She DM’d Me

The wife she was never supposed to meet just sent a message. And she’s not angry at Tola.

Tola sat in that car park for fifteen minutes staring at the message.

“Hi. I think we need to talk. I know who you are.”

Her first instinct was to delete it. Block the account. Throw the phone out the window. Drive home and pretend none of this was happening.

Her second instinct was to call Chinyere.

She called Chinyere.

“She messaged me.”

“Who messaged you?”

“Nkem. His wife. She just sent me a DM. Right now. Just now.”

Silence. Then she heard Chinyere’s car door open. Footsteps. Chinyere appeared at Tola’s window in under a minute, breathing hard, eyes wide.

“Show me.”

Tola held up the phone. Chinyere read it. Read it again. Then she leaned against the car and said, “God is writing a Nollywood script with your life.”

“What do I do?”

“Reply.”

“And say what?”

Chinyere looked at her. “The truth. What else is left?”

Tola waited until she got home. She showered. Changed into the old t-shirt she wore when she needed comfort. Sat on her bed with her back against the wall. And opened the DM.

She typed. Deleted. Typed again. Deleted again.

Finally she sent: “Hi Nkem. I don’t know how you found me, but I think you’re right. We should talk.”

The reply came in forty seconds.

“Thank you for responding. I wasn’t sure you would.”

Then another message: “I want you to know something first. I’m not angry at you. I know that sounds strange. But I’m not.”

Tola stared at those words. She had prepared herself for anger. For insults. For “stay away from my husband.” She had not prepared for this.

“How did you find me?” Tola asked.

“Dubem came home two weeks ago acting strange. Distant. Checking his phones more than usual. I’ve known about the second phone for months. I was just too scared to look. That night I finally looked.”

Tola’s chest tightened.

“I found your number. Your chats. Your pictures together. Everything.”

“I’m so sorry, Nkem.”

“Don’t apologize. You didn’t know about me. That’s what I keep telling myself. You didn’t know. If anyone should apologize, it’s him. But we both know he won’t.”

The messages kept coming. Not fast and frantic. Slow. Measured. Like Nkem had been sitting with these words for days, weeks even, and was finally letting them out one at a time.

“I moved to Abuja for him. I left my job in Enugu. My mother didn’t want me to go but I said ‘Mummy, he’s my husband, I have to follow him.’ She cried at the airport. I told her she was being dramatic.”

“The first year was fine. He traveled a lot. Lagos, Port Harcourt, sometimes Accra. He said it was consulting. Meetings. Clients. I didn’t question it because I trusted him. He was my husband. Why would I question my husband?”

Tola read every word. She could hear Nkem’s voice even though they’d never spoken out loud. She could hear the tiredness. The resignation. The sound of a woman who had been lying to herself for much longer than Tola had.

Then Nkem sent something that stopped Tola cold.

“You’re not the first.”

Tola read it three times.

“What do you mean?”

“Before you, there was someone else. A girl in Port Harcourt. I found those messages too. That one ended last year. I don’t know how. Maybe he got bored. Maybe she found out. I don’t know. But you are not the first woman my husband has done this to.”

Tola put the phone down. Pressed her palms against her eyes.

Not the first. She wasn’t special. She wasn’t even the first mistake. She was just the latest one. The newest version of a pattern this man had been running for God knows how long.

She picked the phone back up.

“Why didn’t you leave when you found out about the first one?”

The reply took longer this time. Almost two minutes.

“Because I was already pregnant. And because his family… you don’t understand his family. Leaving is not simple. His mother called me when she heard we were having problems. She didn’t ask what happened. She said, ‘A good wife endures. That is what we do.’ She didn’t even ask me if I was okay.”

Tola felt something crack inside her. Not for herself this time. For Nkem. For this woman in Abuja who was carrying a baby for a man who didn’t deserve her, trapped between a marriage that was a lie and a family that told her to endure it.

“Nkem, you don’t have to stay.”

“I know. But it’s easier to type that than to do it.”

They talked for two more hours. About everything and nothing. About how Dubem smiled the same way at both of them. About how he used the same compliments, the same gestures, probably the same voice note tone. Tola told Nkem about the ring in the bathroom cabinet. Nkem laughed. A sad, tired laugh. She said, “He told me he lost that ring. Six months ago. Said it slipped off at the gym.”

At 11:47pm, just when Tola thought the conversation was winding down, Nkem sent one more message.

“There’s something else. Something I haven’t told anyone. Not my mother. Not my sister. Nobody.”

“What?”

“It’s about his work. The consulting. I don’t think it’s real, Tola. I’ve seen things in his office at home. Documents. Contracts with government people. Transfers from names I don’t recognize. Large amounts. Very large. And the company he says he runs? I went to the address once. It’s a serviced office. A desk and a phone. That’s it. Nothing is real.”

Tola’s fingers hovered over the keyboard.

“How large are we talking?”

“I don’t know the full picture. But one document I saw had a number on it that I had to count the zeros three times to believe.”

The room was quiet. Tola’s fan was spinning. Somewhere outside, a generator hummed.

This was no longer about a cheating husband. This was no longer about a receipt or a ring or a bracelet. Something bigger was hiding behind Dubem’s perfect smile. Something that involved government contracts and fake offices and money that didn’t make sense.

And Nkem was sitting right in the middle of it. Pregnant. Alone. Scared.

Tola typed: “Nkem, whatever this is, you shouldn’t be dealing with it alone.”

The reply came quick: “That’s why I messaged you. Because you’re the only person who knows who he really is. Everybody else only knows the version he wants them to see.”

Tola read that sentence three times. And she realized something that frightened her more than anything she’d discovered so far.

Nkem was right. Nobody knew the real Dubem. Not his wife. Not his girlfriend. Not his family. Maybe not even Dubem himself.

And now two women were holding pieces of a truth that was getting bigger and darker with every conversation.

The question was: what were they going to do with it?

END OF EPISODE 8

Next Episode: “The Money” – ₦485,000 for a bracelet. But where is a man with no real office getting that kind of money?

She’s not the first. There was a girl in Port Harcourt before her. This man has a PATTERN. And now the money doesn’t add up either. What exactly is Dubem into? 💔 Drop your theories in the comments.