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He had been in the kitchen, trying to make chicken the way Amara liked it, with rice and fried plantain. He had been humming, thinking of the baby.
Their baby.
He heard the front door open.
“Amara, is that you?” he called.
But it was not Amara.
Chief Mrs. Gloria Okafor walked into the kitchen without knocking.
She wore expensive lace, gold jewelry, flawless makeup, and a perfectly tied gele. Everything about her looked polished and cold.
“Amecha,” she said, as if his name tasted bitter.
“Ma, good afternoon. Amara isn’t home yet.”
“I know where my daughter is,” Gloria said. “I came to speak to you alone.”
She sat at the table without invitation and placed her expensive handbag on the surface.
“I’ll be direct,” she said. “I don’t like you. I never have. You are not right for my daughter.”
“Ma, I love Amara,” Amecha said. “And she loves me.”
Gloria laughed softly.
“Love? You think love is enough? You think love pays school fees? You think love builds an empire?”
Amecha said nothing.
“My daughter is meant for great things,” Gloria continued. “She is meant to lead Okafor Holdings. She is meant for boardrooms, magazine covers, government dinners, and powerful rooms where decisions are made. Instead, she is here in Ajegunle with you.”
“Amara chose me,” Amecha said. “She chose this life. She is happy.”
“For now,” Gloria replied. “But how long before she realizes she married beneath her?”
Then Gloria opened her handbag and pulled out an envelope.
She pushed it toward him.
“What is this?” Amecha asked.
“Open it.”
Inside was money.
More money than he had ever seen in one place.
“Five million naira,” Gloria said. “It’s yours. All you have to do is leave.”
Amecha looked up, stunned.
“What?”
“Leave tonight. Disappear. Don’t tell Amara where you’re going. Take the money. Start a new life somewhere else. Let my daughter have the future she was born for.”
“No,” Amecha said immediately, pushing the envelope back. “I’m not leaving. I love her. We’re married. We’re building a life.”
He almost said, We’re having a baby.
But something inside him warned him not to let Gloria know.
Gloria smiled.
It was not a kind smile.
“I’ll leave,” she said. “But this conversation is not over. You will leave my daughter’s life, one way or another.”
At the door, she stopped.
“And don’t bother telling Amara about this visit. She’ll never believe you. I’m her mother. You’re just…”
She did not finish.
She did not need to.
The silence said the word for her.
Nobody.
“After that day, she called me every single day,” Amecha told Amara, his voice breaking. “Every day, she told me I was worthless. That I was ruining your future. That you would leave me eventually. That I should disappear and save everyone the trouble.”
Amara’s hands pressed flat against the table.
“Amecha, I swear I didn’t know.”
“I know,” he said sadly. “That’s what made it so hard. You loved her. You trusted her. And she used that trust against both of us.”
“I would have believed you,” Amara whispered.
“Would you?” he asked. “If I had told you your mother was calling me every day to tell me I was garbage, would you really have believed me? Or would you have thought I was being dramatic? Trying to turn you against your family?”
Amara opened her mouth.
Then closed it.
She did not know.
And that uncertainty answered the question.
“Exactly,” Amecha said softly.
He sat down, suddenly looking very tired.
“Then one morning, she came again. This time, she knew about the pregnancy.”
Amara’s hands began to tremble.
How?”
“I don’t know,” Amecha said. “Maybe she had someone watching me. Maybe she paid someone at the clinic. I had gone to a doctor to ask about pregnancy care because I wanted to be ready for you.”
He swallowed hard.
“Three days later, she was at our door.”
His voice dropped.
“She was angrier than I had ever seen her. She said, ‘You think trapping my daughter with a baby will work? It won’t. It only makes you a bigger problem.’”
Amara felt the room spin.
“She said that about her own grandchild?”
“She didn’t care about the baby,” Amecha said. “She only cared about getting rid of me.”
“What did she do?”
“She told me if I didn’t disappear, she would make everyone believe I was dangerous. Violent. Mentally unstable. She said she would have me arrested. She said she would make sure I never saw you or the baby. And she would make sure you believed every word.”
Amara felt as if the floor had vanished.
“That was when I knew I had to run,” Amecha said. “I had to protect the baby. I had to protect myself. Because if I stayed, she would destroy us, and I was afraid you would believe her.”
He looked at her with seven years of pain in his eyes.
“So I left in the middle of the night. I packed one bag. I took the five million because I had nothing else. And I walked out.”
“But the accident,” Amara whispered. “The police told me there was an accident on the bridge.”
“Your mother staged it.”
Amecha stood by the kitchen window, staring into the street.