Fighting Back

Bimbola decided she would not go down without trying to protect herself first.

She started quietly, subtly asking around about Solomon’s background through a cousin who worked in records at a government office, careful not to raise suspicion. What she learned confirmed what he’d already told her: Adaeze Chukwuemeka, twenty years old, found dead outside Benin City three years ago, case unresolved, quietly forgotten the way such cases often were when the victim had no powerful family to demand answers.

Solomon, she learned, had spent those three years methodically building toward this moment. He’d taken a job as an accountant, learned everything he could about her movements in Lagos, joined the church only after confirming, through weeks of careful surveillance, that Sister Bimbola Adeyanju-Coker was indeed the same Bimbola from Sapele Road.

This wasn’t impulsive revenge. This was a man who’d spent three years grieving and planning in equal measure, and that frightened her more than anything.

She had no leverage against grief like that. Money wouldn’t touch it. Threats would only harden his resolve. She was, she realized with growing despair, entirely at his mercy.

Meanwhile, Oluwasegun’s patience had finally worn thin.

“I’ve given you space,” he said one evening, closing his study door so the children helping with cleanup outside wouldn’t overhear. “I’ve told myself it’s stress, it’s the conference, it’s whatever excuse felt easiest to believe. But Bimbola, you’ve been a stranger in your own house for weeks.”

“Segun, please—”

“Is there someone else?” he asked, the question landing like a blow neither of them expected him to actually voice. “Is that what this is? Because I need you to tell me the truth, whatever it is.”

Bimbola stared at her husband, a good man, an honest man, a man who had built his entire ministry on the belief that truth eventually set people free, and felt the weight of nine years of careful lying pressing down on her chest until she could barely breathe.

“There’s no one else,” she said, which was true. “But there is something I haven’t told you. Something from before we met.”

Oluwasegun’s expression shifted, wariness and fear mixing with the patience he’d clearly been holding onto by a thread. “Then tell me now.”

Bimbola opened her mouth, the truth finally within reach after nine years of burial, when her phone buzzed sharply on the table between them.

A text from an unknown number: Tell your husband everything, Sister Bimbola. Or I will. You have until Sunday.

Beneath it, a second message arrived seconds later, from a different unknown number entirely: Long time, Bimbola. Osas sends his regards. We should talk before your Sunday deadline arrives.

Bimbola stared at both messages, her past finally closing in from two directions at once, and understood that whatever she told Oluwasegun in the next few minutes would need to be the whole truth, because there would be no more time left to control the story herself.

To be continued…

Now that Osas has directly reached out, do you think he and Solomon will work together, or against each other?