Chapter 33

Chapter Thirty-Three

Hlelolenkosi Hlophe

I woke up somewhere that felt painfully familiar: Lethabo's warehouse. Sunlight pooled through the high windows and the smell of freshly brewed coffee curled in the air. The kids were in the next room, quiet for once — probably still sleeping after the late-night panic. Slowly, I sat up and the memory crashed back in: Tshego gone, my phone full of missed calls, Ntando's voice shredded with fear.

When I stepped into the main room, everyone was already there. The women had been awake for hours — faces pale, eyes rimmed with red. The men were clustered together, bodies heavy with shame and exhaustion. We all moved like we'd been hollowed out.

They sat us down at the long table. The gents looked at each other, then at us, and finally the quiet was broken. For once, there was no clumsy pretense — only the raw truth waiting to be spoken.

I could barely breathe. Everything inside me was hot and broken. "You promised," I said, voice low and dangerous. "We are family. You are supposed to tell us everything. You don't leave us in the dark. Now my child is gone." My hands were shaking, and I could feel the tears under my skin. "Ntando — by the end of tomorrow Tshego must be in my arms. If not, hell will freeze over. Owami, umtwana — ngiyamfuna. He must be in one piece."

It came out like a prayer and a threat at once. The room tightened around the words. I could see the men flinch — they heard the truth in my tone.

I left the table and went to the small room I used when I stayed here, because I needed a second to breathe and to remember the sound of my son's laugh. Even for a minute I tried to imagine him safe, toddling toward me with sticky fingers. But the image slid away and the edges of panic sharpened again.

Nkululeko Zulu

No one wanted to speak, because no sentence could fix what had been done. Hlelo was furious — the kind of fury that comes from a woman who has been stripped of something she loves and told to be patient. I watched her shoulders tremble and wanted to crawl into myself and fix it, but there was nothing simple to do.

Then my phone buzzed. The name on the screen made my blood go cold: Rodrigo. I swallowed hard and motioned the others to the basement — some place private, away from the women's eyes. Down there the light was harsh and the air felt thick, like a place where hard things had been made and unmade.

We put the call on speaker. Rodrigo's voice came through, too smooth, too comfortable. He was almost laughing as he spoke.

"Gentlemen," he said, slow and satisfied. "I see you enjoyed Zanzibar. It was quite the show. I found your little ones — one for entertainment, one for leverage. If you want the boy back, you'll give me everything your crew has made in the last month. Territory. Trucks. Not a cut — the lot. Or you can come and try to take him back. I will enjoy watching you try."

His words landed like a slap. The men went silent, some of them folding their arms, others swearing under their breath. Rodrigo wasn't just making demands — he was gloating that he had found a way to hurt us where we'd never imagined.

I stared at the phone, taste of metal in my mouth. "You want our territory?" I asked aloud, because asking felt like breathing. "Do you know what you're asking? That's everything. You take that and we're finished."

Rodrigo's laugh was then, cold. "Then you are finished. Make your choice."

When we cut the call, the room felt smaller. Men's bravado evaporated and left a raw, exposed nerve. We argued fast and hot: pay him and be slaves to his appetite, or try to fight and risk starting a war that would swallow our people. There were no good answers. We all felt small, not because Rodrigo was big, but because he had found our softest point — our families — and he was squeezing.

"Listen," I said finally, my voice steadier than I felt. "We get the boy back. Nothing else matters. We'll burn whatever it takes. We don't hand over territory. We don't hand over people. Rodrigo thinks fear will finish us off. He's wrong. We'll go get the child."

Some heads shook at my words — fear flaring right back — but others closed in agreement. It was madness, it would be bloody, and it might end everything. But the alternative was worse: letting a man use a child to make us bow.

We left the basement with a new kind of focus: not the reckless bravado of before, but a hard, sharpened resolve. We had to find Tshego. We had to bring him home. We would pay for what we'd done, but not with our families as collateral.

Back upstairs, the women were waiting, eyes searching. We told them what we could — not the precise details, because there were no precise answers yet, only plans and fury and a terrible, pulsing worry. Hlelo's face was set with stone. Her words had already been put in the air and they would not be taken back.

Night fell over the warehouse. Somewhere far from us, Rodrigo sat with his smile still on his face, and our world had shifted into a fight none of us had wanted — but one we would no longer allow others to start for us.