ONE WEEK CHAPTER FIVE

“Your brother went through a cardiac arrest, and that was the major reason for his death after a lot of tests were carried out”, the doctor says while handling the report to Andrew who was sitting directly opposite him in his office.

“Has he ever mentioned anything like him having difficulty in breathing?”, the doctor asks once again seeing Andrew going through the report.

“He has always been fine. I always ensured he came to the hospital for weekly check-ups. So how would it not have been found out if he had such a situation”, Andrew asks while getting angry.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean it that way”, the doctor says noticing that his question touched a sour point. “It’s just that we have performed a lot of tests and we haven’t been able to find out what could have led to such a critical situation that caused his death. We even tried a test on the food particles on him, but there isn’t any positive result”, the doctor says stressed by this situation.

From the tests performed on the body of his brother, his body vitals were normal, so how was it possible for such a situation to occur to him was something that was still baffling to the doctor.

“Isn’t there any other way to find out the reason for the sudden cardiac arrest?”, Andrew asks, his eyes were all red from crying too much this period, and eye sacks have started appearing beneath his eyes. This was a total contrast from the richest businessman in the country, and at a young age at that, his face used to be filled with confidence and mostly a smile.

The death of his brother has haunted him and just in the space of two days he has turned to something of this sort. He wasn’t able to attend to any business deals at this moment and his industries were being run on auto-pilot.

“We have tried all we can at this point, Sir. I am afraid there is no way for us to find out what went wrong anymore. Performing any more tests at this point is useless”, the doctor says in reply.

Andrew’s fist hits the table hard with his right hand, and to show that the force he had exerted was no little deal, his hand starts bleeding lightly. The doctor just stares at this lightly and didn’t dare to comment. After all, this was the biggest hospital in the country or you could probably say in the whole world and it was privately owned by both this man who was sitting down in front of him and the now-deceased brother of his.

This goes to show that the scope of business owned by the two boys was not just limited to a single side, but their eggs were spread in different baskets in such a way that if a particular egg goes rotten or breaks, the other eggs could sustain them with little to no damage to their income and expenditures.

In the next scene, Andrew is shown to be inside a police station directly facing Ella who was crying, she was no longer in her fancy clothes. She was in totally different clothes, but she looks kind of haggard at this point. It seems she has been placed under arrest by the police.

“I know this wasn’t your fault. You can never harm Raphael. I have known you for a long while now, but even the police aren’t answering me when I tell them that since you were the one who was with him at the time when everything went down. If you were truly the one that caused all that had happened, you wouldn’t be there in the scene to be implicated when the police came in”, Andrew says through the phone while staring at Ella.

“They said that I won’t be freed until the investigation is over. Although I am being given more freedom than the others, this still feels somehow. I wouldn’t dare to harm Raphael in any way. Why would anyone even think that I would try such a thing with him?”, Ella says while tears pour out of her eyes in no trifling amount.

“I would try all I can to get them to speed up the investigation about you so that you can be freed from this fucking place. I won’t allow you to stay here longer than a day”, Andrew says giving his full assurance on this matter.

In the next scene, the news was being shown on the tv, and the reporter was going through the headlines, “The identity of the head of one of the top three notorious organizations in the world, The Smilers, has still not been found, and he is still running rampant causing loss to lives and properties. In other news, the brother of Andrew, Raphael, one of the two richest men in the country who was killed on a Monday night in his very own hotel is to be buried early tomorrow. Andrew his brother has broken down in tears in a media session while pleading to the general public that if they find any evidence of who the killer could be, they should kindly bring the report to him so that they could be brought to justice”, the tv was quickly being switched off as a man is seen with a remote who was more than five feet tall, wore a black suit with a blue tie, his hair seems perfectly permed and he was handsome, way more than Andrew, but he seem to be in the same age group as Raphael or probably a bit older.

Apart from the young man, another was present sitting down who seem to be formerly watching the tv proceedings. The other man seems to be in his late fifties or early sixties, but he doesn’t have wrinkles on his face and he was also dressed in a suit. Noticing the tv has been switched off, he turns towards the young man, and a striking resemblance could be seen between the two of them, either they were brothers or father and son.

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“That fool is already crying and behaving like a baby after his brother’s death. He wasn’t that way when he was feeling superior over us and wanted to take over our company”, the younger man says with a twisted expression, the older man didn’t respond and just keeps staring at him, nobody knew what was going through his head.

“I guess we should be thankful to the person who killed his brother. His being in this position is of a huge benefit to us. With this we can...”, the young man was interrupted by the elderly man this time around, “Can you shut up for a second, Alfred?”.

Hearing the tone of the voice to which he was being spoken, he didn’t dare to speak a word in return, as he understood what the man before him was capable of doing if annoyed.

After a long time of silence, the old man starts laughing, “hahahahahaha”, his laughter scares Alfred who was beside him, but the next words that come from his mouth calm him down, “Didn’t you say you would kill anybody who caused harm to your family? Why haven’t you done anything at this point?”.

Andrew had said something of that sort during the interview they held the night before the death of his brother. While about to close, the interviewer asked something, “You brothers seem to be one of a kind rarely seen nowadays as envy and jealousy seem to tear apart siblings. But your bond seems stronger every day we get to see you both. What is your secret?”.

Andrew says in reply, “We don’t have any secret. We just have only each other and want to protect each other’s interests. We are each other’s only treasures and what does one tend to do to his most priced treasure, protect it right? We don’t see any reason to get jealous of each other when we built this all together. Raphael over here is my only family and I would do everything in my power to make sure he is happy at all times and whoever dares to cause him harm won’t be able to live to see the next day”, he completes the sentence with a squinted eyebrow, seems like he was totally serious at that time.

But it was the second night after his death already and nothing had been done on his part to save his brother. Seems like he was just trying to make a show at that time. He was all words and no action, an empty barrel.

“Knock, knock”, a light knock could be heard coming from the door which this two-man pair was in. A voice immediately follows though, “Your meal is ready sirs. Madam is already waiting at the dining”, it seems to be one of their maids.

These two men in this room were no ordinary people, they were the former richest men in this country and were suddenly overturned when this brother’s pair came from nowhere and rose through the ranks of richest men.

Their family has sustained their top position for close to a century now, which showed that they were no easy folk to pass through and they had most definitely gathered a lot of powers at their call or put people in that position who would be indebted to them as they would have something to hold them with. But even with these facts, the two brothers still overran them and became successful, even usurping some of their businesses in the process.

Although they were no more the richest people, they still held down on the second position, leaving no leeway for the third to overshadow them. But seeing all these things happening, it would be a little shock if this family was responsible for the death of Raphael, maybe they pressurized Ella into doing the act or something of that sort. But that’s for us to find out in the future though.

Unlike the brothers' pair, their businesses were owned by family members, uncles, aunts, and cousins, but the main flag bearers were this father and son pair who owned almost thirty percent of the shares of their businesses.

“We would be with her shortly”, the older man says while a wicked smile creeps down his face. ‘This is a huge chance for us. Perhaps this Andrew of a guy should be eliminated too to ensure the smooth taking over of his businesses. No, outrightly killing him would make us the prime suspects. Although we could clamp down on it since the power of the authorities and top politicians are in our hands, it would take years before we can be able to take over all the businesses. Other businesses might use that opportunity to feed off on free food which would introduce the possibility of another kind of people overrunning us and becoming the richest once again. I have to discuss this with the rest of them then. They didn’t disappoint me as they made quick work of his brother. Guess I would be working hand in hand with them, but I got to put a leech around them so that they don’t become too conceited’, the older man thought.

From this, most of the things were made clear about Raphael’s death. Although the people who he had worked with to make the scenario successful weren’t yet known, this old man was the one behind all that has happened.

Slowly, he stands up, he was using a walking stick to sustain himself, he has an artificial left leg. But that didn’t stop him from going out from his office with his son in tow, to go and eat.

Meanwhile, Andrew was now at home, feeling down and depressed at all that has happened. He didn’t even receive any calls at this time. He just wore a blank look.