"Stay here," Mwansa commanded, his voice returning to the iron tone of a man who owned the skyline. "My security will handle this. We'll exit through the basement."
"Handle them how, Mwansa?" I snapped, already hiking up the heavy silk of my skirt. "By pushing them further into the dirt? Those are people, not 'operational bloat.'"
"Chileshe, don't be a martyr. You're wearing five million Kwacha around your neck. You go down there, and you're not a 'daughter of the people' anymore. You're the enemy's trophy."
He was right. I looked at the emerald reflecting in the glass—green, cold, and heavy. But I also remembered the smell of my father's certificate of service, the way it smelled like old paper and broken dreams.
"Then I'll take it off," I said.
I unclipped the necklace. The weight left my throat, but the fire stayed. I handed the jewels to a stunned Mwansa and walked toward the elevators before he could stop me.
The South Gate was a chaos of flickering torches and cardboard signs. The smell hit me first—not the expensive jasmine of the gala, but the smell of Lusaka: dust, rain, and the metallic tang of old tires burning.
"TEMBO IS A THIEF!" the crowd roared. "WHERE IS OUR SEVERANCE?"
I pushed through the security line. The guards tried to block me until they saw my face—the face from every billboard and newspaper for the last month.
"Let her through!" someone screamed.
I stepped into the light of the torches. The silence that followed was more terrifying than the noise. Five hundred pairs of eyes looked at my emerald dress. I felt like a neon sign of everything they hated.
Then, I saw him.
In the front row, holding a sign that said **EXPLOITATION IS NOT EFFICIENCY**, was my cousin, **Mulenga**. He was twenty-four, an engineering student whose tuition was currently being paid by my "stipend."
Our eyes met. The shame that washed over me was hotter than any camera flash.
"Chileshe?" Mulenga asked, his voice cracking. "Is that you under all that money?"
"Mulenga, I—"
"We thought you were our inside man!" a woman shouted from the back. It was Mrs. Phiri, whose husband had worked with my father for twenty years. "We thought you married him to speak for us! But you just moved to Leopards Hill and forgot the way to Chelstone!"
"I haven't forgotten!" I shouted back, stepping closer to the fence. "I'm the reason my father has his medicine! I'm the reason—"
"You're the reason he's quiet," Mulenga interrupted, stepping up to the bars. He looked at my dress with a disgust that hurt more than Lombe's insults. "He's ashamed, Chileshe. He eats the food you buy, but he chokes on it. You didn't save us. You just bought us a comfortable grave."
A rock hit the fence near my head. The security guards surged forward, batons raised.
"No! Stop!" I screamed.
Suddenly, a heavy coat was draped over my shoulders. I didn't have to look up to know it was Mwansa. He smelled of sandalwood and power. He stepped in front of me, shielding me from the crowd.
"The police are three minutes away," he whispered in my ear. "Get in the car."
"Look at them, Mwansa," I gripped his arm, my nails digging into his expensive suit. "Look at my cousin. Tell him about 'human capital reduction' to his face."
Mwansa looked. For the first time, he didn't look away. He looked at Mulenga, then at the desperate, angry faces of the men he had fired. He didn't offer a speech. He didn't offer a lie.
He did something worse. He reached into his pocket, took out a stack of K200 notes—the kind he kept for tips—and tried to hand them through the fence.
The crowd went ballistic.
"You think we are beggars?" Mulenga roared, grabbing the notes and throwing them back at Mwansa's face. The money fluttered in the air like confetti at a funeral. "We want our dignity! We want our jobs!"
The police sirens wailed in the distance, growing louder. The blue and red lights began to bounce off the glass buildings.
"Move!" Mwansa grabbed my hand and pulled me toward the waiting car.
We dived into the back of the Maybach just as the first tear gas canister popped, sending a plume of acrid white smoke into the night air. As the car sped away, I looked out the rear window. I saw Mulenga being pushed to the ground. I saw the money—my "husband's" money—being trampled into the Lusaka mud.
I turned to Mwansa. He was sitting in the corner of the seat, his face a mask of stone. But his hands were shaking.
"You tried to pay them off," I whispered, the horror rising in my throat. "Like they were a bill you forgot to settle."
"I tried to help," he growled.
"No. You tried to make them go away. There's a difference."
I looked at the emerald necklace sitting on the seat between us. It looked like a cold, green eye, watching the wreck of our lives.
"The contract is still valid, Chileshe," Mwansa said, his voice trembling with a mix of anger and something that sounded suspiciously like fear. "We have eighteen months left."
"Eighteen months," I repeated, looking at the smoke fading in the distance. "I don't think I'm going to survive the first six."
I realized then that the war wasn't between the rich and the poor. The war was inside this car. And I was married to the enemy.
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