Chapter Nine: Bloodlines and Betrayal
698 Words
The name Charles Wafula hung in the air like smoke.
Zera sat in silence for a long time, staring at the letter.
“My father?” she whispered again, as if repeating it would change what it meant.
Kwame stopped pacing. “You told me your father died when you were ten.”
“That’s what Mama told me,” Zera replied, voice hollow. “He was in the army. She said he died in a raid. A hero.”
Kwame narrowed his eyes. “If that’s true, why would she write he knows everything?”
Zera clenched her fists. “Because he didn’t die. He disappeared.”
---
They took the night bus back to Nairobi.
Zera didn’t sleep. Her mind replayed every moment of her childhood—every story, every lie. Her mother had always gone silent when she asked about him. Her few memories of him were like smoke—his deep voice, the way he used to whistle, the shape of his hands when he lifted her high in the air.
Was he one of them?
Or had he tried to stop them and vanished to survive?
Either way, she had to know.
---
Nairobi was colder than she remembered.
They went straight to an address she found on one of the documents—an old apartment building in Westlands. It looked abandoned, but the front door opened when she knocked.
A security guard let her through with a strange look.
“Top floor,” he mumbled.
Zera’s heart pounded as she climbed.
Kwame stayed close, eyes sharp. But he didn’t speak. This wasn’t his moment—it was hers.
She reached the top floor.
Door 5C.
Her hand shook as she knocked.
The door opened slowly.
A tall man stood there. Mid-fifties. Greying hair. Hard eyes. Familiar jawline.
Zera gasped.
The man didn’t.
He just stared at her. Like a ghost had arrived at his door.
“You’re her,” he said finally.
Zera swallowed hard. “You’re my father.”
He stepped aside.
“Come in.”
---
The room was dimly lit. Sparse furniture. Papers on the table. A half-packed suitcase in the corner. It smelled like old books and unsaid things.
Charles Wafula sat down and poured himself a glass of something dark.
“I wondered when you’d come.”
Zera sat across from him. “You knew I’d find you?”
He nodded once. “Your mother left you everything you needed.”
Zera’s voice cracked. “She said you knew everything. That you were one of them.”
Charles stared at the floor. “I was.”
Silence.
He looked up, face heavy with something between regret and defiance.
“I helped build the cover network. I knew about the fake charities. The trafficking. I signed off on so much…” His voice broke. “Until I found out they were using children. Girls. Like you.”
Zera’s eyes burned with tears.
“Why didn’t you stop them?” she whispered.
“I tried. They tried to kill me. Your mother helped me disappear. She told you I was dead to keep you safe.”
He looked at her now, fully.
“And she kept fighting. Alone.”
---
Zera stood, every part of her trembling. “You let her die out there!”
Charles’s voice sharpened. “She’s not dead.”
Zera froze.
“What?”
“She went underground after they burned her house. The note she left you—that was the last thing she recorded before she vanished. Even I don’t know where she is.”
Zera backed away.
“I don’t know who to believe anymore.”
“You don’t have to believe me,” he said. “But I can help you end this. All of it.”
“How?”
Charles reached into a locked drawer and pulled out a flash drive.
“This has the final list. Names. Bank transfers. Locations. If this goes public, it will burn their whole operation to the ground.”
Zera stared at it.
“And then what?” she asked. “They come for us?”
Charles met her eyes. “Let them.”
- Writer
