Titi Iku: Until Death (Sequel To Irikuri)

25- Until Death, Literally

The day after we got back from the Thanksgiving trip, a public announcement was sent out by Ade's team, confirming we were married on June 20th, 2028. The marriage certificate was dated a couple days before it actually happened to avoid suspicion if Ximenes' body was ever found. Life did change a little bit, I had more security tailing me and of course my friends had a lot of questions, but slowly things simmered down. Two weeks post announcement and it felt like everything was returning to normal until Ade sat me down one night for a long conversation.

"So, I know you've been wondering why I've been so stressed lately. I've told you about some of the things going on, but I admit I should've told you more. It's just that you've been killing it this semester with your grades, your internship, your job, your clubs, and everything else you do- yet you still make time for me. I didn't want to add more to your plate. But, since you just finished your finals, I figured there was no better time to talk. As you know, I'm rebranding Xcel. Its new name is going to be NK Inc. Spelled NK but pronounced 'ink'"

"Wait what? Like Nki? After me?"

"No after the pen...yes after you! I really liked the play on words. It's like Ink Inc., it's kinda satisfying. Everything on the brand is going to have a black tear shaped drop because y'know, 'ink'. Almost like how 'Apple' has their apple, we're gonna have our ink drop. NK actually stands for Novel Keystones, but to be honest I just thought of Ink Inc. with your name and thought it was funny so I found letters to fit N and K. But I digress, this isn't the point. The point is that I've spent the past couple of months rebranding. The name was only the first step. The majority of what I've been doing hasn't been cosmetic or public image rebranding, it's been working out ethical issues within the company."

"...Besides the slavery?"

"I fucking know right! You'd think the slavery was enough, but noooo. I mean, not to get too deep with it, but it really does fucking suck. So many news outlets wrote articles saying Ximenes and I showed that America was the land of opportunity because two children of immigrants, one of them black, could accumulate such wealth. The fact that Ximenes and I were some of the only billionaires to have come from nothing, then become the richest people in the world, was mind blowing. In the back of my mind, I developed this mindset that if I did it, maybe everyone else could too. Not to the extent of that 'pull yourself up by your bootstraps' bullshit, but I really went around giving speeches about determination. About 'if you dream it, you can achieve it'. What a fucking joke! I was living a lie and I sold that lie to the world. Little did I know that where I got was a result of literal modern day slavery. Little did I know that the cobalt used in my batteries was mined by fucking child laborers in Congo, a country that barely gets a dime for the billions of dollars in technology it produces. Little did I know that when Xcel Tech absorbed Hull Energy PLC, they aborbed a gas company had been harassing and polluting villages in Nigeria to get oil for decades! Little did I know that the company that sells the bananas we have in our office breakroom, used a paramilitary death squad to murder their workers because they were unionizing! Everywhere I look, I see people with blood on their hands. People that have ignored, condoned or facilitated muder, corruption, bribery, child labor, slavery, genocide, paramilitaries, opression, and every other awful thing you can think of. And at the end of the day, I'm one of them."

"No, you're not." I reached for him and he gently moved my hand away.

"Stop. We can't sugarcoat any of this. You don't understand how serious I am right now. The way in which they sheltered me was very intentional. I was given access to Ximenes' things when he died and there are so many things this company did that he intentionally hid from me because he knew I had morals. But, he also knew I was an idiot. I was ignorant and privileged enough not to look into the ethical practices of a company that was making trillions of dollars off of me. If I heard about a human rights issue, yeah I'd donate. I'd throw all the money in the world at things as if I didn't have the fucking power to stop them at their sources. So, I was labeled a philanthropist. I could walk around like I was a good person and everyone would think I was a good person, but at the end of the day I was complicit until very recently. I know we've talked about a couple things I've done; It was all over the news when the company announced that we're building 100 new schools and set up a charity in Congo in addition to negotiating fair wages for mineworkers. However, I didn't mention how hard I had to work to be allowed to do that. Only one member of the board agreed with me on doing it for ethical reasons. I got three more members when I mentioned the good publicity it would bring to the company. The two more I needed to win the board vote only came around because I threatened to release a recording of the meeting to the public. Which, in hindsight, was a mistake. Baby, they are going to do everything in their power to get rid of me, one or way another. Congo is not the only way I have pissed them off. I have been cutting ties with every company that has grossly unethical practices, which means I have made an enemy out of at least a quarter of the biggest corporations in the US. I have made decisions for moral reasons that are going to cost some very important people a lot of money. When I am done changing this company, they are going to hate me, and I am going to have to pay for that somehow."