THE DEVIL'S ASSISTANT

Chapter 2: Into The Fire

The airport doors slid open.

Heat wrapped around me like a living thing.

Not the suffocating humidity of Lagos before a storm. This was different — dry, golden, almost regal. It smelled faintly of warm stone, fuel, expensive perfume drifting from passing travelers, and possibility.

The sunlight was almost offensively bright.

I slipped on my sunglasses before it could make me squint.

A city revealed itself beyond the glass.

Luxury cars glided across immaculate roads.

Palm trees stood with impossible precision, as though someone had instructed nature to behave professionally.

Far away, silver towers pierced the sky.

Everything looked expensive.

Even the air seemed to belong to people who had never checked the balance in their bank accounts before buying lunch.

I adjusted the handle of my suitcase.

Its stubborn wheel squeaked.

The sound felt wonderfully inappropriate.

Good.

Something around here needed reminding that perfection wasn't natural.

A taxi driver raised a hand.

"Taxi, madam?"

I nodded.

He loaded my suitcase into the boot while I climbed into the back seat.

"Where to?"

I pulled out the interview confirmation email.

"Osei Industries Headquarters."

His eyebrows lifted slightly in the rear-view mirror.

"Business meeting?"

"Job interview."

He smiled.

"Very good company."

I looked out of the window before he could ask anything else.

Dubai unfolded around us.

Glass towers reflected the afternoon sun like polished knives.

Construction cranes stood beside finished skyscrapers, as though the city had decided it would never stop becoming something bigger.

Billboards advertised watches that cost more than houses.

Restaurants floated above the streets.

Everywhere I looked, people seemed to move with purpose.

Nobody wandered.

Nobody hesitated.

This wasn't a city built by dreamers.

It was built by people who refused to apologize for ambition.

I could respect that.

Even if ambition had once buried my family.

The taxi merged onto a wide highway.

The skyline grew closer.

My reflection floated faintly in the window.

Twenty-five years old.

One degree.

One suitcase.

One mission.

If anyone looked at me now, they'd probably assume I was another young professional chasing opportunity.

They wouldn't see the cemetery still living somewhere behind my ribs.

They wouldn't hear rain.

The day we buried my father, the sky had opened before dawn.

Relatives kept apologizing for the weather.

As though God owed us sunshine.

The cemetery had become mud before the service even began.

My black shoes disappeared into the earth with every step.

People cried quietly.

Some hugged me.

Some promised everything would get better.

Grief made people generous with lies.

I barely heard them.

I watched the coffin instead.

Dark wood.

Silver handles.

Far too small to contain the man who had taught me how to ride a bicycle, negotiate prices at markets, and laugh whenever life became unreasonable.

He had always laughed first.

Even during difficult years.

Especially during difficult years.

Six months after losing everything the laughter disappeared.

His heart lasted another three weeks.

The doctors called it cardiac failure.

I called it heartbreak.

When everyone else began leaving the graveside, I stayed.

Rain soaked through my dress.

My aunt begged me to come home.

I shook my head.

She eventually left too.

Then it was just me.

My father.

And the sound of rain striking fresh earth.

I crouched beside the grave.

"I don't know who did this."

The words tasted like blood.

"But I'll find them."

The wind answered.

"I don't care how long it takes."

My fingers dug into the wet soil.

"I won't waste my life hating them."

No.

Hatred burned too brightly.

It blinded.

"I'll become better."

Smarter.

Patient.

"So when I finally stand in front of them..."

I remembered placing my palm against the rain-soaked earth.

"...they'll know exactly why I came."

I had stood slowly.

Not because I was weak.

Because promises deserved ceremony.

Three years later here I was.

Thousands of kilometers from that grave.

Still keeping my word.

The taxi slowed as another cluster of glittering buildings rose before us.

My phone buzzed with a calendar reminder.

Interview — 2:45 PM.

I dismissed the notification.

Then almost without thinking I searched Damien Osei again.

This time I didn't open the photograph.

Instead I reread one interview quote.

"Business is simple. Sentiment clouds judgment. Results don't."

Cold.

Efficient.

Possibly true.

The article praised his discipline.

Called him visionary.

A man willing to make impossible decisions.

People loved celebrating ruthless men once they became rich enough.

Failure was cruelty.

Success was strategy.

Funny how money rewrote morality.

I locked my phone again.

Whatever Damien Osei truly was, I would soon find out for myself.

And if fate had a sense of humor maybe the first step toward finding my father's destroyer had been disguised as a job interview.

The taxi turned one final corner.

Then I saw it.

A tower of black glass and brushed steel rose into the afternoon sky, its name gleaming in polished silver letters.

OSEI INDUSTRIES.

Elegant.

Powerful.

Untouchable.

The kind of building that existed to remind ordinary people exactly where they stood.

I paid the driver, stepped onto the pavement, and looked up.

For one brief moment, I felt impossibly small.

Then I remembered my father.

I remembered rain.

I remembered a promise whispered over fresh earth.

Small things became dangerous when they were underestimated.

The driver had already pulled away by the time I finished staring.

I hadn't moved.

My feet had simply stopped cooperating with the rest of me.

Around me the city continued.

A woman in designer sunglasses walked past talking rapidly into her phone.

Two suited men exchanged documents beside a waiting car.

A security guard near the entrance glanced at me briefly then looked away.

Nobody paid me any attention.

Which was fine.

Attention was dangerous.

Invisibility was a tool.

I had learned that in the months after my father died when grief made people look at you differently.

Not with cruelty.

With pity.

Pity was worse.

It assumed you were finished.

I was not finished.

I had barely started.

I checked my watch.

Two hours and eleven minutes until the interview.

Enough time to find the hotel I had booked for the night.

Enough time to change into the navy dress I had ironed and carefully folded before leaving Lagos.

Enough time to become the version of myself that Damien Osei's company needed to see.

Professional.

Competent.

Completely unremarkable.

The kind of assistant who blended into expensive offices without leaving fingerprints on anything important.

At least on the surface.

I picked up my suitcase handle.

The wheel squeaked.

Loudly.

A man nearby glanced at me with mild irritation.

I smiled apologetically.

See?

Unremarkable.

Already working.

The hotel was twelve minutes away according to my phone.

Small.

Clean.

Affordable.

Three things that rarely existed together in Dubai but I had searched long enough to find them.

The room had been booked with the last of my savings.

Three nights.

After that I either had a salary or a problem.

I preferred not to plan for the second option.

The walk was short but instructive.

Dubai did not believe in subtlety.

Every building competed with the one beside it.

Every shopfront announced itself.

Even the pavements looked deliberately clean in a way that suggested consequences for disorder.

I passed a café where two women sat with coffee that probably cost what I spent on lunch for a week.

I passed a jewellery shop where a single necklace in the window had no price tag.

Things without price tags were only for people who never needed to ask.

I noted everything.

The layout of streets.

The position of security cameras.

The way the crowd moved and where it thinned.

Old habits.

I had spent three years learning how to watch without being noticed.

How to ask questions that sounded like conversation.

How to remember everything I was told while appearing to remember nothing.

Skills that had seemed excessive when I first started developing them.

Skills that suddenly felt essential.

The hotel entrance appeared between a pharmacy and a mobile phone shop.

Modest lobby.

Cool air.

A receptionist who smiled without making me feel judged.

"Checking in?"

"Yes. Nwosu."

She typed efficiently.

"Room 304. Third floor. Lift is on your right."

"Thank you."

The room was small.

Clean as promised.

A window overlooked another building's wall.

Not exactly the Dubai skyline.

But I hadn't come for the view.

I hung the navy dress carefully in the bathroom so the steam from the shower could release any remaining creases.

Then I sat on the edge of the bed.

Just for a moment.

Just long enough to breathe.

Three years of planning had led to this afternoon.

Three years of working odd jobs while studying everything I could find about Dubai's business world.

About powerful men who destroyed smaller companies.

About the kind of people who operated behind closed doors and left no evidence that could be traced back to them.

I had found names.

Connections.

Patterns.

None of them definitive.

All of them pointing in the same direction.

Toward Dubai.

Toward money that moved in ways that left smaller businesses suddenly exposed.

Toward the kind of strategic acquisitions that looked clean from a distance and felt like ambushes from the inside.

Toward men like Damien Osei.

Maybe him specifically.

Maybe someone close to him.

Either way I needed to be inside that building.

I needed access.

Trust took time.

Time required proximity.

Proximity required a job.

Which meant this interview was not simply an opportunity.

It was the first move in a very long game.

I stood.

Straightened my spine.

Walked to the mirror above the small desk.

The woman looking back at me had learned not to flinch.

Good.

I straightened my dress.

Lifted my chin.

Hooked my sunglasses onto the collar of my blouse.

To everyone walking past, I was just another young woman arriving for an interview that might change her life.

Only I knew the truth.

I hadn't come to build a career.

I'd come to hunt.

And somewhere behind the dark glass above me, destiny had already started watching back.