ALEXANDER COLE

This story began in Lagos, in 1950.

The sun had barely touched the edge of the Atlantic Ocean when Alexander Cole, a Yoruba man, rose from his store in bitterness of heart. The air was thick with salt, and the distant cries of seagulls circled like warnings. In the narrow corridors of Isale Eko, where his staff moved with quiet resilience, Alexander had earned a name as the man who brought fish as far as the eyes could see, but not without scars to his business and finances.

Every trip to the docks to claim his goods was a battle. A tearful battle for that matter!

The waterways, which was once a symbols of life and trade, had become bloodied veins of oppression. Tax masters with crooked books and crooked hearts. There was also the street urchins, those ragged boys turned thugs, hovered like vultures over every merchant boat that docked and the Nigerian government was doing nothing about it. Alexander had learned to grit his teeth and pay his dues. But even grit runs dry. He had taken a loan from the local bank to sustain this business so that everyone of his customers would always have fish to carry whenever they came to patronize him.

They came for him each week, and each time they took more than the last. They took his peace, his pride, his profit. The final straw came on a humid Tuesday, when his boat returned from Port Harcourt packed with fresh catch, only to be seized by well connected rival merchants, guarded by boys with guns and dead eyes. He went home empty-handed, again. That night, as his 4 year old son Alexander Cole Jnr. slept quietly in his room, Alexander Sr. made a drastic decision.

No more!

He had lost his wife during childbirth and raised this boy by himself. He never married again. His life was not about love but hardwork! He had no enjoyment in anything and now, everything was frustrating him. So, he had to say ENOUGH!

With three other men who were his brothers not by blood but by bond, he lit a fire the docks would never forget. Armed and desperate, they stormed the shipping containers of the wicked task masters and their competitors. Gunshots pierced the fog. Guards fell. Fish, meant to feed the greedy, were hauled into their boats. It was not theft, not to Alexander. it was justice, claimed with fire and salt!

From that night on, a new name was whispered across the waterfronts.

Cole!

He was a man that has turned into a movement. A merchant turned kingpin. He built not just a cartel, but a shield for himself, for others like him who could no longer breathe under the weight of extortion. Fear wrapped itself around his name like mist over the lagoon, but so did hope.

In a city where the waters had grown dark, Alexander Cole had chosen to rise, not just for survival, but for dominion. Nigeria was gearing towards independence and he needed his business to experience the liberation also.

After the Nigerian independence took place, their business thrived! He would give basins of fish to market women to sell and return back his capital as they kept the profit. Every fish seller sang his praises! He was fair in his business, strict and hardly make friends.

Alexander Cole Sr. was a man the sea itself feared.

Towering at six foot three, with skin the color of polished ebony and a jawline that looked carved from granite, he moved through Lagos like a storm in a finely tailored kaftan. His favourite colour was black. His eyes very sharp, calculating, always half-narrowed. It held the weariness of a man who had seen too much and refused to be seen as weak. The kind of man who never repeated himself because he never had to. He built himself to become an untouchable entity.

He spoke in a rhythmic dance of English and Yoruba, not for lack of education, but for power.

Each sentence was a command, each proverb a blade. “When the head refuses advice, it follows the body into the grave,” he’d say, wagging a calloused finger at any fool who thought to test him. His voice always sounded low, like a coming storm, and when he laughed, which was rare, it was never without purpose.

His pride was not in his money, but in his bloodline, specifically, in Alexander Cole Jr, his only child.

From the boy’s first steps, Alexander Sr. had a plan. Private tutors. Boarding schools. Overseas education. By the time the boy was writing his Master’s thesis, the docks were already whispering about the young prince who would one day wear the crown of Lagos’ fish trade empire. He was to inherit not just business, but dominance. Influence. Fear.

But something shifted in the boy at 25. Somewhere between the pages of Scripture and the solemn service at St. Dominic’s Cathedral, Alexander Jr. found peace in what his father called weakness.

He has found Faith.

He became A staunch Catholic. The church became his shield, his sword, and his identity. He began to pray more than he planned. Talked more about forgiveness than fortune. And one day, he said it plainly: he would not inherit the business empire.

He would teach!

The word left Alexander Sr. thunderstruck. Teach? A man from Cole blood would earn a salary from chalkboards and school bells? He thought his son was insane!

The empire builder was livid. He threatened to cut him off, and did. He hoped his son would come to his senses. He only built his business on dread. He had never stolen from anyone since the day they took over the water ways.

But the boy remained unmoved. With the strength of quiet conviction, Alexander Jr. walked away from his father’s wealth, name, and legacy. He even married in secret, a quiet ceremony with his beloved Agnes, not a word sent to the man who raised him. It was the final insult!

Alexander Cole Sr. snapped! He was offended beyond apology!

One rainy night, as the docks slept under the calmness of the water ways, his men moved in silence. Two dark vehicles. No license plates. No mistakes. Within minutes, his son and daughter-in-law were bound and blindfolded. They were driven back to the very place Alexander Sr. had built with blood and salt: the shipping docks.

Under the yellow floodlight, with crates of fish stacked high, like walls of a fortress, father and son stood face to face. It was a brewing battle of two Alexanders, cut from the same cloth, now falling apart.

The conversation that followed was not just hard, it was war!

Alexander Cole Sr. stood tall, draped in his black agbada as usual, the silver of his rings catching the light as he stepped forward. His eyes, cold and unwavering, locked onto the man kneeling before him. He questionned if he was truly his flesh and blood.

His son, Alexander Jr., bruised, bloodied, yet unbowed. The boys had struggled to bring him to his father so they had delivered some blows to his face. He stared at Agnes, his young wife, who sat bound a few feet away, eyes wide with terror, her muffled sobs barely cutting through the silence.

Cole’s voice broke the stillness.

“Denounce it, and I will spare you,” he said, slowly, deliberately. “Denounce this foolish dream of poverty and piety in the name of religion. Denounce this thing you call love, weakness and come back to what you were born for. This softness and cowardice is not in my blood. Take my hand, work with me and inherit this empire and I swear, you will never lack.”

Alexander Jr. looked up at his father, his face swollen, his lip cracked, but his eyes burning with something stronger than fear. He coughed, then spoke with the steady voice of a man already free.

“Baba, You may call it softness but the truth is, i have found love, real love, peace and hope. I will never trade blood for bread. I will not rule through fear. I will not pass this curse to my child or My wife,” he turned toward Agnes, whose eyes were leaking rivers “my family deserves peace. I dont want a life of violence.”

Alexander Sr.’s eyes twitched.

“Family?” he spat the word like poison. “You think you know family? You think your wife is your family? She is not your blood. I buried my wife, your mother before you could talk. I bled for you, bled to build something from nothing, and now you turn your back on your name?”

“Because the name is soaked in death! Rulership and gangsterism. I dont have it in me to order these boys around and do your business Baba! I dont want it!” the son roared suddenly, rising to his knees. “I want peace and quietness. I want gentleness around me! My wife is pregnant, Baba. And I swear to you, our child will never call a killer ‘father.’ I will raise him far from all this… from you.”

A beat. Silence. A scream in the distance, seagulls, or spirits.

Then the crack of gunfire. No one expected it or saw it coming.

Agnes shrieked.

Alexander Jr. cried out, his body jerking as the bullet tore through his right arm.His father shot him without blinking. Blood poured freely, soaking his shirt, but still he remained upright, teeth gritted, refusing to cry.

Cole paced, eyes flaring like oil lamps in a storm.

“If you won’t wear my crown,” he growled, “then your son will. You say She is pregnant, that is fine! He will be raised in fire. He will carry my name, my wisdom, my wrath. I will shape him with my own hands. And he will become Alexander Cole III the most powerful man the world has ever known.”

Agnes screamed through her gag, shaking her head furiously, tears pouring down her cheeks. “Please!” she cried out when the gag slipped. “Please don’t kill him! He’s your son!”

Alexander Jr. Wiped his arm and turned his bloodied face to her. His eyes softened. He smiled faintly. Then turned his gaze back to his father.

“You’re right about one thing Baba,” he said, his voice weakening, but steady. “My son will be powerful… but not because of you.”

Cole paused.

“He will have rare gifts Baba. He will be born with a strength that cannot be taught, a heart that cannot be bent. He will rise higher than you ever dreamed.”

Cole’s fingers twitched around the trigger.

“He will rule well and powerfully,” the son went on, gasping now. “But he will love… deeply. Like his father. Oh he will be a lover man. He will find faith, He will protect his wife. Cherish her. His wife would be his blood. That is power you will never understand.”

Cole’s face twisted into rage. “Love,” he hissed. “What a Weakness.”

Another shot. This one into the stomach.

Agnes let out a scream that shattered the silence.

And then, with slow cruelty, the final shot rang out, straight into his son’s forehead. He collapsed, limp, eyes still open, mouth half-parted in a final breath of defiance.

Agnes wailed as the men dragged her away.

Six Months Later

She gave birth alone in a cold compound on the outskirts of Lagos. The boy came out wailing, his fists clenched, as though ready for battle. Agnes held him to her chest and whispered the only thing she had left: “You are not your grandfather. You are your father’s son. You will fulfil your father's prophecy over you”

She breastfed him and spoke to him prayerfully every day.

But Cole came for him.

At six months old, the child was taken. He was torn from his mother’s arms by the same men who had been there when his father was killed. Agnes screamed and fought, but it was useless. She was silenced, locked away, and the boy was gone.

She would not see him again…

Not for many years.

And by then, everything would be different.

The boy never remembered the sound of his mother’s voice, only the cold of her absence. From the moment he was torn from Agnes’ arms, Alexander Cole III became a ghost in the land of the living. He was not raised in love, but in survival.

His grandfather, Alexander Cole Sr., did not raise him directly. No, the boy was too precious for comfort, too important for softness. Instead, he was handed over to an old business partner of Cole’s. Alhaji Rufai, a trader with a bloodstained reputation and an iron fist. In Alhaji’s compound, somewhere in the outskirts of Maiduguri, the boy slept on a straw mat from the age of 4 in a small hut beside the goats that was reared in the compound. He was often sent into the streets, barefoot and hungry, to beg or scavenge for scraps.

“Eat from the earth,” Alhaji would growl in Hausa, “so you will one day command it.”

The boy grew wild. Very Silent. Watchful.

By the age of six, his eyes had hardened into something ancient. That was when the next phase began.

He was put on a plane in the dead of night. With no luggage, no goodbye. No identity. The destination was Mexico.

There, among the ruthless enclaves of the Guerrero mountains, Cole Sr. had struck a deal with one of the world’s most feared drug families. Alexander III was delivered into the heart of darkness. He was to be trained, beaten, molded. A Yoruba boy in a land of gunmetal Spanish, he was baptized in blood and betrayal.

By twelve, he could dismantle an AK blindfolded.

By thirteen, he stopped flinching at executions.

By fourteen, he was the youngest enforcer in the camp, known only as El Fantasma Negro (The Black Ghost.) He accepted the name like a mantle. No one knew him as Alexander cole. They had no idea where he was from. He was a tough young boy!

But nothing hardened him like El-Fecuro.

At fifteen, after a bloody turf war, Alexander was arrested with seven others. His sentence was ten years in El-Fecuro Juvenile Penitentiary, a concrete hell where boys were turned into beasts. It was survival of the cruelest. Food was currency. Water was hardly available and breath was borrowed. The guards were devils in uniform. They raped any boy they desired.

One night, a rival faction set the prison ablaze in an escape attempt. Amid the chaos, Alexander was cornered by guards. There were sixteen of them. Armed. Laughing.They told him they would enjoy raping him.

He had no weapons.

Just a sharpened toothbrush.

They never stood a chance.

When the smoke cleared, all the guards lay dead in pools of blood, eyes wide in disbelief. The other inmates terrified and awed at the escaped, whispering his name like a legend.

Across the ocean, in Lagos, Alexander Cole Sr. received the news with a slow, satisfied smile.

“Yes,” he whispered, “Now he is ready.”

Alexander Cole III landed in Lagos in a slippers, taller than most boys his age with scars wrapped around his arms like tattoos of pain. His English was broken, his Yoruba was jagged, and his Spanish very fluent like air. However his eyes? Those told the real story.

His grandfather. enrolled him quickly in university preparatory lessons. He sat for WAEC and JAMB, barely speaking a word during classes, yet passing both with frightening precision. Teachers spoke of a boy who didn’t ask questions but stared through people, as if trying to read their sins.

He gained admission into the University of Ibadan, Nigeria’s most prestigious citadel of learning.

There, for the first time, he was among books, laughter, and youth again.

But war still lived in his blood!

One afternoon, as the sun was still yawning behind the palm trees, an incident took place. Alexander Cole III, freshly admitted into the University of Ibadan, walked past a building everyone whispered about but no one approached. He lived off the campus and attended his lectures quietly. He had no friends and he knew how to mind his business. The building called Block Faho Hostel, also nicknamed the Capon’s Building, loomed like a cursed monument. It was painted gray, with white corridors. Its windows are dark even in daylight.

Students crossed to the other side of the path when walking near it. But Alexander did not.

He walked straight ahead, shoulders squared, his face unreadable, as always. His presence was quiet but suffocating, the kind of silence that made people look away before they even realized it.

And then he saw her.

A girl.

Sitting just outside the building, under the shadow of the mango tree that had never borne fruit. She was crying, face buried in her knees, hair tangled and hanging like curtains.

She looked up. Their eyes met.

“You can see me?” she whispered.

Alexander stopped.

The voice was not airy or echoing. It was clear. Too real. He blinked. She stood up now, stumbling toward him, her white shirt soaked in what looked like old blood.

“You can see me!” she screamed.

His heart didn’t race. he had seen too much for that but confusion flickered in his dark eyes. He turned slowly, scanning the students walking behind him. No one reacted. No one looked at her.

No one saw her!

“You’re not… real?,” he muttered. It was one of the rare times he’d spoken out loud. He barely used his voice on a daily basis.

She stepped closer. Her skin looked cold, drained of color. Her eyes were wide with pain. “They raped me. The Capon and six of them. Right there. They took turns and they hurt me,” she said, pointing to the first floor. “They choked me with a belt. I couldn’t scream. I couldn’t fight.”

Alexander’s gaze followed her shaking hand towards the window. A curtain moved. Laughter spilled out.

“They buried me at the back. Near that cassava patch. No one looked. No one cared. My parents are looking for me but they cant find me.”

She reached out. Her fingers passed through his.

That was when he believed.

That was when the storm inside him began to rise.

He followed her direction.

“This is where they buried me” she said.

The cassava patch wasn’t even fenced. The soil was fresh. It was disturbed. Too fresh. Flies buzzed above it, drawn to something more than dirt.

He stared at it for one long, slow moment.

Then he heard them.

“Hey! You! Idiot! What are you looking at?”

Voices. Mocking at him. Five boys. They were shirtless, drunk on power, stepping out from the rear door of the compound like wolves sniffing blood.

“You dey crase? You wan dig where we shit? You dey find wetin nor lost abi? Investigator oshi”

The biggest of them which was Wale, the Capon, clapped his hands. “Bring him in. Make we show am who get this hostel.”

They surrounded him. He followed without resistance. Silent as usual.

They took him into the open space in the compound. The place was empty but stinking of stale beer and filth. One boy swung first. A punch to his ribs.

Alexander didn’t move. He did not feel the pain.

Another tried to grab his neck.

What happened next was not a fight. It was an exorcism!

He moved like a shadow. No weapon, no warning. He shattered one boy’s throat with his elbow. Twisted another’s wrist until bone broke like dry stick. He crushed Wale’s face against the wall, again and again, until skull met cement like thunder.

Eleven of them.

All dead.

Some with eyes still open, their mouths frozen in screams that never came out.

The ghost girl stood in the corner. Watching the action. Then she began to smile before fading away peacefully.

No one reported the killings.

The remaining students in the hostel fled that night, when they found the bodies. They were screaming through the halls like the building itself had come alive. By morning, When the police arrived, there were no witnesses. No noise. Just blood, and silence, and the scent of something gone terribly wrong.

A quiet man who followed him all around school since the day he returned in Nigeria was thrilled. He was the one who had been assigned to always watch Alexander from afar. He saw it all. And he told Cole Sr.

The old man laughed for a long time when he heard.

“This one,” he said, “is truly mine.”

Alexander Cole III graduated top of his class in Engineering department with First Class Honours. His project on precision mechanics was used as a national reference. But none of that mattered to his grandfather.

The real work was about to begin.

He was flown to Russia, to a remote military lab in Siberia. There, he studied weapons design, nuclear theory, and ballistics under warlords and ex-KGB tacticians. This was a masters degree program. It was his grand father's arrangement. AC made 4 allies in this program. Every of his trips and training was made possible by the money the grand father earns from shipping alone. He had entered fully into the fish transportation business and he was the head of it all.

From Russia, Alexander III was moved to America. The purpose was for a second Master’s in Finance and Strategic Operations at a top Ivy League institution. The university didn’t know who was paying. They never asked!

By 29, he returned to Lagos.

A man!

An architect of violence. A strategist of power. Fluent in death and diplomacy.

That evening of his return, dressed in a tailored navy suit, he stood before the man who had started it all.

Cole Sr., now old and grey but still sharp-eyed, placed a gold ring on his grandson’s finger.

“This,” he said, “is your empire now.”

And just like that, the AC Cartel had its next king.

The conference room inside the AC Tower was all glass and steel, perched high above Victoria Island like a throne on top of the city. From there, Alexander Cole III worked daily. Just months into his reign, he made his first true move as leader of the AC Cartel and the world would never forget it.

He began the importation of his specially designed firearms. The weapons were his legacy project. Crafted in the icy labs in Russia, each one was a marvel of engineering. He introduced the precision-calibrated assault rifles, compact submachine guns, custom-modified snipers with zero recoil. Untraceable. Legal on paper. Deadly in purpose. These were his babies!

He made it official!

The first shipment landed at the Lagos port under diplomatic seal. In this business, no questions asked. Disguised as components for oil rig security, the shipment was driven straight to a secure government facility. Within 48 hours, the Military General himself received a gift: six handcrafted steel crates with the AC insignia engraved in gold.

Inside of the crates were 180 high-tech weapons and 2,000 rounds of ammunition.

The general was impressed. “This,” he muttered, “is war refined.”

The rest of the weapons were sold to the Nigerian Defence Academy for training and border control. The contract was clean, signed off at the top. That one deal alone brought over ₦50 billion into AC accounts.

Alexander didn’t stop there.

The second shipment was lighter, meant for domestic arms. Police stations from Abuja to Enugu suddenly started sourcing their weapons from the AC line. It wasn’t long before security companies, DSS divisions, and private firms were lining up to secure deals.

In just one year, Alexander Cole III became the country’s most sought-after private military contractor. His grandfather’s legacy had turned corporate, global, and unstoppable. It was not about a fish business or a transport vessel anymore.

One month later, a message came from the East.

A wealthy man, Chief Duru, had purchased a bulk of weapons from the AC line. There were about 70 rifles, several crates of bullets to reclaim his ancestral town from bandits. The operation was successful. The war was won.

But now, his boys had refused to disarm.

They were terrorizing his village, drunk on power and bullets. “They listen to no one,” Chief Duru said, voice shaking. “They say the guns belong to them now. Please… these weapons bear your mark. Please can you call them off?.”

Alexander nodded once.

“Don’t worry. I’ll handle it.”

He was a man of few words. If people are acting unreasonable, you stop them with unreasonable ways. He chose three of his youngest lieutenants. They were all in their twenties. They had met in the university and travelled with him to be trained in the Russian camp. They arrived in Ibirigbo that night under the cover of a storm.

By morning, half the boys with weapons had disappeared.

By the second day, the other half turned in their weapons silently, eyes hollow. No one knew what they had seen. No one spoke of the ones who didn’t return.

All that was left were 70 retrieved rifles, 11 crates of bullets, and a legend whispered through the forests:

Alexander Cole III had come… and cleaned the house.

With the year’s profits stacking to dizzying heights, laundering the money became a priority. Bankers were crawling around him as well as certified money cleaners. Alexander was nothing if not strategic. He started building hotels and private estates and from there, the AC homes was born. A real estate business.

One day, He called for an emergency meeting for all the thirty founding fathers of the AC Cartel, the four men who had fought alongside his grandfather in the old days, now retired and buried in quiet power.

They gathered at The Black Vault, a hidden estate in Lagos, shielded by water and armed guards.

There, in a single evening, Alexander gave each of them a gift of ₦1 billion in clean, laundered funds, traced through art collections, oil consortiums, and an estate in Kenya.

He handed each man a black ring, etched with their family insignia and the AC seal. “This buys your loyalty,” he said, “but more than that, it secures your bloodline. Your first son, or grandson, has an eternal seat in this family.”

The men were stunned. Old eyes gleamed with tears. They stood and pledged themselves to him, not as a boy who replaced Cole Sr. but as a King in his own right. He had secured posterity for them.

With such amount of money, Alexander Cole made AC a brand and a force. They determined the next political ruler If they are interested. They had capacity to sponsor any election. The president knew of their existence as his uncle was a member. They were men of influence.

Weeks later, his old grand father summoned him.

Alexander Cole Sr. was frail now. Thinner. A man at the end of his time. But his voice still held venom wrapped in wisdom.

“My son,” he whispered from his bed, “Before I go, there is one truth you must carry.”

Alexander leaned in.

“I have heard that You’ve always asked about your father. You seek to know What really happened.”

He paused, blinking with false sorrow.

“It was your mother. Agnes. She seduced him into weakness. Into betrayal. She found out about my plans for him. I was told that She killed him. They told me that she Slit his throat while he slept. I was mad! I tried to save you. I chased her down. Tracked her to the place she ran to and took you from her before she could end you, too.”

He coughed, eyes watering. “You were crying. Covered in your father’s blood. I ran with you, son. I saved your life.”

Alexander sat back, silent. Cold.

His jaw clenched.

“Where is she now?” he asked flatly.

Cole smiled, a dying serpent’s grin. “Living quietly in an estate that I built for your father here in Lagos. I kept her under house arrest at first. I wanted you to make the decision. Your father was dead and i did not want to kill your only parent too. She goes to church alot and The church people adores her. They think she’s holy. They know nothing.”

Alexander stood slowly. “Don’t worry, Baba. She will get what is coming to her one day.”

Cole’s eyes closed, satisfied.

He had turned his grandson into a weapon, aimed straight at his mother.

Another incident happened one late afternoon as sun spilled golden smears across the old velvet curtains of Cole's living room.The air was thick with cigar smoke and history. Two old men sat side by side like kings past their prime, laughing over the same jokes they’d shared since the 1960s.

Segun Falade, broad-shouldered and grey-bearded, chuckled as he slapped his friend, Alexander Cole Sr. on the thigh. “That your fish tax stunt in ’77, Cole, you nearly made that boy drown!”

The old Cole wheezed, struggling through laughter, “Ah, if he drowned, he would have made a fine sacrifice to the gods of greed.”

They both roared again, age softening neither their bond nor their ruthlessness.

That was when Alexander Cole III walked in.

He entered not alone, but with four of his elite guards, dressed in black casuals, eyes like razors scanning every window, every shadow. Cole III was calm, dark shades over his eyes, his stride deliberate. He gave the room a short nod, and the old men fell silent.

“Leave us,” Cole Sr. ordered, gesturing to everyone, including Segun. “I want to speak to my boy alone.”

As the others filed out, Cole III stepped forward into the living room.

And stopped.

Right there, by the television, stood a ghost.

Tall. Pale. Dripping blood from a torn forehead. His eyes were fixed on Alexander, silently screaming with a mix of pain and sorrow.

Alexander sighed. This was not new to him. He sees alot daily.

His eyes barely twitched as he asked, “Who do you want to speak to?”

Segun, still at the door, turned in confusion. “Who’s he talking to?” he whispered.

No one answered.

Alexander stepped closer, his voice low and firm. “You want to speak to…my Grandfather?”

The ghost nodded. He lifted one hand, pointed at Segun, then drew a horizontal slash across his own throat.

Alexander turned to the two elders, who now looked very uneasy.

“He says he was murdered,” Alexander said plainly. “Says Segun’s son killed him. Over the ₦150 million you sent them to collect today from the fish merchants at Ijora Wharf.”

Segun’s face drained of color.

Alexander went on. “Your son took the money. Shot him in the head. Dumped the body by the mangroves. Then fled to Togo. He just boarded a plane.”

Segun stumbled back into a chair.

The room went cold.

Cole Sr. leaned forward, eyes twinkling, not with fear, but fascination. He has heard of this but to witness such greatness was outstanding.

“You’re… speaking with him now?”

Alexander nodded. “He’s not angry about the death or his stolen share of the money. He’s angry because his wife and daughter are starving in Mushin.”

Segun began to weep quietly. “Tell him… tell him I’m sorry. I never knew. I’ll take care of them. I swear it on my own grave. They will never lack.”

Alexander turned. The ghost nodded.

“But,” Alexander added, “he wants you to give your hidden dollars to his wife. The ones under your prayer room tiles. It’s about thirty thousand dollars.”

Segun froze.

No one had ever known about that money.

Not even Cole Sr.

He stood up slowly, trembling. “My God,” he whispered. “This boy really sees them.”

Cole Sr. grinned with pride. “He doesn’t just see them, Segun… he communicates with them.”

From that moment on, the whispers began to grow. The Cartel’s new king wasn’t just deadly in body.,he was connected to the unseen. AC was no longer just a tough empire. It was now shrouded in myth.

On the eve of his 30th birthday, Alexander was summoned privately once again by his grandfather. The old man’s health had begun to falter. his voice weaker, his body slower but his mind was still fire and iron.

He poured his grandson a glass of aged cognac, then said in a hushed, serious voice:

“Now you’re a man. And as your father died young, it falls on me to give you wisdom no one else will.”

Alexander leaned forward.

“I hear that you barely have sex! Now, i have asked Tom to prepare a monthly feast for you and anyone you like. There are plenty girls arranged for you son. Use them! I mean empty yourself but with protection! Never repeat a woman,” Cole Sr. said with venom.

“They will weaken you. They will poison your judgment. You are too pure and gifted for that. Use them. Break them if you like. But never, never love them.”

Alexander frowned slightly and after a moment he spoke. “Why?”

Cole Sr. chuckled bitterly. “Because women are the source of most downfalls you see. It was a woman that broke your father’s back. It was your mother. And if you’re not careful, it will be a woman who ends you.”

He coughed, then added:

“Besides, you have great spiritual power so only touch virgins. Let them come to you willingly, because you have the money. The looks and the power. Don't force them, they will submit to you because of your money. They will crave your power, even crave to carry your seed. Don't give in to them. Leave them empty. Keep your soul clean from their filth.”

Alexander was quiet for a long time.

Then nodded.

Something inside him, something soft slowly hardened that night.

The very next year, on Alexander’s 31st birthday, the old man passed in his sleep.

They found him in bed, eyes open, as if he had just watched something. It was often said that perhaps Death himself, walk through the door.

Alexander buried him with honors, in a gold-plated coffin, next to his secret vault. He did not see his ghost. This further toughed his belief that ghost only appear when they have unfinished business.

There were no tears. No sorrow. Just silence.

From that day forward, the young king ruled alone with order, fearlessless and a profit system that took ordinary men to billionaires.

He was now everything his grandfather dreamed of ruthless, untouchable, and utterly void of love.

But the dead… they still followed him, especially the ones who need a favour or an act carried out before they could truly rest.