Unavoidably Yours.

Chapter Seven: "Odeshi! It kant possible."

KITAN

Monday morning finds Kitan trapped in the back seat of his father’s Mercedes, wearing a navy blue shirt he does not particularly like and a dark grey suit that feels unsuitable for the Nigerian climate. His mother had stood outside his bedroom door earlier, refusing to let him leave until he changed, insisting the stiff fabric of the shirt made him “look responsible.” Which, in Kitan’s opinion, is exactly the problem.

The driver navigates the final turn, and the corporate headquarters of Peters Holdings comes into view, commanding a prime piece of real estate along the main commercial strip of Alfred Rewane Road.

The structure rises cleanly above the neighbouring complexes, a massive, ten-storey monument of reflective dark glass and dark granite stone, its long vertical windows catching the morning light.

Outside, the property is a hive of activity. Well-dressed employees stream steadily through the security turnstiles, colour-coded electronic ID lanyards swinging from their necks and phones pressed to their ears, their conversations already fast-paced before the official workday has even begun.

The Mercedes pulls up smoothly beneath the wide, concrete front canopy of the drop-off zone.

“Oga, we’ve arrived.”

Kitan nods absently, clears his throat, and steps out into the humid air.

The contrast is instant the moment he pushes through the heavy glass revolving doors; a blast of aggressive, ice-cold air conditioning hits him, smelling faintly of expensive lemon-scented cleaning polish.

The white marble floors gleam beneath recessed LED lighting, polished to such a high mirror finish that the click-clack of heels across the expanse sounds sharper, echoing off the high ceilings.

To the right of the main reception desk, a massive, illuminated scale model stretches beneath a pristine glass casing. It is a sprawling architectural layout of tiny paved roads, towering luxury apartment blocks, manicured green lawns, and miniature streetlights.

Kitan slows his pace, pausing instinctively beside the display.

“Eko Crest Residences.”

He looks up to see Mr. Lawson walking toward him from across the lobby, a sleek tablet tucked securely beneath one arm. To the rest of the employees at Peters Holdings, the grey-haired man approaching is the formidable Chief Operating Officer, his father’s brilliant close friend and right-hand man.

But to Kitan, he is simply Uncle Lawson. He was the man who had sat at their family dining table many Sunday afternoons for twenty-five years, debating politics with his father over plates of food.

He had paid for Kitan’s first stethoscope when he got into medical school and had been a steady anchor through every major family celebration and crisis alike. If his father built the spine of Peters Holdings, Uncle Lawson was the one who kept the heart beating.

“Uncle Lawson.”

“Kitan.” The older man’s face lights up with a warm, genuine smile as he extends a hand.

“Good to see you, my boy. Glad to finally have you here.”

“I’m just here to observe, Uncle. Don’t let me disrupt anything.”

“That means you’re settling in properly already. Deflecting responsibility on day one.”

Kitan lets out a breathless, low laugh.

Lawson glances down at the miniature towers beside them, his eyes softening. “Your father was entirely obsessed with this project for almost two years. He drew the initial concept on a napkin during a flight from London.”

“It looks incredibly expensive.”

“It was expensive,” Lawson agrees, his tone dry. “Nearly bankrupted our liquidity in Q1, but your father refused to back down.”

“To be fair, looking at the scale of it, I’m sure it was worth the headache.”

Lawson chuckles, nodding in agreement as he gestures with his tablet toward the restricted executive elevators. “Come, let’s get you upstairs before the morning briefing starts.”

As they cross the high-ceilinged lobby, the atmosphere shifts around Lawson. Security guards straighten their postures, and passing staff members offer respectful nods, their greetings cutting through the air in rapid successions.

“Morning, sir.”

“Good morning, Mr. Lawson.”

“Sir, Legal just sent the revised joint-venture documents upstairs to your desk.”

Lawson acknowledges each of them with an easy, practised wave of his hand, navigating the crowd without once breaking his stride. Kitan watches him, deeply aware of the invisible current of authority his uncle carries. It is a profound, earnest respect built over decades of loyalty to the company.

The executive elevator chimes, swallowing them whole and shooting upward in a stomach-dropping rush. When the doors slide open on the top floor, the chaotic energy of the lower lobby completely evaporates.

Here, the air is thick with the scent of rich leather and old money. Deep plush charcoal carpeting swallows the sound of their shoes entirely, creating an almost reverent silence. The hallway stretches out ahead of them, lined on one side by floor-to-ceiling glass panels that reveal sleek, minimalist offices where senior partners sit behind dark mahogany desks.

On the other side, the entire length of the corridor opens up to a breathtaking panorama, punctuated by cranes and half-finished high-rises, stretching all the way down to the murky blue waters of the lagoon gleaming in the morning sun.

Lawson guides him forward at a deliberate pace, letting him absorb the tempo of the floor.

“Your father started with basic residential development,” Lawson says, his voice carrying the easy cadence of an old historian. “Middle-income housing, mostly. Then we transitioned into commercial properties. By the time the federal infrastructure contracts started rolling in, the enterprise had already expanded far beyond his initial blueprints.”

Kitan’s gaze drifts through the clear glass pane of a conference room as they pass.

Architectural renderings and topographic blueprints cover an entire wall inside. A junior architect stands by a whiteboard, gesturing sharply toward what looks like storm-drainage layouts, while three senior executives argue over projected timelines with crossed arms.

“How many staff do you have?”

“Across all operational branches? A little over four hundred.”

Kitan lets out a low whistle.

Lawson’s lips twitch with amusement at the reaction. “We have fully staffed regional offices in Abuja and Port Harcourt as well. Most of the project management teams are highly mobile, shifting across the country depending on active construction sites.”

As they continue down the corridor, Lawson introduces him to the passing members of executive management, anchoring each face with a title.

Mrs. Adebayo, the Head of Legal, handles his handshake with a grip that could crush granite. She studies his face for a beat before a knowing smile breaks through her severe expression. “Ah. So you’re the son who escaped to London.”

Kitan blinks, caught off guard, before a genuine laugh escapes him. “Is it that obvious?”

“My dear, your father complained about your strong mind for years.”

“Wonderful to know my reputation precedes me.”

She offers a quick, reassuring pat on his arm before disappearing into a nearby meeting room.

Farther down the hallway, Lawson pauses beside a tall, impeccably tailored man speaking sharply into a phone, his northern accent clipped and precise.

“—I don’t care what Procurement promised the sub-contractors. We are absolutely not approving revised variation figures without signed site logs. Hold the invoice.”

The man ends the call with a curt flick of his thumb, taking a brief breath to smooth down his features before turning to face them.

“Ibrahim,” Lawson says, stepping in. “Kitan, this is Ibrahim Dantata. Our Head of Project Execution.”

Dantata’s tense posture relaxes slightly as he extends a hand. He looks Kitan over with a sharp, calculating gaze. “The doctor, I presume.”

“The one and only.”

“It’s unusual for this environment.” Dantata glances toward Lawson briefly before looking back at Kitan. “Real estate isn’t exactly a part-time hobby.”

“Don’t intimidate the boy on his first morning, Ibrahim,” Lawson interjects mildly.

“I’m just being honest” Dantata’s mouth curves into a faint, dry grin as he nods at Kitan.

“You’ll survive, don’t worry. Welcome on board.” He excuses himself with a brief nod, heading toward the elevators with quick steps.

Kitan watches him go, noting the tight set of the man’s shoulders. “Is he always that uptight? He seems stressed.”

“He usually is,” Lawson replies, his tone perfectly even as they reach the double doors of the boardroom. “Project execution is where all our theoretical plans meet reality. It’s where most of the fires start.”

The quarterly board briefing commences precisely at ten o’clock.

For the first twenty minutes, Kitan sits near the edge of the long mahogany table, trying to decode language that sounds vaguely like English but is somehow still incomprehensible.

Land banking. Equity exposure. Site acquisition timelines. Regulatory bottlenecks.

A massive, high-resolution satellite map of the Federal Capital Territory is projected onto the central screen. Executives debate infrastructure corridors and commercial viability projections with the intense, aggressive gravity of military generals arguing over national security.

Kitan remains entirely silent, retreating into the background to watch the room. He treats the table like a clinical round, listening to the symptoms without offering a premature diagnosis.

Lawson occasionally leans in close to explain terms under his breath without making a spectacle of it.

“SPV, what’s that?” Kitan murmurs under his breath, leaning slightly toward his uncle.

“Special Purpose Vehicle,” Lawson whispers back, not breaking his gaze from the slide presentation. “A clean subsidiary company set up exclusively for a single project to isolate financial risk.”

Kitan nods slowly, logging it away.

Ten minutes later, during a slide on projected cash flows, Kitan leans in again. “Yield seems to be a recurring phrase today.”

The observation catches Lawson off guard, nearly causing him to choke on his morning coffee. He clears his throat into a napkin, suppressing a chuckle.

By midday, a dull, throbbing headache has begun to take root right behind Kitan’s temples.

Yet, beneath the dense layers of corporate vocabulary and complex financial modeling, certain anomalies begin to stand out to him.

It isn’t any specific data point that catches his attention, but rather a distinct shift in behavior.

Every single time the discussion veers toward a particular luxury estate project in Abuja, the vibe around the table alters almost imperceptibly. He notices the tiny, unnatural hesitations.

He hears the sudden, careful curation of words. At one point, a rapid, loaded glance is exchanged between two senior asset managers before another executive quickly steps in to steer the conversation back to safer ground.

Midway through a heated discussion on construction reconciliation timelines, Kunle Fajemirokun, the Chief Financial Officer, smoothly cuts off the presenter.

“We can revisit those specific audit numbers during the closed-door session later this month,” Kunle says, his voice a polished, unhurried drawl as he clicks to the next slide. “The immediate priority for the board today is our current liquidity positioning.”

The room moves on to the new topic without a single murmur of protest, but Kitan catches the omission immediately. Nobody actually answered the original question about the missing site receipts.

He registers the smaller reactions too. He tracks the way Dantata’s fingers rhythmically drum against the polished wood before the man goes completely silent, withdrawing from the discussion entirely. He notes the way one of the project directors suddenly avoids eye contact, staring intently at his tablet.

Medical residency trains a mind to observe the patient’s subtle physical tells long before looking at the lab results. Patterns first. Symptoms second. Diagnosis last.

By the time the heavy leather chairs slide back and the meeting finally adjourns, Kitan has only understood about thirty percent of the technical strategy. But as he stands up to stretch his back, he understands enough to know one thing for certain.

Something deep inside his father’s empire is under immense, fracturing strain.

*********

By the time Kitan walks through the front door of his parent’s home that evening, his head is pounding with a vicious, dull ache. An entire day of unfamiliar terminology, endless slide decks, and high-stakes conversations where everybody else around the table seemed to instinctively grasp the subtext ten seconds before he even processed the words.

He tosses his car keys onto the dresser inside his bedroom, pulling his tie loose with a sharp, irritated tug before collapsing backward onto the mattress fully clothed. For a long time, he simply stares at the ceiling plaster, letting the quiet room slowly siphon off the day’s stress.

His phone buzzes against his thigh. He pulls it out.

Enitan:

Kit Kat. How was day one of corporate capture?

A small, genuine smile breaks through his fatigue, tugging at the corner of his mouth.

Kitan:

Cheeseballs, it was fine.

The typing bubble appears instantly.

Enitan:

Cheeseballs???

Kitan:

Yes naw. Since we’re resurrecting embarrassing nicknames.

Enitan:

Omg. Please, that was a lifetime ago. I am a big girl now.

Kitan grins, his thumbs flying across the screen.

Kitan:

Do you even still eat cheeseballs?

The three dots appear. Disappear. Then return.

Enitan:

Unfortunately, yes.

And Ribena.

He lets out a breathless laugh, the tension in his shoulders loosening.

Kitan:

Some things never change.

Enitan:

Please abeg, I do not identify with that version of myself anymore. Like I said, big girl now.

Kitan:

Na you sabi. Have you eaten?

There is a noticeable pause before her next bubble drops into the chat.

Enitan:

You think you’re sleek. Answer my own question first.

Enitan:

How was your first day of work, Kitan? Genuinely.

He stares at the glowing screen for a moment, the humor fading as the reality of the day he had settles back over him. He types a single word.

Kitan:

Hard.

Then, before he can second-guess the impulse, he types:

Kitan:

Can I call you?

Kitan:

Or are you talking to one of your boyfriends?

Her reply is nearly instantaneous.

Enitan:

Which boyfriend? Call me jare.

He presses the dial icon before she can change her mind. She picks up on the second ring.

“Hello?”

There’s rustling in the background punctuated by the steady hum of a microwave.

“What are you doing?” he asks, resting the phone against his ear.

“Trying to eat before I pass out.” Her voice sounds laden with her own workday exhaustion, but there is a lighter, softer cadence to it now that she’s speaking to him. “How bad was it?”.

Kitan exhales deeply, dragging his forearm across his eyes. “Why do you always wait until you’re on the verge of starvation before you remember to eat?”

“Uhm, that is not what I asked you o. Please stay on topic.”

“Omo.” He sits up, shifting until his back is resting flat against the headboard. “I spent six hours in different meetings understanding absolutely nothing. It was incredible.”

Enitan laughs softly, the sound traveling warmly through the speaker. “It couldn’t have been that bad.”

“It was terrible. I am serious.” He rubs a tired hand over his jaw, his fingers catching on the stubble. “Everybody kept throwing around terms like equity exposure and asset optimization with so much confidence, and I was just sitting there fighting for my life. I felt entirely stupid half the time.”

On the other end of the line, the microwave delivers a soft, electronic beep.

Enitan’s tone gentles, losing its teasing edge completely. “You are not stupid, Kitan.”

“I know that logically,” he says, looking down at his free hand. “But at my actual job, I know exactly who I am and what I’m doing. I walk into A&E and I know the room belongs to me. I know how to make split-second decisions under immense pressure. That’s my playground.”

He exhales a long, frustrated breath. “Today, I felt like an imposter. It’s a very strange, uncomfortable thing to start from absolute scratch when you’re used to being a sought-after expert in your own field.”

“You’ve only been there for one day, Kit.”

“I know.”

“Did you honestly expect to wake up and inherit over twenty years of corporate real estate strategy overnight?”

He snorts softly. “Maybe a little bit.”

“Abeg.” He hears the clink of a ceramic plate against the counter as she moves. “You are literally one of the smartest people I know. It’s actually quite annoying how easily things usually click for you.”

“Why does this sound like a backhanded compliment?”

“Because it is.”

Kitan laughs under his breath, the heavy knot in his chest dissolving a little further.

“But you’re also being too hard on yourself.” Enitan continues, her voice growing thoughtful as she walks toward her dining table. “You’ve spent your entire adult life building excellence at what you do. Of course pivoting into a completely different world is going to feel jarring. It’s supposed to. Plus, I doubt all those people there gained all that knowledge in one day. You have to give it time.”

“Hmm.”

“And for what it’s worth, most people would’ve run away after today.”

“Oh, the thought crossed my mind at least five times.”

“See? But you stayed. That’s resilience.”

“Says the person who is just eating at 10pm”

“Mind your business”

“What are you even eating?”

“Fried rice.”

“Did you actually cook?”

“...It is professionally prepared restaurant rice.”

Kitan bursts into a proper, loud laugh. “I for say! I was wondering when you suddenly developed culinary skills.”

“Please, leave me alone.” He can practically hear the dramatic roll of her eyes through the line. She settles into her dining chair, taking a bite before speaking again. “You know what’s funny? I can almost bet that every single person in that office probably thinks that you adapted perfectly.”

Kitan frowns slightly. “Haba…”

“I’m serious. Including your mum.” She says it with absolute certainty. “You have one of those faces that makes people assume you’re completely in control, even when you’re mentally fighting for your life.”

He lets out a defeated chuckle because annoyingly enough, she’s right.

The conversation drifts after that. They talk about mundane things. Work, general life,
Oyinda’s latest pregnancy complaint. Easy things. Familiar things.

By the time the call ends nearly forty minutes later, Kitan realizes he feels entirely different than he did an hour ago. The crushing weight of his frustration has receded, smoothed out by the easy familiarity of her voice.

He hadn’t realized how desperately he needed a safe harbor, someone with whom he rarely had to try to be anything else but himself, until she provided it without him even having to ask.

The terrifying part is the sudden, pulling urge to hit redial and do it all over again.

He catches the impulse almost immediately, his jaw tightening as he reins himself in. He stares at the ceiling, firmly reminding his own brain that she is his younger sister’s best friend. Off-limits. A line he has no business crossing.

“Odeshi,” he whispers into the dark room, invoking the slang like a protective charm against his own thoughts before closing his eyes to sleep.

---

Author’s Note: Are you team slow burn or team Odeshi? 🤭

Odeshi (A Nigerian Slang): I’m unaffected or it won’t work on me.

Catch up: Chapter one, Chapter Two, Chapter Three, Chapter Four, Chapter Five, and Chapter Six.

See you next week Monday.🫶🏽