The heir had made his father angry, and not for the first time. It was always something with the man, and usually something petty. This time, it was pettier than usual. He’d brought friends home.

It hadn’t been in any intrusive way, their house was big enough that the heir could keep his associates tucked away at one side and have no risk at all of them ever even encountering his father. By chance, however, the older man had come to speak with him, and in doing so seen the strangers present. Etiquette had kept him from protesting before them, but the moment they were gone, the heir received his displeasure.

“How could you be so stupid?”

He steeled himself against it, as usual. An accusation of stupidity was tame compared to the sorts he’d usually expect. His father didn’t relent.

“Well, boy? How? What were you thinking?”

The heir knew, from many years of hard learning, that there was rarely a correct answer in replying to his father, and lots of wrong ones. He kept his silence most of the time for that reason. Being demanded an answer…That was a problem, because it meant he couldn’t afford to safely avoid committing to any singular answer without having it interpreted as further insolence.

So he thought. What was the most likely thing to diffuse this rage? He’d need to know what its cause was, first, but that wasn’t hard to deduce. His father was endlessly fearful of others working against him.

“I wanted to see how they’d try to approach me, to learn how they might try and get close to me.”

His father’s eyes defrosted, just a shade, and he weighed his son with a new consideration. Thoughtful, perhaps a fraction impressed.

“And you didn’t tell me first?”

“I didn’t want to bother you with it.”

That was perhaps a word too many, for his father’s face tightened again.

“Always tell me before inviting snakes into my home, understand? You can experiment all you want with yourself, but not with me. You knew they were only here to slither close to you, to curry favour and gain wealth, and still you deposited them under my roof?”

The heir said nothing, simply awaiting his father’s tirade to reach its end. It didn’t take too long- fortunately the old man had never been particularly skilled at sustaining any complex thought, and the anger he was venting out seemed enough of a contrivance to challenge him plenty. He was gone soon enough.

The heir didn’t know what to do at that, already rather missing his friends. He didn’t get to see them often. They went to school, he didn’t, they were permitted to go outside at all hours, he wasn’t. The heir of his father’s “empire” was too important for such things, his mind demanding tutorship like a sword demanded sharpening. On some days he might have spent the hours with his brother, Taiwo, but the boy was far less restrained by their patriarch than the heir, and was nowhere around. And so he simply wandered, idle and thoughtless, until his lessons next began.

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It was tomorrow when his father took him out again, to some insubstantial meeting or another among the executives of his company. It was the first time the heir had ever actually attended one, but his father insisted that fifteen was more than old enough. He was seated in one corner to watch in silence- always in silence- while it all unfolded.

The heir watched, accustomed to doing so, and learned. And when at last the event was over his father took him to one side and asked him what he’d seen. He answered him, impressed him, listened to him as the man tried to offer fleeting insights into his own genius. It was infuriating.

His father was not an unintelligent person, but his mind was semi-remarkable at best. His ascension in class had been luck and dedication more than native genius. Like so many powerful men, however, he’d convinced himself he was one of the world’s greats, and become desperate to model his cleverest son in his image.

Well, the heir would let him have what he wanted, for a while at least. It would lubricate the churning gears of his life more effectively than anything else. That was one thing he’d learned from his father, intentional or not.

Working people often was about surrender and a deft-handed touch. Perhaps he would gain something from their lessons one day.

The years went by, the days bled together. He found his life growing lethargic and stagnant, sluggish and still. There were very few things in need of doing, for one born to even half as much wealth as him. Motivation came through necessity, and necessity was never assassinated as completely as by excess. He moved around, flitting from place to place, ever osmosising the languages and cultures of all the areas his father’s tendrils of Capital touched.

After a while, the world became a small thing. It was rare enough for the heir to remain in the same place as long as a fortnight before being whisked off to some meeting or deal occurring elsewhere on the globe, and he continued in this state for some time. He did not have the opportunity to make friends, and was increasingly kept from uniting with those he already had.

The one constant, though, was bigotry. It was the great shadow lurking over any black man born in Africa, omnipresent across the earth and omnipotent in its ability to move others. It is one thing to have melanin in the skin and curls in the hair, but quite another to be African. The heir learned just this fact through a thousand miserable lessons.

One day, though, things changed. The heir had started to reach the end of his growing, and at last he was given a permanent assignment by his father. Or a long-term one, at the very least. He was to settle in one of several properties within America, ever the seat of all their family’s most profitable jewels, and manage it himself. He would be counted, immediately, among the most powerful men within the company, and granted a level of autonomy touched by few others.

Pure nepotism, of course. The heir was gifted, ingenious even, and vastly experienced through the unique diligence and exertive lessons granted during his childhood. Nonetheless, he would have received no such offer were he not of his father’s blood, and he knew it. He accepted regardless, settling in a city of his choice, and then something strange happened.

With an address finally cemented, he found his friends speaking more frequently. Then, eventually, visiting. Within the month he was physically meeting two of the oldest, and within another they all lived together. Free time stretched out for all of them, with the heir’s own wealth and excess now extended past the scope of necessity by his father. They interacted, they joked, they felt all the grating rust of long estrangement falling away.

And one day, they started to speak with one another about writing a book.