The Mercedes S-Class sped down the R21, cutting through the darkness toward the massive granite silhouette of the Voortrekker Monument. Jones Shongwe gripped the steering wheel, his knuckles white. Zweli sat in the passenger seat, his body angled so he could watch both the road and his father-in-law. Beauty sat in the back, stunned into silence.
“You were his accountant?” Zweli asked, his voice low. “For how long?”
“Five years,” Jones said, his eyes fixed on the asphalt. “Before you were born, Beauty. I was young. I was good with numbers. I thought it was just import-export. By the time I realised they were moving weapons and people… I was in too deep.”
“How did you get out?” Zweli pressed.
“I didn’t,” Jones admitted grimly. “I bought my freedom. I stole a ledger—a digital one. Encrypted. It has the names of every politician, every judge, every general on The Architect’s payroll. I hid it. I told him if anything happened to me or my family, the ledger goes to the press.”
“That’s why you are so quiet,” Beauty whispered from the back, realisation dawning. “That’s why you let Mom bully you. You were trying to be invisible.”
“Invisibility is survival,” Jones nodded. “But he found the ledger. Or he thinks he has. He raided my old office in the city yesterday.”
“He doesn’t have it,” Zweli said confidently.
Jones glanced at him. “How do you know?”
“Because I have it,” Zweli said.
Jones nearly swerved off the road. “What?”
“The old hard drive in the garage,” Zweli said. “The one you used as a doorstop for the tool shed? I found it three months ago. I decrypted it. It’s part of how I found my father. It’s part of how I built my network.”
Jones stared at his son-in-law. “You… you decrypted a military-grade Ghost File? You really are not the man I thought you were.”
“We can discuss my resume later,” Zweli said, checking his watch. “We are here.”
The Voortrekker Monument: 11:45 PM
The Monument loomed like a fortress of doom against the moonlit sky. The massive granite block, surrounded by a laager of stone wagons, was usually a place of history and tourists. Tonight, it was a graveyard waiting to be filled.
The parking lot was empty of tourist buses. Instead, a circle of luxury SUVs—G-Wagons, Range Rovers, and Bentleys—was parked near the main steps.
Jones stopped the car at the bottom of the long staircase.
“They are inside,” Jones said. “In the Cenotaph Hall. It’s the only place big enough for his ego.”
Zweli opened his door. “Beauty, stay in the car. Lock the doors.”
“No,” Beauty said, opening her door. “Gogo Jane is in there. She raised me when my parents were too busy being… complicated. I am coming.”
Zweli looked at her. He saw the steel in her spine. She wasn’t asking for permission.
“Stay behind me,” Zweli ordered. “Jones, you have a gun?”
Jones reached under his seat and pulled out a vintage .38 revolver. “I haven’t fired it in twenty years.”
“Don’t shoot unless I say so,” Zweli said. “Let’s go.”
The Cenotaph Hall
They walked up the endless stone steps. The air was cold. The silence was absolute.
They pushed open the heavy wooden doors and entered the upper dome.
The interior was vast. The marble friezes on the walls depicted scenes of the Great Trek, but tonight, the floor below—the Hall of Heroes—was the stage for a modern war.
Standing in the centre of the lower hall, near the empty sarcophagus, was a group of ten men. They were dressed in expensive suits. These were the bidders—the heads of the syndicates.
In the middle of them, tied to a chair, sat Jane Shongwe. She looked small and frail, her silver hair messy, but her head was held high. She was glaring at her captors.
Standing next to her was a man Zweli recognised from the dossier. He was tall and thin, wearing a white suit that looked spectral in the dim light. He held a tablet in one hand and a cane in the other.
The Architect.
“Welcome!” The Architect’s voice echoed off the marble walls, amplified by the dome’s acoustics. “The guest of honour has arrived!”
Zweli, Beauty, and Jones stood on the upper balcony, looking down into the pit.
“Let her go!” Beauty shouted, her voice echoing.
“In due time, my dear,” The Architect smiled. He looked up at them. “Jones. You look old. The quiet life didn’t suit you.”
“Let my mother go, Darius,” Jones called out, using the villain’s real name. “This is between us.”
“It was between us,” The Architect said. “Until your son-in-law decided to play superhero. Until he decided to disrupt the supply chains and embarrass my investors.”
He turned to the group of men in suits.
“Gentlemen, behold! Zweli Masilela. The heir to the Masilela Empire. The man who holds the Black Card. The man who holds the encrypted ledger.”
The syndicate bosses murmured, looking up at Zweli with greedy eyes.
“The bidding stands at R50 million,” The Architect announced. “For the right to kill him and claim his assets. Do I hear R60 million?”
“Sixty!” shouted a Russian man—one of Volkov’s associates.
“Seventy!” yelled a man with a gold chain—the leader of the Nigerian Brotherhood.
Zweli gripped the stone railing. They were bidding on his death like it was a piece of art.
“Stop!” Zweli’s voice boomed, utilising the Dragon’s Roar technique again. The sound filled the dome, silencing the bidders.
“You want me?” Zweli shouted. “I am right here. But you are making a mistake. You think you are bidding on a victim. You are bidding on your executioner.”
The Architect laughed. “Brave words. But look around you, boy. You are three people. We are thirty armed men.”
Shadows moved in the corners of the hall. Mercenaries stepped out from behind the marble pillars, raising assault rifles. They were surrounded, above and below.
“The ledger,” The Architect said, extending his hand. “Give me the password to the file Jones stole. And maybe… maybe I let the old woman live.”
Zweli looked at Jones. Jones was sweating, the gun shaking in his hand.
“Do it, Zweli,” Jones whispered. “Give him the code. Save Ma.”
Zweli looked down at Gogo Jane. She looked up at him. She shook her head slightly. Don’t, her eyes said.
Zweli knew that if he gave up the ledger, they all died. The ledger was the only shield they had.
“I don’t have the code,” Zweli lied. “I deleted it.”
“Liar,” The Architect snarled. He pointed his cane at Gogo Jane. “Kill the old woman.”
A mercenary stepped forward, raising a pistol to Jane’s head.
“NO!” Beauty screamed.
BANG.
The gunshot was deafening in the enclosed space.
But Gogo Jane didn’t fall.
The mercenary fell. He dropped to the floor, clutching his leg, screaming.
Jones Shongwe stood on the balcony, smoke curling from his vintage .38 revolver. He had made a seemingly impossible shot from thirty metres up, hitting a moving target in the leg.
“I said,” Jones shouted, his voice suddenly steady and commanded, “Let my mother go!”
The Architect looked up, stunned. “Jones? You actually fired?”
“I am done being invisible,” Jones said. He cocked the hammer of the revolver.
“Kill them all!” The Architect shrieked.
Chaos erupted.
“Get down!” Zweli grabbed Beauty and pulled her behind a marble pillar just as the mercenaries below opened fire. Bullets chipped the stone, sending shards flying.
“Jones, cover me!” Zweli yelled.
“What are you doing?” Jones shouted, firing blindly over the railing to suppress the gunmen below.
“I’m going down,” Zweli said.
Zweli didn’t take the stairs. He vaulted over the balcony railing.
It was a ten-metre drop to the floor of the Hall of Heroes.
To a normal man, it was suicide. To a master of the Golden Lotus, it was a controlled descent. Zweli channelled his Qi to lighten his body, using the “Featherfall” technique. He grabbed a hanging banner on the way down, slowing his momentum, and landed in a crouch in the centre of the hall, right between Gogo Jane and the mercenaries.
The syndicate bosses scrambled back in fear.
Zweli stood up. He was unarmed. He was surrounded by twenty gunmen.
But he was smiling.
He looked at The Architect.
“You invited the syndicates, Darius,” Zweli said calmly, as red laser dots from the mercenaries’ rifles painted his chest. “But you forgot to check who else was on the guest list.”
“What are you talking about?” The Architect sneered.
Zweli tapped his ear. “Now.”
CRASH! CRASH! CRASH!
The stained-glass windows of the dome high above shattered inward.
Ropes dropped.
Men in black tactical gear abseiled down from the roof, rappelling into the hall with precision speed. They weren’t police. They weren’t Comfort’s men.
They wore green berets.
“Sandf!” one of the syndicate bosses screamed. “It’s the Special Forces!”
Jackson Masilela had not just sent money. He had called in favours from the highest level of the military.
The Recces hit the floor, weapons raised.
“DROP YOUR WEAPONS! DOWN! DOWN!”
The mercenaries, realising the deadliest soldiers on the continent outclassed them, dropped their guns instantly.
The Architect stood alone, his cane trembling.
Zweli walked over to him. The laser dots were gone.
“The auction is closed,” Zweli whispered.
He untied Gogo Jane. She stood up, rubbing her wrists. She looked at Zweli. Then she looked at The Architect.
And then, the frail old lady did something shocking.
She walked up to The Architect and slapped him across the face. Hard.
“Darius,” Jane Shongwe said, her voice shaking with rage. “You never did have any manners. I told your father you were a bad seed.”
Zweli stared at her. “Gogo? You know him?”
Jane straightened her cardigan. “Know him? Zweli, my boy… Darius is my nephew. He is your wife’s uncle.”
Beauty, who had run down the stairs with Jones, stopped dead. “What?”
“He is the son of my sister who ran away to Russia,” Jane said. “He isn’t just a criminal. He is family.”
The Architect wiped blood from his lip. He grinned, revealing bloody teeth. “Hello, Auntie. Did you miss me?”
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