The Airegin Mafias – Chapter 3 Part 6

“You are what?” General’s eyes widened in shock. 

Katherine kept a sad face, staring at him as he began to pace around the room. His previously bulged trouser had returned to the normal size as his erection disappeared immediately the news was broken. 

“But why now?” General asked his question aloud, not to Katherine or himself, it was rhetorical as he was staring up to the ceiling for answers. “I don’t think we have gathered enough money to stay on our own,” General said, now looking at Katherine. The intention he had was to suggest abortion to Katherine but he was scared to voice it out, he knew she wouldn’t take it well no matter how good he presented it.

“What other thing do we need to gather?” Katherine asked defensively. “My savings are enough to get us away from here and get an apartment somewhere far from here?”

“Are you suggesting that we run away?” General cut in.

“No but we have to leave here,” she insisted. “You know maids and workers here are not allowed to raise a family.”

“Yes, we won’t be allowed to have a kid here.”

“Yes, that’s why I’m suggesting that we make use of our savings now.” Katherine continued. “My savings can get us an apartment and even set up a small business for me, I’m sure your savings  would be far more than mine. You should be able to do something with it that’ll help us live well.”

“Never!” General objected in a loud voice. “That’s not the kind of situation I want to raise my family. I can’t train my kids by living on a meagre income.”

“Come on, how can you say that?” Katherine sparked off defensively. “Don’t you save? And even if you don’t save, there are places we can get money to start up a good business for you.”

“You don’t still get it Katherine,” General said, folding his arms as he stared at her thinly. “That kind of money can not help us get a good life.”

“What do you call a good life?” Katherine’s barked loudly at him, her frustration showed in her voice. “Do we have to live as rich as Lord Frederick? Come on, we are never going to be poor with all the monies we have saved here.” 

General paused and let out a deep breath, he didn’t like the way the argument between them had become heated. He proceeded towards Katherine slowly, he could see tears forming in her eyes already. 

“Sorry Kath,  I understand you.” He said as he rubbed his hands on her cheeks. A tear which rolled down her cheeks touched his fingers. “You know, its just that I don’t think we can leave here now.”

“Why not? What’s holding us back?” Katherine asked, taking his hands off her face. 

“Our services are still needed here… I mean Lord Frederick still needs me around him,” General said.

“Lord Frederick can get someone else to represent you and you know that,” Katherine argued.

“Kath, please try understand me.” General said softly, placing his hands on her shoulder. “Lord Frederick…”

“Enough!” Katherine cut in and shoved off his hands from her shoulder and proceeded towards the door. She held the handle and turned to face him, “I thought you said I was more important to you than any other thing in the world, I thought you said you could give up anything for us to spend the rest of our lives together.”

“Please understand me Kath…” General tried to speak but Katherine walked out without waiting to hear any other thing.

____

Lord Frederick finally opened his eyes from the thirty minutes rest he had after the several intimate sessions with his wife, Silvia was still fast asleep beside him. He placed a gentle kiss on her lips before rising up from the bed. He stretched as he placed his foot into his footwear. Then, he remembered that his phone was ringing during his session with his wife. He proceeded towards the drawer and took out his phone. He swiped down the notification bar and cleared all unnecessary notifications, then he saw the message from Don Pedro. He wondered what the urgent message Don Pedro wanted to relay to him was. His conclusion was that it must be concerning the mails they sent earlier. He dialed Don Pedro’s number and placed it on his ears. 

“Hey Pedro,” he said as the call was answered.

“Fred, why weren’t you picking your calls?” Don Pedro replied from the other end with a sleepy voice. 

“I was busy,” Lord Frederick replied briefly. 

“Okay, I wanted to tell you about Louis Hamilton’s reply, I already forwarded his acceptance to your mail.”

“Uhm… And is that the urgent message?” 

“No, there’s something else.” 

“Come on, answer me friend. I need to take a quick shower now.”

“I think Laura has read some of my private messages,” Don Pedro spilled. 

“Huh?”

“Yes, and if I’m correct, I’m afraid she could have gotten some information about what we do.”

____

Laura had given the debit card and Cheque book to Mabel in which she had settled all the bills for their purchase, they went back to the store together to wait for the delivery of the materials. The delivery took some hours from the scheduled time, all these and more were the excuses that Laura presented to Lucas and they had both agreed to postpone their lunch date to the next day, Lucas sounded a bit disappointed but Laura persuaded him. Laura just used the excuse of the material delivery but deep inside, she knew it was really because of her disturbed mind. She couldn’t take her mind of what she saw on Don Pedro’s laptop, if only she had more time to read through the message. Just that little she saw wasn’t enough for her but there was another thing that caught her attention about the mail, the sender’s name which was Louis Hamilton. The name had stuck immediately she saw it because it was synonymous to the name of her favourite actor, Lewis Hamilton. She quickly brought out her phone and typed the name into the Google search box of her phone’s browser, the page was yet to load when the delivery men arrived. She quickly rushed outside alongside her Aunty and most of their workers. 

She and Mabel made sure that the right and complete materials were being delivered and also supervised the offloading and taking in of the material. Mabel left her a large portion of the responsibility so as to review what she has learnt so far and to also correct her about some things that she was yet to be familiar with. After Mabel realised that Laura was almost perfect with how everything is done about delivery and storing of materials, she left her totally in charge and entered into her office. The offloading and loading finished under the space of an hour, Laura went to the store room to take stock of everything before going to Mabel’s room to fill her in about everything. Mabel was really impressed about Laura’s fast learning, Mabel was really happy, so much that he had gathered all her staffs around, only to tell them that Laura would be in charge of the runnings of the business anytime she herself is not readily available. 

After all was said and done, Laura had almost forgotten about what she was doing on her phone until she wanted to check for time on her phone, she slid the lock open and there was the page fully loaded, the first page result of the Louis Hamilton search showed her the Wikipedia page of various musicians, actors and some politicians too, after making sure to open all the informations about Louis Hamilton on the first page, she clicked on the second page and waited for it to load. The second page consisted of more of the activities of the celebrities which she saw in the first page, their movies, concerts and so on. She wanted to close the browser when something else came into her mind. She remembered the heading of the mail, “Demand for more nicotiana tabacum”. 

She decided to search for the phrase “nicotiana tabacum”. She typed it into the search engine and in few seconds, the search results displayed. The browser, displayed the page from the bottom instead of the top. Her heart skipped a beat as her eyes met with options displayed under the related searches. 

Cocaine, Coca, Hard Drugs, Coca plantation were some of the options.