His Brother Knows

Obinna doesn’t ask nicely. He slides an envelope across the table and says two words: “Walk away.”

Tola told Chinyere about the call.

Chinyere’s first response: “We need to go to the police.”

Tola’s response: “And tell them what? That my ex-boyfriend’s brother called me and said I should be careful? They’ll laugh us out of the station.”

“Then what? You just sit here and wait for these people to do something?”

“No. I meet him.”

Chinyere looked at her like she’d lost her mind. “Meet him? Meet the man who just threatened you on the phone at 10pm?”

“He didn’t threaten me. He gave me ‘advice.’ There’s a difference.” Tola made quotation marks with her fingers. “If I run from this, they win. They’ll know I’m scared and they’ll use it. But if I show up, look him in the face, and let him say whatever he wants to say, I’ll know exactly what I’m dealing with.”

“Tola, this is not a movie.”

“I know. In movies, the girl usually has backup. I have you.”

Chinyere stared at her for a long time. Then she sighed the kind of sigh that meant “I think this is a terrible idea but I love you so I’m coming anyway.”

“Where?”

“Somewhere public. Daytime. Lots of people.”

“And I’m sitting at the next table.”

“I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

They picked a café in Victoria Island. The kind of place where tech bros have meetings and influencers take pictures of their coffee. Bright. Open. Full of people. Nobody was going to try anything stupid in here.

Tola got there at noon. Chinyere was already seated three tables away, wearing sunglasses like she was undercover. Tola would have laughed if her hands weren’t trembling.

Obinna arrived at 12:15. Fifteen minutes late. Tola noticed that. Power move. The kind of man who makes you wait because he thinks his time is more valuable than yours.

He was taller than Dubem. Broader. Older by maybe three or four years. He wore a grey suit with no tie. Gold watch. The same smooth walk. The same easy confidence. But where Dubem’s charm felt like warmth, Obinna’s felt like ice wrapped in a handshake.

He sat down across from her. Didn’t smile. Didn’t greet. Just looked at her for a few seconds, like he was sizing her up.

“Thank you for meeting me,” he said.

“You didn’t give me much choice.”

“There’s always a choice, Adetola. That’s actually why I’m here.”

He ordered black coffee. She ordered nothing. She wasn’t here to eat.

“Let me be direct,” he said. “My brother is a flawed man. I know that. I’m not here to defend what he did to you. He was wrong. He should have been honest about his marriage. I’ve told him that myself.”

“How generous of you.”

He ignored that. “But what’s done is done. The relationship is over. You’ve moved on, he’ll move on, life continues. The problem is what’s happening now. You’ve been in contact with his wife. You’ve been asking questions about his business. And I need you to understand that those are two very different things.”

“Different how?”

“His marriage is his marriage. If it falls apart because of his choices, that’s his problem. But his business? That involves other people. Important people. People who don’t appreciate attention.”

He said “important people” the way someone says “deep water.” You don’t need to see the bottom to know you shouldn’t swim there.

“I don’t care about his business,” Tola said. “I didn’t go looking for any of this. A receipt fell out of his pocket and everything unraveled from there. If your brother had been honest from the beginning, we wouldn’t be sitting here.”

“I agree. But here we are.” He reached into his jacket and pulled out a white envelope. Placed it on the table between them. Slid it forward with two fingers.

“What’s that?”

“Call it an apology. From the family. For your trouble and your time.”

Tola looked at the envelope. She didn’t touch it. “How much is in there?”

“Enough.”

“Enough for what?”

“Enough for you to move on comfortably. Find a new apartment. Take a trip. Whatever you want. All I ask in return is that you stop talking to Nkem and stop asking questions about things that don’t concern you.”

The café buzzed around them. Espresso machines. Laptop keyboards. Someone laughed at the table behind them. Normal sounds in a normal place where a very abnormal conversation was happening.

Tola looked at the envelope. Then she looked at Obinna. At his gold watch. His pressed suit. His calm, unbothered face. This man had probably done this before. Sat across from someone, slid an envelope, made a problem go away. Clean. Quiet. Professional.

“I don’t want your money.”

Something shifted in his eyes. Just slightly. Like a door that was expected to open and didn’t.

“Think carefully, Adetola.”

“I’ve been thinking carefully for weeks. That’s why I’m here.” She leaned forward. “I don’t want your money. I want your brother to tell his wife the truth. All of it. Not just about me. About the girl before me. About whatever he’s doing with government contracts and fake offices and bank transfers that don’t make sense.”

Obinna’s jaw tightened. First crack in the ice.

“My brother’s marriage is not your concern.”

“He made it my concern when he lied to me for three months.”

“You’re a smart girl. Smart girls know when to walk away.”

“And smart men don’t sit in cafés trying to buy women’s silence with envelopes.”

Something passed across his face. Not anger exactly. More like reassessment. Like he had walked in expecting one kind of woman and found another.

He took the envelope back. Slipped it into his jacket. Stood up. Buttoned his suit.

“I hope you know what you’re doing, Adetola.”

“I hope you do too, Obinna.”

He left. Didn’t look back. His coffee sat untouched on the table.

Chinyere appeared within seconds. Sat down in the chair Obinna had just left. Her sunglasses were on her head now and her eyes were wide.

“I heard everything. Tola, that man is dangerous.”

“I know.”

“So what do we do?”

“We keep going.”

She got home at 3pm. Normal afternoon. Quiet street. She walked to her door and stopped.

There was a box on her doorstep. Small. White. No name. No label. No delivery sticker.

She picked it up. Opened it.

A brand new iPhone. Still sealed. Latest model.

No note inside the box. But the phone was already set up. Already charged. She pressed the power button and the screen lit up. One notification. One message.

“Last chance, Tola. Let it go.”

No sender name. No number. Just those six words glowing on a screen she didn’t buy, delivered to a door she thought nobody was watching.

She stood there, holding this phone that cost more than her rent, reading a message that was dressed like advice but smelled like a threat.

She should have been scared. Part of her was. But a bigger part of her, the part that had been growing since the night she found that receipt, felt something else entirely.

Anger.

She walked inside. Locked the door. Sat down. And called Nkem.

“They’re trying to shut me up. Which means we’re close to something they don’t want us to find.”

Nkem was quiet for a moment. Then she said: “I know. Because Dubem hasn’t come home in two days. Something is happening.”

Something was happening. And it was too late to stop it.

END OF EPISODE 10