Chapter 1 THE EVICTION

I am Joan James, 21 years old and a year 2 undergraduate in a popular university in the city. My parents aren't so rich but had struggled to maintain an education trust fund for my two siblings and i from birth that gave us the privilege of having the best of education. I wasn't such a brilliant type but managed to be an average student in my quest not to leave my parents disappointed.

It was a hot afternoon, my class had just ended as i made my way through the scotching sun to my classroom, i was interrupted by a smartly, neatly and richly dressed young man who introduced himself as Dickson Smith a 4th year medical student. I needed not be told what he wanted for the manner in which he stared at me left a lasting impression that he was in love with my curvy busty body or should i simply put it as he was in love with me. I seem to like him too anyway, smart, handsome rich looking kid. He requested my name and contact and demanded we be friends as he saw me to the school gate, he was fun to talk to but i was rather engaged in my plans to go home to my parents for the weekend. It was a regular practice for me to go home for weekends to help my mother in her petty store so she could go get supplies for the week. My thoughts was already in my journey home.

Reaching home, i met my family seated outside with our luggage littered outside, The landlord had forcefully ejected my parents out of his house, they have been unable to pay the rent for the past 5 months and the Landlord wasn't ready to hear any more of their excuses. The neighbourhood is a slum and the law wasn't much functional aound here, people live and act as they choose so he definitely needed no legal process to throw anyone out into the streets, all he needed was to get some street thugs known for their inhumanity led by the popular Bone Max leader of the pack. He is renowned to have held the police in a shootout that lasted hours and the cops had to give up visting the hood without the approval of Bone to avoid his fury

I was thrown into a state of confusion as i didn't know where to start from. Should i go console my wailing mother who screaming pleas on the landlord or make to stop the thugs who were violently flinging our wretched properties that looked like they were from the 80's or join my dad who was busy trying to negotiate with the landlord who was violently turning a deaf ear, or join my siblings who were picking the littered properties together. It was the height of humiliation to come home to. Soon the landlord and his thugs were done with their eviction, sealed the property and left in a commando style. I watched them walk away as my parents soon joined my siblings to pick our properties. I must have frozen at the view as i just stood there watching all that was happening, i soon joined my family in their task, confused and devastated not knowing what to do. My anger swelled by the second and i soon got up in anger and began to leave towards where the landlord had gone. Come here Joan screamed my father, where are you headed Joan asked my broken mother, i am going to have a word with the landlord i replied in tears, come back here continued my father but i was too angry to listen. I went where the landlord had gone. I needed not be told he was going to his corner office from where he managed his chain of properties in the neighborhood He spent most of his time in his office, he obviously seem to be trying to escape his nagging wife who was always heard ranting complaints at him whenever he went home and i am quite sure the landlord did some dirty stuffs in that office of his. He was quite an influential man who had inherited so much in real estate from his father who used to be a renowned drug baron before he met his death in a clash with some rival group over supremacy. The landlord sure doesn't have the nerve to walk in his shoes so he simply walked in his shadows but his father had done quite well for him to inherit.