I walked without direction. My feet carried me down streets I barely registered — hawkers shouting, danfo conductors clinging to rusted doors, beggars rattling tins at junctions. Their voices came to me as though through water, muffled, distorted.
My hands trembled as I wrapped my arms around myself. I could still feel the sting of her slap on my cheek, still hear the grunt of Raymond beneath my fists, still see Bose's smile as she screamed his name.
I don't know how long I walked. My slippers dragged through dust and broken bottles, and still I kept moving, like if I stopped I would collapse and never rise again.
At one point, I ducked into a narrow alley and vomited. It was bitter and empty, just bile, but it left me shivering. People glanced at me, then turned away. Lagos has no time for broken women.
And all the while one thought thudded in my skull: betrayal upon betrayal. First Raymond, then the fire, then Bose. What more could Lagos take from me?
When I finally stopped walking, I realised where I was.
My burnt shop.
It pulled me back like a magnet, as though my grief had a compass pointing only here.
The air was still heavy, the smell of wet ash and burnt fabric and plastic hung stubbornly. The signboard with my name was still dangling, swaying in the hot afternoon breeze like a broken tooth refusing to fall.
I stepped across the caution tape, not caring if anyone stopped me. Nobody did. The place was abandoned now, the crowd long gone. Only the carcass of my dreams remained, blackened and skeletal.
I sank to my knees in the soot, my fingers clawing through ashes that used to be fabric, receipts, photographs of designs. My machines were nothing but twisted lumps of iron, their handles melted, their wheels fused.
And that was when the sob finally broke loose.
It tore through my chest, raw and ragged, shaking me until my whole body folded in on itself. My palms pressed against the floor of my shop — my once shop — and black streaks stained my skin. I smeared them across my face as I tried to wipe my tears, but there was no difference anymore between ash and grief.
"Why?" I choked into the silence. "Why?"
There was no answer. Only silence.
Officer, in that moment, sitting in the ashes of everything I had built, I thought of suicide. A kind of quiet darkness was consuming my chest, my body, my soul— slowly creeping in, whispering only one solution: end the ache, end the source.
And for the first time in my life, I understood how easy it could be to commit murder and suicide.
I curled up on the blackened floor, ash clinging to my hair, soot streaking my skin until I was unrecognisable even to myself. I held my knees to my chest like a child hiding from the world, and I let the despair swallow me whole.
The afternoon passed into shadow. I don't know how long I lay there, but when the coolness of evening descended, a different warmth reached me.
Hands — strong, firm, and trembling ever so slightly. Gregory's.
"Timi," his voice broke through the fog, deeper now, ragged with worry. "Timi, wake up."
I stirred, blinking against the twilight. His face hovered above mine, etched with something raw. Ash smeared my cheek and he brushed it away with a tenderness that undid me.
"You came back," I whispered.
His jaw tightened, as though the very idea of not coming back was unthinkable. "Of course I did. I'll always come back for you."
Officer, I know how that sounds. I know I should be ashamed of how those words warmed me, even as I sat in the ruins of my shop, even as my life unravelled. But in that moment, with his arms sliding under me to lift me from the ashes, I wanted to believe him. I wanted to believe in a man who would hold me, even when the world had burned everything else away.
He carried me outside the shell of my shop, ignoring the soot staining his shirt, ignoring the curious eyes of passersby who slowed to watch. To them it was gossip. To me, it was survival.
In his car, the silence was heavy. I could feel the fury simmering beneath his restraint, the kind of controlled rage that could so easily spill into violence if given direction. His hand tightened on the wheel, knuckles white, as he drove me away from the ruins.
He said nothing at first, but the muscles in his jaw twitched. His eyes, fixed on the road, darkened until they were near black. "If that bastard did this," he said at last, low and cold, "he hasn't just taken your shop. He's declared war."
My chest constricted. I should have felt comfort, knowing someone was willing to fight for me. But instead, dread coiled tighter. Because I had seen what rage could do in a man. I had lived under its fists. And I knew too well that revenge never ends where you think it will.
"Greg, promise me," I whispered, my hand covering his where it clenched the wheel. My voice trembled but I forced each word through my dry throat. "Don't go after him. Promise me."
His eyes flicked to mine, hot and unyielding. "Timi…" His voice was low, dangerous, like a blade scraping metal. "You don't know what you're asking me. He—he hurt you. He burned your life to ash. And you want me to sit here and do nothing?"
"We don't know that!" I shot back, tears spilling freely from my eyes. "I want you alive beside me, not in prison. Not six feet beneath. I can't lose everything and then lose you too."
He flinched at that last word — you. Something shifted in his gaze, a crack in the armour he wore so tightly. His jaw worked, the muscle ticking hard, but still he didn't give in.
I gripped his hand tighter, nails biting into his skin. "Gregory, please. I'm begging you. Don't fight this battle for me. Don't give Raymond the satisfaction of dragging you into his madness."
For a long moment, the only sound was the hum of the engine and my ragged breathing. Then, slowly, painfully, he exhaled through clenched teeth. His jaw ticked once more, then stilled.
"…Fine." The word was ground out like it hurt him to speak it. "I won't touch him. Not unless he comes near you again."
Relief crashed over me, but it was thin, fragile, because I could see it in his eyes — the fire hadn't gone out. He had only caged it, for me.
I leaned back, exhausted, tears drying on my cheeks. "Thank you," I whispered.
He didn't answer. His hand stayed on the wheel, rigid, the veins standing out like cords. But his silence was its own promise — one I prayed he would keep.
Officer, I should have felt peace. Instead, I felt the quiet before a storm.