café, the glow of his laptop casting a pale light on his face. He read it once, twice, a third time, the words a hammer blow to his soul. He had understood his father’s death as a tragedy, a failure of a weak man in the face of ruthless power. He had pitied his father. But Kunle’s words painted a different picture: not of a coward, but of a man who, at the last possible moment, chose a more horrifying path of self-sacrifice. He hadn't failed; he had succumbed, not to Thompson, but to the ancestors themselves. He had chosen the poison over public humiliation.
Dayo reached into his pocket and pulled out the wooden bird, the one he had taken from his father's hand. He ran his thumb over the intricate carvings, feeling the weight of it, the coldness of it. He had always seen it as a quaint anachronism, a relic of a past he had left behind. Now, he saw it for what it was: a burden. The bird, the legacy of Oba and Femi, was now in his hands.
Later that evening, Dayo met Tola, Femi’s would-be successor, at a rooftop bar overlooking the city. Tola was sharp, ambitious, and utterly heartbroken by the corporate machinations that had derailed her career. She nursed a glass of wine, her eyes distant.
"They've moved me to a side project," she said, her voice laced with bitterness. "A task force to 'modernize internal communications.' It's a gilded cage."
"That's what they do," Dayo said, looking out at the city lights. "They absorb the threat. They co-opt it."
"He said I was the future," Tola murmured. "He said he was passing the torch."
"He lied," Dayo said, his voice hard. "He was never going to pass it. Not to you. Not to anyone. He was clinging to it until the very end."
Dayo told her everything, showing her Kunle’s message, explaining the ritual, the promise to Oba, the spiritual weight of it all. He spoke of his father not as a martyr, but as a man who had chosen a terrible end over a humiliating one. Tola listened, her eyes widening, her grief transforming into a cold, hard anger.
"They just see numbers," she said, her voice trembling. "They think they can just put a price on everything."
Dayo shook his head. "They're wrong. Some things are priceless. Some debts are unpayable."
He gave her the wooden bird. "This is not for me," he said. "This is a debt owed by Oba Holdings. And it's a debt that you, as his chosen successor, have to settle. But you have to do it on your own terms. You have to write your own script."
Tola held the bird, her fingers tracing the contours of the carved wood. A spark, a flash of determination, lit up in her eyes. It was no longer a symbol of Femi's failure, but a weapon forged in the fires of betrayal. She and Dayo had different battles to fight, but they were both fighting against the same erasure, the same lie. The old traditions might have been pushed into the shadows, but in the heart of the corporate behemoth, a new kind of defiance was being born. A defiance not of tradition, but of a hollow, heartless modernity
Chapter 9: The Ghost in the Machine
The takeover of Oba Holdings was a textbook lesson in corporate ruthlessness. Thompson, now the de facto head of the company, systematically purged the old guard. He brought in his own people, replaced Oba’s original motto with a generic mission statement, and began a rapid campaign to "synergize" and "globalize" the company’s assets. The legacy that Femi had sacrificed himself for was being dismantled with a cold, financial efficiency that made his death seem all the more pointless.
But as Thompson's new machine whirred into motion, a ghost lingered in the algorithms and server rooms of Oba Holdings. Tola, relegated to her gilded cage of "internal communications," began to use her new position to dig. She had the not-I bird, a tangible reminder of the spiritual debt that had been called in. And she had Dayo, with his unparalleled tech skills and his deep-seated knowledge of his father's—and Oba's—business practices.
Dayo, in the meantime, had gone to ground, burying himself in the startup scene. But he wasn't building a new company; he was building a back channel. He used his coding prowess to create a secure, encrypted link between himself and Tola, hidden within the company’s own network. They communicated in a digital language only they could understand, using code phrases and oblique references to Oba and Femi.
"The horseman faltered, but his spirit still rides," Dayo typed, the words a nod to the original legend.
They began to reconstruct the narrative, not as a tragedy, but as a conspiracy. They found the files, buried deep in the servers, that showed Oba’s original plans for the succession. The plan was not for Femi to just step down, but for him to become an advisor, a bridge between the old and the new. Femi's fear and vanity had made him misinterpret Oba's intent. He had seen the request for his "succession" as a command to die, a final, public spectacle to solidify his own ego. It was not Oba's wish, but Femi's own tragic hubris, that had set his fate in motion.
Chapter 10: A Different Kind of Ritual
Tola and Dayo's investigation uncovered a darker truth. Thompson’s firm had been waiting for Oba’s death, aware of the traditional succession plan. They had deliberately manipulated the situation, feeding Femi's paranoia and isolating him from those who could have advised him, including Oba's original counsel. They had weaponized tradition to achieve a hostile corporate takeover. Femi’s death was not a cultural tragedy; it was a calculated corporate murder, masked in ritual.
They decided to stage their own ceremony, not in a boardroom, but on the world stage of social media. Using their back channel, they timed their strike perfectly. On the one-year anniversary of Femi’s death, as Thompson was giving a live, televised interview to an international business news channel, Dayo and Tola made their move.
Dayo launched a distributed denial of service attack on Thompson's personal website, causing it to display a single, damning image: a photo of Femi's crumpled body on the conference room floor, followed by Oba’s last, handwritten will, which had clearly outlined a different path.
Simultaneously, Tola, using her access to the internal communications system, sent a message to every employee, shareholder, and board member of Oba Holdings. The message was simple and direct, but devastating: "The horseman did not have to fall. The new king's crown is forged in blood." She attached Kunle's confession, a detailed account of the events leading up to and including Femi's suicide, proving Thompson's deliberate manipulation.
The world watched as Thompson, live on air, received a notification on his phone and saw his face drained of all color. He stammered, his polished corporate facade crumbling under the weight of his guilt.
The fallout was immediate and catastrophic. Thompson’s firm collapsed, and Oba Holdings was plunged into chaos. But out of the wreckage, a new, younger generation of leaders emerged. Tola, hailed as a whistleblower and a hero, was elected to lead the company. She was no longer just the "chosen successor," but a leader who had earned her place through courage and truth. Dayo, no longer a disillusioned outsider, was brought back to rebuild the company’s tech infrastructure and its shattered trust.
The final scene took place not in a boardroom, but in the heart of Lagos, at Oba's original factory. Tola, wearing a simple dress, stood before a crowd of employees and journalists. She held the wooden not-I bird. "My name is Tola," she said, her voice clear and strong. "And I am not my father's horseman. I am a child of this new time. And I will not fall."
The crowd erupted in a roar of applause. The old tragedy had been written in blood, but the new story was being written in code, with a bird in hand, and a refusal to repeat the mistakes of the past. The legacy of Oba was safe, not through sacrifice, but through resilience and truth.
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