In the heart of Windhoek's CBD stood a tall glass tower bearing the name Shikongo Industries.
High above the city, inside a sleek office lined with files and framed silence, a man in his late twenties sat behind his desk as if time itself were chasing him. His glasses rested low on his nose, and his attention was buried deep inside the mountain of paperwork spread before him. Contracts, reports, approvals—his desk looked less like a workstation and more like a battlefield made of paper.
Alexander Shikongo had been sitting there for so long that even the office air felt tired.
Outside his office, in a smaller cabin, a young woman scrolled through TikTok on her phone, her handbag already packed and resting on her lap like a prisoner waiting for release.
"Hey... pssst."
The whisper came from two offices away.
Dina was peeking around the corner, waving urgently.
"Cidy," she whispered again, louder this time.
Cidy slowly lifted her head, clearly exhausted from doing absolutely nothing for over thirty minutes.
"He's still in there, Dina," she muttered, stretching her arms. "I cannot disturb him for the fifth time."
"Please, just go in again," Dina begged, clasping her hands together dramatically. "My boyfriend is already outside."
Cidy's shoulders sagged.
It was Friday. There were no urgent deadlines, no fire to put out, and no corporate disaster crawling through the vents, yet their boss had locked himself inside his office and continued working as if the end of civilization depended on signed contracts. Every other employee had already gone home. But secretaries? Secretaries did not leave before the boss.
That was apparently one of those invisible workplace commandments written somewhere in executive stone. With the weariness of a woman being sent to war, Cidy rose from her chair.
Before she could take even two steps, Mr. Damien appeared. Both women nearly sighed in unison at the sight of him.
Relief had never worn such an ordinary face.
Damien frowned as he looked at them.
"You're still here?"
He placed his thumb on the clocking machine and signed out, then glanced toward the office across from them.
"Alexander is still inside?"
"Yes," Cidy said at once, her expression almost pleading.
Dina rushed back into her office, grabbed her bag, and returned so quickly it looked like she had been waiting for exactly this opportunity.
Dina and Cidy were Alexander's office secretaries, and as long as he remained in the building, so did they. Officially, their day ended at four. Unofficially, Alexander's work ethic had been violating labor peace since birth. It was now almost six.
Damien shook his head and headed for the office.
Alexander's office was massive—so large that first-time visitors often mistook it for a private library. Files and dockets were stacked in careful towers. Shelves lined one wall, packed with documents, folders, and neatly labeled binders. The door was so heavy it took effort to push open.
Usually, when someone approached, Alexander noticed and unlocked it with the remote on his desk.
Not today.
Today he was swallowed by work.
Damien pushed the door open and stepped inside.
"Alex."
No response.
"Alex"
This time Alexander looked up, blinking as if he had just returned from another planet.
"Oh—hey, Uncle. Are you already leaving?" he asked, noticing Damien's work backpack.
Damien studied him for a second. "What time do you think it is?"
Alexander frowned and glanced up at the large clock above the office entrance.
Then his eyes widened.
"Holy shit... it's six?"
The shock on his face was real enough to make Damien breathe easier. At least the boy had not chosen madness intentionally. He had simply wandered into it.
"Come on," Damien said. "Let's go. You don't want to miss—"
Alexander cut him off at once.
"I'm staying late. I still have contracts to approve, and the Goreangab Project is behind schedule. Adam is probably cursing me right now."
He leaned toward the landline and pressed a button.
"Dina, Cidy, you can clock out. I'm staying late tonight. I already informed Ruben. And Cidy, make sure you pin my meeting for tomorrow at Carlos Resorts."
Through the glass outside, the two women nearly floated into freedom.
Damien, however, did not move.
"What do you mean you're staying late?" he asked. "There's a family event at home. Kuku is waiting for you to—wait."
His expression changed.
The pieces clicked together.
"Are you avoiding the flag again?"
Alexander opened the mini fridge beside his desk, grabbed a soda, and shut it with more force than necessary.
"I'm not avoiding anything," he said. "I'm busy. You can go and tell Kuku exactly that. James can accept the flag instead."
Damien rubbed the bridge of his nose.
There it was. The real issue.
"Alex," he said, quieter now, stepping closer. "When I married Sofia, Mrs. Veronica accepted me like I was her own son. I appreciated that more than I can explain. It felt like my mother had come back to me with a different face." He paused. "I know you feel something similar. You see your parents in her too."
Alexander said nothing.
"Please go home," Damien continued. "For her sake. She's been waiting for you. Eagerly. She wants to see you accept the flag."
Alexander drank the soda in one long swallow and returned to his desk as if paperwork might save him from the conversation. He reached for another file.
Damien placed a hand over his wrist.
That stopped him.
"We all know you don't want to get married," Damien said. "Fine. We get it. You made a promise to your childhood friend, and no one is mocking that. But accepting the flag does not force you into marriage, Alex. It's tradition. Family. A gesture. Nothing more. Take it as fun, if that helps. Like a gift. But don't break Kuku's heart over something symbolic."
Alexander stared at the file in front of him for a long time.
Then, with the deep reluctance of a man signing his own torture order, he exhaled.
"Fine."
Damien's face softened in quiet victory.
After a long lecture and even longer persuasion, Alexander finally agreed to go home.
At the Shikongo mansion, the house was alive with movement.
Servants moved in and out of the halls carrying trays and cutlery. The chef shouted instructions from the kitchen. Aromas of roasted meat, spice, and celebration drifted through the air. It was not a large event, only a small post-wedding family gathering for Adam and Betty, who had married the previous weekend, but the house still pulsed with warm, expectant energy.
Everyone was waiting for Alexander.
More specifically, Kuku Veronica was waiting.
And when Kuku Veronica waited, the rest of the house obeyed.
The Shikongo family had a tradition. A marriage flag was passed to the next unmarried person in line, a symbol that their time to marry had come. Kuku Veronica had once had two sons and a daughter. One of her sons—Nathan, Alexander's father—had died years ago, leaving his only son behind. When Sofia married five years earlier, she had passed the flag to Adam. Now that Adam was married, tradition demanded that he pass it to Alexander.
Alexander, unfortunately, wanted no part of it.
He had refused the flag before. But Kuku Veronica still hoped.
Perhaps this time he would not disappoint her.
Alexander arrived in his Bentley with his PA, Ruben, who also lived at the mansion. Damien followed behind in his sedan.
The moment Alexander stepped out, tension settled over him like a second skin. He disliked crowds, disliked family functions even more, and disliked becoming the center of expectation most of all.
He looked like a man arriving at his own sentencing.
Ruben noticed the shift in him at once and moved slightly closer, guiding him toward the entrance with quiet awareness.
Then someone bumped into Ruben.
Hard.
He turned sharply, irritation flashing across his face more from the pain than the surprise.
"Sorry," the man muttered before continuing toward the house through the main entrance.
Ruben paused.
He had never seen him before.
The man was dressed in full black—an oversized hoodie, black trousers, head lowered, pace steady. In a house full of invited guests dressed for a family celebration, he looked out of place enough to ring every alarm bell Ruben had.
"Just a sec," Ruben said under his breath.
His hand drifted to the gun tucked at his waist, not drawing it, only checking that it was still there.
Then he followed.
The event was not huge, but the mansion was busy enough for strangers to blur into the crowd. By the time Ruben stepped inside, the suspicious man had already vanished among the guests and servants moving through the house.
Ruben's jaw tightened.
"Please don't be the boss," he muttered under his breath.
And for the first time that evening, his heartbeat lost its rhythm.