The wind that night howled like it was angry at the world. It tore through the broken louvre windows of the Reign household, making the rusted metal creak as if it might finally collapse. The breeze brought with it the scent of burning trash, gutter water, and diesel fumes — the three-layered perfume of poverty.
Dave Reign lay on a mattress so flat and thin it could barely be called bedding. He stared upward, watching shadows dance across the cracked ceiling. The ceiling fan above him hadn't worked in two years, but it still hung like a dead dream nailed in place. Just above that — a jagged hole in the corrugated zinc roof, wide enough to let rain drip in and soak the floor when the sky wept.
His room was silent, except for the occasional creak from the wooden window frame and the snoring from the next room. His father — ex-military, now full-time alcoholic — lay passed out beside the front door, limbs tangled in an old wrapper, empty schnapps bottle still clutched like a second spine. The man hadn't worked since the army pension dried up. Since the shame of losing everything swallowed him.
In the tiny kitchen, his mother boiled water over a hissing blue kerosene flame. She didn't talk much these days. Not even when they ran out of rice. Not even when the electricity bills piled up like gravestones.
Dave blinked slowly. His body ached, not from physical labor, but from something heavier — the kind of ache that sat in the bones of a man with no roadmap.
This wasn't a home. It was a slow death.
He was seventeen. No school. No job. No future. Just a mind that ran like a machine, constantly calculating, constantly burning.
And he was tired of burning in silence.
"David," his mother called, voice gentle but weighted. "Come and eat."
He didn't answer right away. He sat up with a groan, as if the weight of the world sat squarely on his shoulders. He stretched, cracked his neck, then stepped carefully around the bottle of schnapps his father had dropped in the hallway.
In the kitchen, his mother had placed a plastic bowl on the table — inside, two spoonfuls of soaked garri. No milk. No sugar. Just bare white grit floating like hope in cold water.
She didn't sit with him. She just turned and faced the wall, silently wiping the countertop as if she could scrub the hunger out of their lives.
Dave ate slowly. Spoon. Swallow. Think.
Always thinking.
While the boys outside argued over soccer scores and who had the baddest girl in the street, Dave was thinking about power. About freedom. About what it would take to escape this godforsaken cycle.
And he had a plan. Not just a dream.
A real, dangerous, and possibly suicidal plan.
The sun was barely up when Dave left the house. The streets were already alive with movement — hawkers shouting about recharge cards, the smell of roasted corn and groundnut in the air, and far off, a siren wailed like a warning.
He wore a black hoodie, jeans too tight at the waist, and knock-off sneakers with peeling soles. He didn't care about how he looked — only where he was going.
First stop: Red's place.
The building had once been a mechanic shop. Now, it was a halfway house for stolen goods, street deals, and whispers. The signboard still read "Omenka & Sons Auto Repairs," but the only thing being repaired here was reputation.
Red was there, of course. Short, bald, built like a cement bag. Always chewing on something — nobody knew what. Rumor said he never slept, and never forgot a face.
Dave entered without knocking.
Red glanced up, eyebrow cocked. "You dey find phone?"
Dave shook his head. "I dey find work."
Red chuckled, a dry sound that scratched the air. "Work? My guy, na hustle everybody dey hustle. You get anything wey you sabi do?"
Dave stepped forward, voice low but certain. "I sabi think. I sabi plan. And I sabi move in silence."
Red stopped chewing. For a second, there was silence. Then he leaned back in his chair.
"You be different, abi?"
"I be ready."
That was the start.
Over the next few days, Dave didn't just hang around — he moved. He delivered packages with no questions asked. Helped Red trace who stole a shipment. Carried burner phones in his socks and sold unregistered SIMs to bikers who needed to disappear for a day.
No violence. No spotlight. Just motion.
Every job earned him two things: a name and a favor.
By the second week, people on the block had stopped calling him "that boy with the quiet eyes" and started calling him Reign.
Then came the alley.
A Tuesday night. Late. The air smelled like fried fish, piss, and rain. Dave was cutting through behind a supermarket when they cornered him.
Three of them. One tall and twitchy, another fat and breathing heavy, the last one holding a blade with a shaky hand.
"You think say you smart, abi?" the tall one spat. "You dey collect work wey no be your own!"
Dave didn't run. Didn't flinch.
Instead, he looked the leader dead in the eyes and said calmly, "You touch me, you die. Not now. Not here. But soon. And it'll be loud."
The twitch in the boy's lip slowed. Uncertainty crept in.
And that's when Jamzy came flying out of the shadows — metal pipe in hand.
The first hit cracked loud like thunder on bone. The second missed, but it was enough. The boys scattered like rats, cursing, spitting, limping away.
Jamzy stood over Dave, breathing hard. "You dey try die?"
Dave smiled. "No. I dey try live."
That night, something shifted.
Jamzy was everything Dave wasn't — loud, impulsive, street-famous. A hothead with scars to prove it. But he was loyal. And when he wasn't chasing chaos, he listened to Dave like a soldier listens to a commander.
Together, they became a whisper — "Reign and Jamzy."
Dave had brains. Jamzy had balls. And soon, the combo had power.
Their small empire began:
Selling fake fuel receipts to truck drivers Smuggling SIM cards through secondary schools Clearing stolen bikes in abandoned compounds Making enemies without even knowing their names yet
But even as money came in, Dave couldn't shake the weight in his chest.
At night, he'd lie awake again — not in fear, but in wonder.
What was all this leading to?
Was he building a throne… or a coffin?
Then came Tessa.
The community library wasn't really a library. Not anymore.
It was once a government-funded center with after-school programs and free internet. But the funding dried up, and now only the books and dusty AC units remained — barely working, barely alive, like the people who wandered in.
Dave wasn't there for books.
He came for silence.
It was the one place in the entire neighborhood where nobody screamed, nobody fought, nobody asked, "Where my money dey?"
And it was there — in the stillness between two broken fans — that he saw her.
She sat near the back, feet tucked beneath her chair, nose buried in a thick psychology textbook. She had curly black hair and brown skin the color of burnt caramel. Her face looked calm, but her eyes… her eyes moved like a person who never fully rested.
Dave found himself staring.
"Why are you watching me?" she asked, eyes never leaving the page.
He blinked. "I'm not."
"You are."
"Maybe I'm wondering why a beautiful girl is hiding in a place like this."
She looked up then. Just once. "Maybe because it's the only place boys like you don't pretend to be men."
That hit him harder than a punch.
He laughed — softly, not defensively. "Fair."
"Tessa," she said.
"Dave."
"You read?"
"Sometimes. Mostly people."
She nodded. "I can tell."
He came back the next day. And the next.
He never said much. She never asked much. But a rhythm formed. A code. A bond in the silence.
She was studying trauma, and he didn't need to ask why. Everyone in the hood was carrying ghosts. Some just wore them better.
Dave had never believed in love. But now he believed in her.
And that was dangerous.
Because love is a weakness in the game.
A crack in your armor. A distraction that gets people killed.
Dave tried to slow things down. But life had other plans.
Red got picked up by SARS. No warning. One moment he was selling knock-off tech, the next he was in cuffs, screaming about setups and betrayals.
Jamzy got stabbed at a party. Over a girl. He survived, but barely — and he came back changed. Paranoid. Angry. Twitchy.
And then came the job that changed everything.
Dave had quietly moved some fake ATM cards through a trusted plug. No names. No heat. Or so he thought.
But the money trail led to a politician's son — and the walls began to close.
Dave sat in the back of a danfo one night, staring out at the orange streetlights, hearing gunshots echo three streets away.
"This is it," he thought.
"This is the fork."
He could run. Disappear. Leave Tessa. Leave Jamzy. Burn every bridge and start over.
Or…
He could take the risk. Go deeper. Own the streets. Control the chaos.
"You wanna rise?" he whispered to himself.
"You bleed first."
That night, he got off the danfo early.
He walked past his street. Past the boys at the barbershop. Past the broken compound gate.
He walked into the darkness. Alone.