₦airaland Forum

Present day

Mofe felt something cold slide down his spine at her question. Not because he had not expected this conversation eventually, but because of how calm she sounded asking it. That was what unsettled him.

If Ezinne had shouted immediately, he would have known what to do. Anger, he understood. He understood sharp words, slammed doors, and accusations thrown like weapons. He understood the version of Ezinne who fought him openly because, at least with that version, everything was visible.

This quietness was worse.

It reminded him too much of the moments before she truly withdrew from someone. Before, she stopped fighting because she no longer believed the person deserved access to her emotions at all. And Mofe could not bear the thought of going back there with her.

Not now. Not after these past few weeks. Not after the little, fragile progress they had made. Not after hearing her laugh again. Not after watching her slowly allow him back into spaces he thought were closed forever. Not after finally beginning to feel like a father to Azora instead of a visitor begging for scraps of his daughter’s life.

He did not want to go back to war with Ezinne. He did not want every conversation to become a battlefield again. He did not want her looking at him like he was poison. And most of all … He did not want her to discover the truth the wrong way.

Mofe inhaled carefully. “I don’t exactly have a relationship with your father,” he said slowly.

Even to his own ears, the answer sounded weak, but Ezinne remained silent beside him. She was giving him the chance to elaborate on his weak statement.

Mofe rubbed a hand over his jaw. “You overheard my conversation with him, didn’t you?”

The moment the question left his mouth, he knew it was a mistake. Not because it was untrue. But because Ezinne was too intelligent not to hear exactly what he was doing.

He was stalling, buying time, and trying to arrange his thoughts carefully enough not to blow their lives apart. Because of one wrong sentence tonight … he could already see it happening. Ezinne, shutting down completely … Ezinne retreating behind walls so high he might never reach her again … Ezinne deciding he was exactly what she’d suspected he was, a manipulative son of a …

And maybe he deserved that. But he was terrified of it anyway.

Beside him, she let out a short breath.

“Don’t stall,” she said quietly. “And please, for goodness sake, don’t patronise me.”

Her voice remained calm, but he could hear the strain beneath it now, the anger pressing forward through the cracks.

“Don’t think that I don’t know exactly what you’re doing, Mofe. You’re answering my question with another question because you don’t want to directly respond to mine.”

Mofe went still. He was still not sure how best to answer her question or where to start his explanations from. He was wasting precious seconds trying to come up with something.

“This is exactly why I can never fully settle when you’re around.” Her tone sharpened suddenly.

Mofe’s chest tightened. “Ezinne—”


“You think you’re so smart,” she cut him off, the calmness beginning to fray around the edges now. “So clever. So crafty. Like everybody else around you is too stupid to notice when you’re manipulating a conversation.”

“That’s not what I’m doing.”

“Really?” Her laugh was soft and bitter. “Because from where I’m sitting, that’s exactly what you’re doing.”

Mofe opened his mouth again, but Ezinne was already spiralling now, words rushing out faster with every sentence.

“You always do this. You decide what I should know. You decide when I should know it. You decide what’s best for me as though you’re the only intelligent person in the room—”

“Hey, hey.” Mofe reached for her instinctively, his voice firm but careful. “Ezinne, please.”

She jerked slightly away from his touch.

“Calm down, and I’ll tell you everything.”

“Oh,” she said softly. “Now you’ll tell me everything?”

Mofe closed his eyes briefly. “Ezinne—”

“After I catch you hiding things from me, that’s when you’ll talk?” Her voice rose now, hurt overtaking restraint. “When exactly were you planning to tell me my father came to see me tonight? Were you ever going to?”

“I was going to tell you.”

“When?”

He hesitated. And that hesitation destroyed whatever little patience she had left.

“Exactly.” She stood abruptly from the couch. “Exactly, Mofe.”

Mofe rose immediately too. “Ezinne, please listen to me.”

“No, you listen to me for once!” Her breathing had quickened now, emotion cracking fully through the calmness she had walked into the room with. “You keep making decisions for me and calling it protection.”

“That’s not fair. I don’t want …”

“It’s the truth!”

Her voice echoed sharply through the quiet study.

“I’m not a child,” she continued. “I am not some helpless damsel in distress you need to save every time something unpleasant happens.”

“I know that.”

“Do you?” she shot back immediately. “Because you keep behaving as though you think I’ll break if people tell me the truth.”

Mofe dragged a frustrated hand through his hair. “That’s not what this is.”

“Then what is it?”

He looked at her helplessly. It was because the truth was messy.

The truth was that after the kind of day she’d had, after watching her cry and shake and struggle beneath the weight of hope, the thought of adding her father to the mix had felt cruel.

But there was another truth beneath that one, too. A selfish truth. He had not wanted her asking questions. Not tonight. Not while his own fear was still sitting raw in his chest after that conversation.

Ezinne laughed bitterly again.

“You weren’t protecting me,” she said quietly now. “You were protecting yourself.”

The words hit too close, and he stilled, his silence betraying him immediately.

Ezinne’s face tightened.

“What was he talking about, Mofe?” she asked.

Mofe’s pulse kicked harder. “What do you mean?”

“My father.” Her voice dropped lower, steadier again in a way that frightened him more than shouting. “What was he talking about when he said you were hiding something from me?”

Mofe looked away briefly, which was a wrong move because Ezinne saw it even without seeing his face. She was perceptive like that. Even without her sight, she read his body movements like an open book.

“Oh my God,” she whispered. “There really is something, and it’s something really serious, isn’t it?”

“Ezinne…”

“What did you do, Mofe?”

“Please..”

“What did you do, Mofe?” Her voice cracked this time, and that sound nearly undid him. Because beneath the anger was hurt. The kind that came from someone slowly realising the ground beneath them might not be stable after all.

Mofe stepped toward her carefully. “Please, calm down.”

“Don’t tell me to calm down!”

“I’m trying to explain.”

“Then explain!”

His chest rose sharply. “I will,” he said quickly. “I will tell you everything if you calm down.”

The room fell silent immediately after the words. Heavy silence.

Ezinne stood a few feet away from him, breathing unevenly, her hands trembling faintly at her sides.

Mofe hated himself in that moment because he knew exactly how this looked. Another secret … Another hidden truth … Another moment where she had to drag honesty out of him, piece by painful piece … And yet fear still held him frozen. Because once he started talking, there would be no taking it back.

Mofe stood very still for a moment after telling her he would explain.

His mind was racing. He had spent years burying certain parts of himself carefully enough that even he sometimes pretended they no longer existed. Rage. Obsession. Revenge. Those ugly years after leaving Nigeria when he had poured every wound, every humiliation, every ounce of helplessness into ambition because anger was easier to survive than heartbreak.

And now he had to lay pieces of that ugliness before Ezinne and hope she would not look at him differently afterwards. Or perhaps she already did.

Slowly, he exhaled. “I bought your father’s company.”

The words dropped heavily into the silence.

Ezinne frowned slightly behind her glasses. “What?”

“Onu Shipping.” His voice remained low. Controlled. “I bought it years ago through a shell corporation. Nobody knew it was me at the time.”

Ezinne stared blindly toward him, stunned into silence.

Mofe dragged a hand over his face before continuing. “After I left Nigeria, I carried a lot of anger toward your father. More than I even realised at first. I blamed him for the role he played in our separation. For forcing you into …” His jaw tightened. “Into the life you ended up trapped in.”

The study felt too quiet now, but Mofe forced himself to continue before fear made him stop.

“When the opportunity came to acquire Onu Shipping, I took it. At first, it was business. Or at least that’s what I told myself.” He gave a bitter laugh. “Truth is, it was revenge. I wanted payback.”

Ezinne said nothing, and that silence was beginning to terrify him.

“I set auditors on the company after the acquisition,” he continued carefully. “And they found serious irregularities in the books. Financial mismanagement. Fraud. Funds disappearing. Their records had been manipulated before the sale. They essentially misrepresented the state of the company.”

Ezinne inhaled sharply.

Mofe looked away briefly before saying the next part. “I brought criminal charges against your father.”

The shock that crossed her face this time was immediate.

“You what?” She whispered.

Mofe nodded once, even though he knew she didn’t see it.

For a second, Ezinne looked genuinely unable to process the information.

“You brought criminal charges against my dad?”

“Yes.”

“Jesus Christ, Mofe…”

Chapter 23

Eleven years ago

The lunch hour on campus was loud in the way only a school could be. Metal trays clattered against tables. Students laughed too loudly over shared jokes. A few groups huddled under the shade of nearby trees, talking with the easy freedom of people who had never had to look over their shoulders while eating.

Ezinne sat across from Dara beneath the open corridor beside the cafeteria, one hand resting around a half-finished drink while the other absently picked at the edge of her food. Her attention kept drifting past the lunch tables, beyond the students, beyond the walkway, all the way to the parking lot where the officer stood beside the car.

He was not close enough to hear them. Leaning against the side of the car with his arms folded, dark sunglasses shielding his eyes from the afternoon sun. From a distance, he almost looked casual. Relaxed, even.

But Ezinne knew better. The man never stopped watching.

Every now and then, his gaze swept toward the cafeteria entrance, checking movements, timing exits, faces. It made her skin itch.
Dara followed her line of sight and sighed.

“He is still there?” She asked.

Ezinne gave a short nod, keeping her expression flat. “He is always there. It’s like he has no life of his own to go live.”

Dara gave a soft, humourless laugh. “He probably thinks this is called dedication.”

Ezinne stirred her spoon slowly through the rice. “More like irritation.”

Dara stabbed at a piece of chicken on her tray. “At this point, I’m starting to think your father would assign you bodyguards inside the bathroom if he could.”

That almost earned a smile. Almost.

For a moment, both of them sat in silence, the sounds of students around them filling the space where their real conversation had to wait. Ezinne could feel the officer’s presence even from here. He was too far to hear them, but not far enough to forget.

Suddenly, Ezinne leaned forward slightly in her chair, then quietly, she said, “I think I know how to get rid of him.”

Dara paused mid-bite.

“What?”

Ezinne finally looked away from the window.

“I have an idea.”

Immediately, Dara’s expression changed. Not excitement. Suspicion!

Because she knew that tone. It was the same tone Ezinne used whenever she had already thought something through privately and only needed someone else to confirm she wasn’t losing her mind.

“You mean the kind of idea that is either brilliant or absolutely terrible?” she asked.

“The kind that gets me free of him.”

Dara blinked.

Then she leaned back slowly in her chair, studying her friend.

“Ezinne…”

“I’m serious.”

“I can hear that.” Dara’s voice dropped lower. “But what exactly are you thinking?”

Ezinne looked up then, her expression calm, but there was a sharpness in it that Dara had not seen before. Not anger exactly. Something more deliberate. She glanced briefly toward the parking lot again before lowering her voice, though there was no real need inside the noisy cafeteria.

“My father wants me with Ekene.”

Dara blinked once. Then twice.

“Oh no!" Dara exclaimed, quite scared of where Ezinne was going with this line of thought.

Ezinne ignored that reaction.

“He already thinks Mofe is the problem,” she continued calmly. “So if he believes I’m over Mofe and moving toward someone he approves of…” She lifted one shoulder lightly. “He’ll relax.”

Dara stared at her. “You cannot be serious.”

“I am.”

“Ezinne.”

“What?” she asked flatly. “Tell me I’m wrong.”

Dara opened her mouth. Then closed it again.
Because annoyingly enough… Ezinne was probably right.

Her father adored Ekene. Trusted him. Approved of his family, his background, and his future. Compared to Mofe, Ekene represented safety and familiarity.

If Ezinne appeared to be reconnecting with him, her father would almost certainly loosen the pressure around her.

The realisation clearly unsettled Dara.

“That is a terrible idea,” she said finally.

“It’s an effective idea.”

“It’s manipulative.”

Ezinne laughed softly under her breath. “Look at my life right now and tell me manipulation isn’t already happening.”

Dara rubbed her forehead slowly.

“No,” she muttered. “Absolutely not. I bind these kinds of crazy ideas from your head, Ezinne. You really can’t be thinking about doing something like this.”

That earned a small smile from Ezinne this time. But it faded quickly.

“I’m serious,” she said quietly. “I’m tired, Dara.”

The honesty in her voice immediately softened Dara. “Ezinne, you’re thinking about walking into a fire with your eyes open.”

“I know exactly what it is.”

“You are talking about using Ekene.”

Ezinne’s jaw tightened slightly, though her voice remained controlled. “I’m talking about using what already exists.”

“What already exists?” Dara repeated, incredulous. “That man is your ex. And not even a decent ex. He’s controlling, jealous, a cheat, and clearly still thinks he has some kind of claim over you.”

“He does not have a claim over me.”

“I know that,” Dara said quickly. “You know that. The question is whether Ekene knows that.”

Ezinne’s expression did not change, and Dara could see the answer in her eyes. She did not care whether Ekene knew it.

Ezinne glanced toward the parking lot again, toward the officer standing beside the car like some permanent extension of her father’s control.

“I can’t breathe like this anymore,” she admitted. “Everywhere I go, he is watching. I have to sneak around just to speak to someone I…” She stopped herself.

Someone I love.

The unfinished words still lingered between them anyway.

Dara looked at her carefully.

“And your solution is Ekene?”

“My solution is freedom.”

Dara leaned back in her chair, studying her now. “And what happens when Mofe finds out?”

There it was.

The exact question Ezinne had been avoiding since the idea first entered her mind.

Her jaw tightened slightly. “He doesn’t have to know.”

Dara stared at her in disbelief. “Ezinne.”

“What?”

“You’re joking.”

“I’m not.”

Dara lowered her voice immediately. “You think you can pretend to reconnect with your ex-boyfriend and Mofe just magically never hears about it?”

Ezinne’s expression hardened slightly.

“He was comfortable going behind my back,” she said quietly. “I can do the same.”

The words landed heavily between them. Dara went still, and for a moment, the cafeteria noise seemed distant around them.

Ezinne looked down at her untouched food, her fingers tightening slightly around the fork in her hand.

“I’m not trying to hurt him,” she continued after a moment. “But I’m tired of being the only one carrying consequences. He made decisions for me because he thought he was protecting me. Fine.” Her voice sharpened faintly. “Now I’m making one for myself.”

Dara searched her face carefully.“And if this blows up?”

Ezinne let out a slow breath.

“It won’t.”

“That’s not confidence, Ezinne. That’s denial.”

Ezinne looked up immediately. “Dara.”

“No, seriously.” Dara leaned forward now, her voice softer but more intense. “You’re talking about Ekene. Not some random harmless boy. Ekene is possessive. He already sent people after Mofe once. What happens if he starts believing this fake relationship is real?”

Ezinne’s stomach tightened slightly at that. She hated that Dara had a point. But she pushed the discomfort aside quickly.

“I can handle Ekene. Now that I know him for who he truly is, I can handle him.”

“That’s exactly what girls say before things become disasters.”

Ezinne rolled her eyes at her friend’s pessimism. “I’m not getting back together with him.”

“But you’re planning to make your father believe you are.”

“That’s different.”

“Is it?”

Ezinne looked away.

Outside, the officer shifted slightly beside the car, glancing toward the cafeteria entrance again, and her irritation returned instantly.

“Yes,” she said quietly. “It is different.”

Dara lowered her voice further. “Okay .. so what is your actual plan? Explain how you’ll manage to pull off this kind of deception. ”

Ezinne exhaled slowly.

“I’ll act interested in him again. Not enough to make it obvious to everyone. Just enough for my father to notice. Enough for him to think I’m moving on from Mofe. Enough for him to believe I’ve come to my senses and stopped chasing something he never approved of anyway.”

Dara stared at her for a long second.

Then she said, “And you think that will make him take the officer away?”

“I think it will make him think he no longer needs the officer.”

“That is a very dangerous thing to think.”

Ezinne gave a tired little shrug.

“Maybe.”

Dara opened her mouth, then closed it again. The unease on her features softened into something more careful. “Are you really sure you want to go through with this, and you’re okay with the decision?”

Ezinne’s eyes moved away. She couldn’t look Dara in the eyes anymore as she responded.

“No,” she said honestly. “I’m not okay with it. I’m okay with the result.”

Dara studied her for a moment longer, her expression caught somewhere between concern and disbelief.

“That is a very cold way to survive.”

Ezinne looked back at her.

“I’m not trying to be cold. I’m trying to breathe.”

That silenced Dara for a second, and she sighed heavily.

“You know Mofe is going to lose his mind if he hears about this.”

Something flickered across Ezinne’s face. Not guilt exactly. Something more stubborn. “Then maybe he’ll finally understand what it feels like when someone makes decisions behind your back and expects you just to accept them.”

Dara stared at her for a long moment after that, suddenly understanding something important.
She could tell that this plan was not coming only from strategy. Part of it was hurt and anger. Part of it was Ezinne still bleeding from what Mofe had done, and whether she admitted it or not, to reclaim some sense of power for herself.

That realisation made Dara even more nervous. Because wounded people rarely made clean decisions.

“You know still love him, even though you refuse to admit it to yourself,” Dara said softly.

Ezinne’s face tightened immediately. “That’s not the point.”

“It is exactly the point.”

Ezinne pushed her tray slightly away.

“I love him,” she admitted quietly. “And I’m still angry with him. Both things can exist.”

Dara’s expression softened.

“Yes,” she said gently. “They can.”

“Mofe doesn’t even have to know.” Ezine said with a shrug.

Dara blinked. “Ezinne...?”

“He doesn’t,” she argued.

“You are saying that very casually.”

Ezinne met her eyes. “Because I mean it very casually.”

Dara stared at her in disbelief, then gave a small, frustrated breath. “You really think you can keep that from him?”

“Yes.”

“He’s not stupid.”

“I didn’t say he was.”

“Then what exactly are you saying?”

Ezinne leaned back slightly in her chair, her gaze drifting again toward the parking lot before returning to Dara.

“I’m just saying, just as how he makes decisions on my behalf, I'm doing the same and he doesn't need to know about it.”

Dara looked stricken. “Ezinne—”

“No. Dara,” Ezinne’s eyes sharpened. “I’m tired of my father controlling where I go, who watches me, who I can see, and who I can’t. Even Mofe makes decisions about our relationship without caring about how I feel. I’m tired of everyone deciding what is best for me and then expecting me to be grateful for it.”

Dara said nothing.

Ezinne looked down at her hands.

“I know what I’m doing is not clean,” she said after a moment. “But I also know I cannot keep living like this. If pretending to go back to a man my father approves of is what it takes for him to loosen his grip on me, then that is what I’ll do.”

Dara’s brow furrowed. “You sound almost certain.”

“I am certain.”

“Even if it hurts Mofe? You’re sure?”

That question finally made Ezinne pause. For a moment, the answer did not come. Not because she did not know it. Because she knew it too well.

Her face remained composed, but her voice softened just slightly when she replied. “He hurt me first.”

Dara’s expression faltered, and Ezinne kept her eyes down, her fingers slowly tracing the edge of her plate.

Dara looked at her for a long time. Then she sighed.
“You really are determined.”

Ezinne gave a faint, humourless smile. “I have to be.”
Dara’s voice softened. “You know this could get messy.”

“It is already messy.”

“That does not mean it can’t get worse.”

“I know.”

“And you still want to do it?”

Ezinne finally lifted her gaze and looked directly at her.

“Yes.”

The answer was simple. Too simple.

Dara rubbed a hand over her forehead and let out another sigh. “You’re going to make me stress-eat this entire lunch.”

Despite everything, the corner of Ezinne’s mouth twitched faintly, and Dara noticed.

Then she pointed at her with one finger. “And don’t look at me like that. I am not agreeing with you [i]oh. I am just acknowledging that you’ve made up your mind.”

Ezinne let out a breath that was almost a laugh, though it never quite became one. “I’m aware.”
Dara studied her again, her eyes softer now. “Just promise me something.”

Ezinne waited for her to continue.

“Promise me you are doing this to get free,” Dara said, “and not because you want to hurt Mofe for what he did.”

Ezinne’s face turned unreadable, and for a second, neither of them moved. Then she looked away toward the parking lot again, where the officer still stood by the car like a fixed shadow.

When she spoke, her voice was low. “I’m doing this to get my life back.”

Dara held her gaze for a moment, then nodded once. “Then do it carefully.”

Ezinne nodded back, though her mind was already moving far ahead. And somewhere deep inside, beneath the hurt and the anger and the humiliation of being watched like she was something dangerous, Ezinne could feel the first hard edge of resolve.

If her father wanted her under control, she would give him a version of herself that looked controlled. If he wanted Ekene, she would let him think he was getting Ekene.

She would smile when she needed to.

She would lie when she had to.

And she would take her freedom back one careful step at a time.[/i]

tonystark007:
This update is just an extra for the week. Suppose to be friday.

Oh! I just got a veteran writer in my followers list, repogirl. She is one of my favorites writer here. Na she dey teach me work 😎

Let me also mention my vip readers/commenters

yungbanks, Jupitre, anjay1212, panpan, DeltaBachelor, iamL, Iseddy, Ybbjune, and my other ghost readers who are still considering whether to switch mode yet 😂

And those I didn't mention, please bear with me. My memory card don full.

Thanks for the support, and comments. It's encouraging. And keep the comments coming 🙏

🙏🏽 I'm honoured. You're doing a great job keeping the lit section going. Weldone.

Dear readers,

My apologies please. Due to circumstances beyond my control, tonight's update has been postponed till tomorrow.
Kindly bear with me pls.

tonystark007:
Whatever she is planning is going to backfire one way or another.

Anyways sha, people will always do desperate and crazy things for love.

But that Ekene guy, don't trust him one bit, especially since her plan is probably going to involve manipulating him without his knowledge. She would only end up drawing him closer again, and complicating things for herself and Mofe

Kudos Repogirl! this one was an interesting read. Surely anticipating the next

Thanks! Nice analysis.

Ezinne knew her father had come looking for her at the centre, but Mofe did not know she knew.

That was what sat between them now as they walked toward the study, heavy and quiet, like something alive breathing in the dark.

The house around her was calm, almost too calm after the noise and movement of the charity event. The air smelled faintly of furniture polish, and the light floral diffuser one of the staff always placed near the hallway. Somewhere in the distance, a generator hummed softly, and from the kitchen area came the muted clink of plates being arranged for the night.

She moved carefully, one hand brushing lightly against the wall when she needed to orient herself. Mofe walked near her, not too close, not too far, as though he was still trying to respect the space she had not asked for but clearly needed. A few weeks ago, that might have softened her. Tonight, it only made her chest ache with confusion.

Because she had been softening toward him.

The afternoon had drained her in ways she had not expected. First, there had been the success of the charity event, the unexpected turnout, the laughter, the gratitude, the strange joy of seeing something she had carried in her heart become real in the lives of others. Then came the doctor and those words that had shattered the careful peace she had built around her blindness.

“Surgery could help you.”

She still felt those words inside her like a trembling flame. Then she had broken down in front of Mofe. That was the part that unsettled her the most.

Not the tears themselves. She had cried before. She had survived enough to know that tears were not a weakness. But she had cried in his arms. She had let him hold her. She had let his warmth steady her when fear had made the ground beneath her feel untrustworthy. She had admitted things to him she had not wanted anyone to know, not even herself.

She had told him she did not want to hope. And he had known what to say. That frightened her.

It frightened her because she was beginning to need him again. Not in the childish, helpless way people often assumed blind women must need people. No. This was worse. This was the old, dangerous need. The kind that came from remembering that once, long before pain and betrayal and years of silence, Mofe had been the person her heart ran toward before her mind could stop it.

And now she was doing it again. And a part of her was terrified. Another part, the foolish part she had tried to bury, was not sure she hated it.

It was why she had not reacted as fiercely as she should have when he confessed he had stolen her medical records. She should have been angrier. She should have walked away. She should have told him that concern did not excuse violation, that good intentions did not erase betrayal, that he had no right to touch any part of her life without permission.

Instead, she had listened. She had allowed him to explain. She had even gone through with the consultation.

Perhaps the success of the charity event had clouded her emotions. Perhaps the doctor’s possibility had shaken her too deeply. Perhaps Mofe’s remorse had found her when she was already too tired to keep all her walls standing.

Or perhaps, and this was the thought she hated most, she had wanted to forgive him before he deserved it. She’d started to believe he had good intentions for her and her daughter.

Now she was no longer sure. Not after what she had heard.

Earlier, after returning from the consultation, after her tears had dried and Mofe’s comforting words had settled too warmly in places she did not trust, she had needed space. She had needed somewhere no one could find her, somewhere no one would ask if she was okay, somewhere she could sit with her own breathing and force her emotions back into some kind of order.

So she had gone into the private bathroom inside her office and locked the door.

She had not told anyone. She had simply slipped away.

For a while, she had sat on the closed toilet lid with her glasses in one hand and her other hand pressed against her chest as if she could physically calm the chaos inside it. She had listened to the muffled sounds of people moving outside. Volunteers calling to one another. Chairs being dragged. Someone laughing. The world carrying on as if her life had not tilted sideways.

She had heard Maureen come looking for her. The receptionist had knocked lightly at first.

“Ms Ezinne?”

Ezinne had held her breath.

Another knock.

“Ma? Are you inside?”

She had not answered.

Not because she wanted to worry anyone, but because she could not bear to be found yet. Her face still felt swollen from crying. Her thoughts were scattered. Her heart was doing that terrible thing again, reaching toward hope and fear all at once.

Eventually, Maureen had left.

Ezinne had waited a little longer before rising slowly. She had washed her hands, splashed a little water on her face, put her glasses back on, and unlocked the bathroom door.

She had only just stepped into her office when she heard the voice.

At first, her mind refused to understand it.

The sound drifted in faintly from the reception area beyond her office door, low and aged, but still carrying that unmistakable firmness. A voice that had once filled rooms without effort. A voice that could turn her childhood cold with one command. A voice she had not heard so close in years, except in memories that arrived uninvited and left her skin tight with old dread.

Her father, General Onu.

Ezinne had frozen where she stood.

For one suspended moment, she could not move, could not breathe, could not even think properly. It was as if the years folded in on themselves.

She was no longer a grown woman standing inside the office of the centre she had built with her own hands. She was a girl again, standing in a house that had stopped feeling like home the moment she’d fallen in love with the wrong guy, by her father’s standards. She was a daughter who had learned that obedience could be demanded, but affection could be withheld. She was the young woman whose future had been discussed like property, whose choices had been swallowed by other people’s pride.

Her fingers had tightened around the edge of her desk.

Why was he here? Why today? After all these years, why had he chosen this day, of all days, to walk back into her life?

Confusion moved through her first, thick and disorienting. Then came shock, sharp enough to make her knees feel weak. Then, beneath both, something deeper and older rose slowly.

Pain.

Not fresh pain, but the kind that had been buried so long it had roots.

She had retreated quietly back toward the inner part of her office, careful not to make a sound. Her instinct had been immediate and humiliating. Hide. Stay still. Do not let him know you are there.

She had hated herself for that reaction.

She had survived him. She had built a life away from him. She was not the heartbroken, confused young lady that he had once forced into a loveless marriage.

And yet, hearing his voice had sent her body back to a past her mind had spent years leaving behind.

Then Mofe had arrived.

She had heard his voice enter the reception area, cold and angry, and something inside her had gone still for a different reason.

She had not meant to listen. At least, that was what she told herself. But once she heard the tension between the two men, once she heard Mofe’s anger sharpen, and her father’s voice turn low and dangerous, she could not move away. Their conversation had held her where she stood.

At first, she had felt something painfully close to gratitude, because Mofe had stood up for her.

He had spoken the words she had never been able to throw at her father’s face. He had named what had been done to her without softening it, without dressing it up as a family misunderstanding or cultural expectation or difficult decisions made by elders who thought they knew best.

“The one you practically sold into slavery and abuse.”

The words had shaken her. They had wounded her, and they had also, shamefully, comforted her.

Because someone had said it. Someone had seen it, and had been angry on her behalf. But then the conversation had shifted.

“Have you told her?” … “Does she know what you did?” .. “Does she?”

That was when the cold had begun spreading through Ezinne’s body.

Mofe had not answered, but that silence had said too much.

Her father’s voice had changed after that, carrying something that sounded almost like triumph.

“I thought so. You still cannot bring yourself to tell her.”

Ezinne had stood in her office, one hand pressed against the wall, feeling crushed but forcing herself to listen. There was more. There had always been more.

The anger between them had not sounded like two men who merely disliked each other because of her pain. It had sounded older than that. Personal. Complicated. Filled with history that she had never known existed between the two of them. Filled with secrets that Mofe had deliberately kept from her.

And now he had not even told her that her father had come.

He had sat beside her in the car, watching her in silence, keeping another truth tucked away because he had decided she could not handle it. Again. That was the part that cut deepest.

Not just the secret itself, but the pattern. Mofe deciding … Mofe protecting … Mofe hiding. Mofe choosing what she could know and when she could know it.

How was she supposed to build any trust with a man like that? How was she supposed to let herself hope with him beside her when every few steps, another hidden thing rose between them?

By the time they reached the study, Ezinne felt calm in the way a person sometimes became calm when pain had become too sharp for noise.

Mofe opened the door ahead of her.

“Careful,” he said quietly. “The rug starts just after the doorway.”

“I know where the rug is,” she replied.

The words came out colder than she intended, and he went silent.

Good, she thought. Then immediately hated the small cruelty of it.

She stepped inside, finding her way easily. She knew this room well. It smelled of leather, paper, and the faint woody scent of the shelves along the wall. She moved toward the couch with slow, controlled steps, touched the armrest lightly, then lowered herself onto it.

Mofe remained standing for a moment.

She could feel him watching her.

Then he came closer and sat beside her, leaving a careful space between them.

“What is it?” he asked.

His voice was gentle, but there was tension beneath it now. Curiosity. Concern. Perhaps even fear.

Ezinne folded her hands in her lap to stop them from trembling, and for a few seconds, she said nothing. She listened to the quiet of the house. To Mofe’s controlled breathing. To her own heart beating too hard beneath her ribs.

Then she turned her face toward him behind her dark glasses. “What is the nature of your relationship with my father, Mofe?”

The silence that followed was immediate, and she felt him go still beside her.

Ezinne’s throat tightened, but she forced herself to continue. Her voice was quiet, not angry, and somehow that made the words heavier.

“Tell me the truth this time. No more hiding things from me, please.”
*************


Next post comes up Thursday evening/Friday morning. Thanks for reading.

Present Day

The drive home was painfully quiet as the SUV moved steadily through the evening Abuja traffic. Cars crawled along the roads, streetlights reflected off wet patches left behind by an earlier drizzle, hawkers moved between vehicles selling bottled water, plantain chips, phone chargers, and cold drinks to impatient drivers trapped in traffic.

Inside the car, however, everything felt strangely distant.

Ezinne sat beside him in the back seat with her head resting lightly against the seat, earphones tucked into her ears, the faintest sound of music or perhaps an audiobook leaking through whenever the car went over a bump.

Her eyes were closed, or at least Mofe assumed they were. She had barely spoken since leaving the centre. Not since she’d strangely reappeared after disappearing for a long while.

That part still unsettled him.

One moment, she had been helping with the final closing activities at the event, quiet but composed again, and the next, she had vanished. Nobody had known where she went. After getting her father off the premises, he had searched for her twice before forcing himself not to panic. When she eventually returned, she had looked calmer somehow. Too calm.

And now this silence.

Mofe sat beside her with one arm resting against the seat, watching her more than he should have. She looked exhausted.

Not physically alone, though that too. Emotional exhaustion hung around her heavily tonight. He could almost feel the weight of everything pressing down on her. It had been a lot to take in for one day, and would have been compounded by her father’s visit if he’d not stepped in.

Mofe’s jaw tightened slightly. He still had not decided whether he should tell her.

Every few minutes during the drive, he found himself glancing toward her and almost saying, “Your father came to the centre.”

The words rose repeatedly to the edge of his mouth before dying there. Because what good would it do tonight?

She was already barely holding herself together emotionally. He had seen it in the way she withdrew into silence after leaving the doctor’s office. In the way her fingers trembled slightly when she reached for her seatbelt. In the way she had leaned her forehead briefly against the car window.

Telling her now would only upset her further. And if he was honest with himself, another part of him simply did not want her anywhere near that conversation.

Not yet. Not when General Onu had looked at him the way he had. And certainly not after those vague, dangerous words.

“Does she know what you did?”

Mofe’s chest tightened.

He looked away from Ezinne and toward the passing lights outside the window. No, she did not know.

And he intended to keep it that way.

Beside him, Ezinne shifted slightly in her seat, adjusting the position of her head against the leather.

“You okay?” he asked quietly before he could stop himself.

She gave the smallest nod without opening her eyes. That was all. She had no more words, and Mofe let the silence return after that. For once, he did not try to fill it.

The rest of the drive passed in muted stillness.

By the time they pulled into the compound, the night air had grown cooler. Security lights illuminated the driveway in soft white pools as the gates closed behind them.

The driver parked near the front entrance, and for a moment, neither Mofe nor Ezinne moved. Then the driver climbed out first and hurried around to open the rear door. Mofe stepped out immediately before turning back toward Ezinne.

She removed one earphone slowly. “We’re home?”

“Yeah.” He replied, offering his hand automatically. “Careful.”

Ezinne placed her fingers into his palm and allowed him to guide her out of the car. The moment her heels touched the ground, she swayed faintly from exhaustion.

His hand tightened around hers at once.

“I’m fine,” she murmured.

“You almost stumbled,” he told her.

“But I didn’t,” she countered quietly.

“I said almost.”

Despite himself, the corner of his mouth twitched faintly.

The front door opened before they reached it. One of the house staff stepped aside respectfully to let them in.

“Good evening, sir. Good evening, ma.”

“Evening,” Mofe replied absently, assisting Ezinne inside.

The house felt unusually quiet without Azora’s endless chatter filling it. No cartoons playing too loudly somewhere. No little footsteps running across the hallway. No excited voice demanding snacks before bedtime.

Just silence, and he realised he missed his daughter’s presence even if it was only for the night. Ezinne seemed to notice it too because she paused briefly just inside the entrance.

“She’s probably bullying Dara for snacks already,” Mofe said lightly.

A faint smile touched her lips. “Most likely.”

It disappeared quickly again.

Mofe studied her for another second, and there was a niggling feeling in his gut that something was up with her. She looked drained enough that he almost told her to go upstairs and sleep immediately.

Instead, he guided her farther inside before releasing her hand carefully. He had already decided he would leave once he knew she was settled. There was still too much moving around inside his head tonight. The doctor. The surgery. General Onu. The threat hidden beneath that conversation. He needed space to think before exhaustion made him reckless.

“You should rest,” he said softly. “It’s been a long day. I’ll be heading to my hotel now, I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Ezinne nodded once.

Mofe waited another moment to make sure she was steady before turning slightly toward the hallway. But he had barely taken two steps away when Ezinne’s voice stopped him.

“Mofe.”

He turned immediately.

She was still standing near the foyer table, one hand resting lightly against its edge.

“Yes?”

There was a brief pause as if she was considering something. Then she said quietly, “I need to speak with you.”

Something in her tone made his attention sharpen instantly, and that niggling feeling he had now became a slight panic.

“Now?”

“Yes.”

“Is everything okay?” He asked even though he knew everything was certainly not okay.

“I don’t know yet.” Ezinne replied, adjusting her glasses faintly before continuing. “Can we go to the study?”

Mofe’s curiosity deepened. The study? Not upstairs. Not the sitting room. Not somewhere casual.

The study meant she wanted privacy, and a strange tension slid quietly through him.

“What’s wrong?” he asked carefully.

Ezinne shook her head once. “I just .. I need to talk to you.”

Mofe searched her face instinctively even though her eyes were hidden behind the dark lenses. Although she sounded calm, too calm, after the kind of day they had just had, calmness suddenly felt dangerous.

“All right,” he said. Without another word, Ezinne turned toward the hallway leading to the study.

Mofe watched her for half a second before following behind her. The unease gathering in his chest felt like he was being strangled from within. Had Ezinne somehow found out about her father’s visit? He was sure Maureen hadn’t told her. So how would she know?
**

tonystark007:
I hope this patient pays off, because I was already getting connected to this story.

Well, Like they say, the patient dog eats the fattest bone 😎 so we would be expecting fat, and suspense-fill fun update 😂

ofcourse , thanks for hanging in there.

jupitre:
Repogirl
When are you going to continue this please

IFECODBLISSEDBOY:

---

Please don't forget to continue this story

yungbanks:
Please when are you coming back ooo

Hi guys,

This story is moving on to its next stage which will be the crucial part of the story. I want to give it what it deserves and not just rush through. I'll continue it when I can do justice to it.

For now my focus is on concluding Forever and for always, it's long overdue.

Thanks for being patient and sticking around.

jupitre:
Even me sef is scared...
What was the deal they made then, how bad could it be

PHEMMY1007:
Mesef dey gbadun this story, following bumper to bumper... Kudos repogirl

welcome on board

sal1974:
Excellent piece as usual! This episode is captivating, well-structured, and emotionally engaging. Thank you for giving readers such a wonderful experience for free. You are truly talented, and your hard work shows in every chapter.

It's comments like yours that makes my effort worthwhile. I appreciate it, and I'm glad you're enjoying the story.

Ibunkun1:
Wow! You had me teary

Thank you so much for this update. I’ve been on hibernation for a while too

Great to have you back from hibernation. Thanks for hanging in there and waiting patiently

jupitre:
Even my emotions are all over the place...

All she can do is hope...

Thanks repogirl

Awww ... You're welcome 🙂

IZUKWU:
Rollercoaster of emotions

Good to see you here. It's been a long time.

Present Day


By evening, the crowd that had filled the compound for most of the day had slowly thinned into scattered groups. A few volunteers still moved around with tired smiles, gathering empty water bottles, folding chairs, and stacking leftover forms into neat piles. The earlier noise had softened into something calmer; the excited buzz of the charity event was settling into the weary satisfaction that came after a long, meaningful day.

The doctors and nurses who had given free consultations were packing up their tables. Some of the company representatives had already dismantled their stalls and carried away the equipment they had displayed. The sun had dropped lower, turning the sky a soft, fading orange, and the shadows of the tents stretched long across the compound.

Mofe stood near the side of the main building, speaking quietly with one of the coordinators while his eyes kept moving over the grounds ... He was looking for Ezinne.

He had been looking for her for the past hour without making it too obvious.

Dr. Edwards, and his team had left not long ago. Their equipment had been packed into two vehicles, and the doctor had shaken Mofe’s hand before leaving for the hotel. They would rest briefly, send preliminary notes to his team, and fly out of the country later that night.

Mofe had watched their car drive out of the gate with a strange heaviness in his chest.

A part of him had wanted to stop them, to ask more questions. To demand clearer answers. To know exactly what type of surgery, what percentage of hope, what risks, what timeline, what country, what cost, what possibility. But for once, he had held himself back.

This was not his decision to rush. It was Ezinne’s.
And yet, deep down, he believed she would agree to the surgery.

Not because she had said so. She had barely said anything after their conversation in the empty office. She had wiped her tears, put her glasses back on, straightened her shoulders, and returned to the event with a composure that might have fooled anyone who did not know how badly she had just been shaken.

But Mofe knew.

He had felt the tremor in her hand when she pulled away from him. He had heard the fear beneath her silence. He had seen how carefully she was holding herself together, as if one careless word from anyone would make everything inside her collapse.
She had been scarce since then.

Not absent exactly. Now and then, he had caught sight of her speaking to one of the volunteers, thanking a guest, or standing beside a nurse as someone praised the event's success. But she had moved like a woman trying not to stay in one place long enough for anyone to ask how she was.

She was terrified of being hopeful, and he did not blame her.

Hope, for someone who had already lost so much, was not soft. It was a dangerous thing that walked into the heart without permission and began arranging dreams one had already buried.

Thankfully, Dara had taken Azora home earlier. Their daughter had resisted at first, insisting she wanted to stay until the very end, but exhaustion had finally won. Dara had promised to keep her for the night, and Mofe had been grateful. Azora did not need to witness the strange, fragile tension that had settled over her parents after the doctor’s words.

Mofe was about to excuse himself from the coordinator when he saw Maureen coming toward him.

Ezinne’s receptionist looked tired but alert, her event tag still hanging crookedly around her neck. She had a file pressed against her chest and a faint crease of worry between her brows.

“Sir,” she called softly as she approached.
Mofe turned fully toward her. “Maureen. Is everything all right?”

“I’m sorry to disturb you.” She glanced around the compound as if expecting someone to appear from somewhere. “Have you seen Miss Ezinne?”

Mofe’s attention sharpened immediately. “Not in the last hour. Why?”

Maureen sighed, shifting the file in her arms. “I’ve been looking for her everywhere. I checked the main hall, the volunteer tent, and even her office. She’s not there.”

Mofe frowned. “Did you call her?”

“Yes, sir. It rang, but she didn’t pick up. I assumed maybe she kept the phone somewhere, or it’s on silent mode.”

The unease that had been resting quietly inside him stirred.

“Why are you looking for her?” he asked.

Maureen hesitated, then said, “There’s a man here to see her. Quite older, possibly in his sixties”
Mofe stilled.

“Did he give his name?”

“Yes, sir. He said his name is General Onu.”

For a moment, Mofe heard nothing else.

The fading noise of the compound seemed to recede into the distance. A volunteer laughed somewhere near the staff tent. Someone dragged a chair across the floor with a sharp scrape. A car horn sounded briefly outside the gate.

But Mofe remained very still.

General Onu, Ezinne’s father. The name entered him like a cold warning, and Mofe’s jaw tightened.

“What is he doing here?” he asked, though he knew Maureen could not answer that.

“I don’t know, sir. He only said he wanted to speak with Ms Ezinne.”

“Did he say anything else, or give a reason for his visit?”

“No. But…” Maureen glanced toward the admin block. “He doesn’t look like someone who came for a casual visit.”

Of course, he did not. Mofe looked toward the admin block, his mind moving quickly.

“Where is he now?”

“In the admin block reception office,” Maureen replied. “I asked him to take a seat while I looked for her.”

Mofe nodded once. “All right. I’ll speak with him.”

Maureen’s brows lifted slightly. “You, sir?”

“Yes.”

“I can keep looking for Miss Ezinne if you want. Maybe she went to the back—”

“Keep looking,” Mofe said, but his voice remained controlled. “If you find her, don’t bring her to him immediately. Come and tell me first.”

Maureen looked uncertain. “Okay, sir.”

He softened his tone a little. “Please.”

That seemed to reassure her. “All right. I’ll check around again.”

She turned and hurried away, crossing the compound toward the makeshift staff tent that had been set up earlier for volunteers and workers. A few people called to her as she passed, and she paused briefly to answer before disappearing beneath the canopy.

Mofe remained where he was for a few seconds longer.

The evening wind moved through the compound, lifting the edges of a loose banner that had been tied to a canopy. The words on it fluttered in and out of shape.

[center]Vision. Dignity. Hope.
[/center]

Mofe began to walk toward the admin block with long, hard strides, his jaw tight enough to ache, anger simmering beneath his skin with every step he took.

What a day for General Onu to appear.

Ezinne had barely found her balance after one life-altering conversation. And now this....

The same man who had forced her into a life that had nearly destroyed her. The same man whose decisions had chained her to years of misery and pain. The same man who had looked at his brilliant, stubborn daughter and decided her happiness was negotiable.

Mofe’s expression darkened further. She definitely did not need this today.

By the time he pushed open the glass door leading into the admin reception office, his temper was already hanging by a thread.

The reception area was quiet and dimly lit compared to the noisy compound outside. Most of the staff had gone home or returned to cleanup duties elsewhere. Only the faint hum of the air conditioner filled the room.

General Onu stood near the reception desk with his hands clasped behind his back. The last time he’d seen the man had been several months back in his office, when the General had confronted him upon being served a subpoena from his lawyers. But seeing him again today, it was obvious that even old age had not completely stripped the man of command.

He was not as tall as Mofe remembered. Time had bent him slightly at the shoulders and thinned some of the intimidating breadth he once carried with ease. His hair was now fully grey, clipped low in military neatness, and deep lines marked the dark skin of his face.

But pride still stood straight inside him.

It was there in the rigid set of his shoulders. The lifted chin. The stillness of a man accustomed to being listened to the moment he entered a room.
Mofe stopped a few feet away from him, his gaze cold.

As always, Mofe found himself thinking that Ezinne must have inherited her looks entirely from her mother. He had never been able to see much resemblance between the stern, dark-skinned General standing before him and the woman whose beauty remained soft even in anger. Ezinne carried a warmth and gentleness that felt completely out of place beside a man like this. The apple had certainly fallen far from this tree.

General Onu turned fully when he sensed him.
For one brief second, surprise flickered across the older man’s face. Then it disappeared beneath composure.

“Mofe.”

Mofe did not bother greeting him back.

“When I dropped the charges against you,” he said flatly, “and refused to meet with you afterwards, you should have taken the hint that I wanted nothing else to do with you.”

The General’s face hardened slightly. “I did not come here to see you.”

Mofe gave a harsh scoff. “No?”

“I came to see my daughter.”

The bitterness that rose in Mofe surprised even him.
“What daughter?” he asked coldly. “The one you practically sold into slavery and abuse?”

The General’s jaw tightened.

“In what world,” Mofe continued, stepping closer, “do you think she wants to see you?”

Silence stretched between them.

Then the older man said quietly, “That is why I came. To ask for her forgiveness.”

Mofe stared at him for a second before shaking his head slowly in disbelief.

“If Ezinne can forgive you for what you did,” he said, “she’ll reach out to you herself.”

General Onu’s eyes darkened with something older than anger. Regret, perhaps. Weariness.

“I have waited years for her to reach out.”

“And?”

“I have tried to speak with her.” His voice lowered slightly. “She has shut me out every time.”

Mofe felt absolutely no sympathy. Good, he thought viciously.

“You are going to have to keep waiting,” he said bluntly. “Because you are not seeing her today.”

Not after the day she'd just had. Not when she was emotionally hanging by a thread, she was trying desperately not to show anyone. Not when the mention of surgery alone had left her shaking in his arms.

The General studied him carefully now, and something about that look made Mofe’s irritation sharpen into warning.

Then the older man spoke. “Have you told her?”

Mofe’s brows pulled together in a frown. “Have I told her what?”

“Does she know what you did?” The General’s gaze remained fixed on him. “Does she?”

Mofe’s heart stopped. Just for a second.

A single, dangerous second. The air in the room thickened instantly. Because there were some things buried so deeply inside him that even thinking about them felt like touching fire.

And that particular secret ... That particular deal ...

Could never reach Ezinne.

Never.

Mofe’s face gave away nothing, but inside him, something cold moved sharply beneath his ribs. The General saw it anyway.

A slow, grim understanding crossed the older man’s face.

“I thought so,” he said quietly. “You still cannot bring yourself to tell her.”

Mofe said nothing, because anything he said now would be dangerous. But his silence stretched too long.

And General Onu noticed. Of course he noticed.

Men like him built entire lives reading weakness before it was spoken aloud.

Mofe’s jaw hardened violently.

“Leave,” he said.

The General remained still.

“I mean it.” Mofe’s voice dropped lower, rougher now. “Leave before I call security and have you escorted out."

For a long moment, the older man simply looked at him. Then, slowly, he nodded once.

“All right.”

Mofe did not relax.

General Onu adjusted the cuff of his dark grey Senator sleeve calmly, but there was something unsettling in the composure that returned to his face.

As if he had just confirmed something important.
As if the conversation had gone exactly where he expected it to go.

But before turning away, the older man spoke again.
“We are not done yet.”

Mofe’s eyes narrowed dangerously. “I have nothing else to discuss with you.”

“You will.” The General’s voice remained calm. “Because I will be reaching out to you soon.”

Mofe’s expression darkened. “Don’t.”

General Onu ignored the warning completely.

“Perhaps,” he said slowly, “it is time we made another one of our deals.”

The words landed like a punch to the chest. Mofe went completely still, as memory threatened at the edges of his mind ... Old desperation ... Old bargains. A younger version of himself standing across from this same man with ambition, rage, pride, and love all tangled together badly enough to ruin lives.

He crushed the memories down immediately.

“No,” he said coldly.

General Onu merely held his gaze.

“Mofe...”

“I said no.”

The older man studied him for another long second before finally inclining his head slightly.

“We shall see.”

Then he turned and walked toward the door with the same rigid dignity he had entered with.

Mofe remained standing exactly where he was until the glass door closed behind the General. Only then did he exhale.

His pulse was pounding now but not from anger anymore. From fear.

Real fear.

There were very few things in this world capable of terrifying Mofe. But the possibility of Ezinne discovering the truth about what had happened all those years ago …

That sat at the top of the list.

And now General Onu had just reminded him that the past was not nearly as buried as he desperately wanted to believe.
********


Thanks for reading. Next post comes up on Monday night/ Tuesday morning. [sup][/sup]

Kamachicho:
Thank you

you're welcome

sal1974:
Thank you for the update

My pleasure

The next chapter comes up on Thursday evening/Friday morning. Thanks for reading.

Mofe’s hand closed a little more firmly over hers.

The doctor continued, “Your case is complex. I will need to review your scans in more detail and discuss with my surgical team before giving a full recommendation. But based on what I have examined today, I am positive that you would benefit from surgery.”

Ezinne stopped breathing. For a moment, she did not understand the words. Or maybe she understood them too well, and that was the problem.

Benefit from surgery …The phrase moved around inside her head, strange and impossible.

Not “there is nothing more we can do.”

Not “you have to accept your condition.”

Not “manage your expectations.”

Benefit from surgery.

Her lips parted, but no sound came out.

The room tilted around her though she was sitting still. Her fingers went slack beneath Mofe’s hand. Somewhere beyond the door, the charity event continued, voices rising and falling, people laughing, chairs scraping, a child calling for someone. Life was still moving outside.

Inside the room, Ezinne could not move at all.

Mofe leaned forward. “Doctor,” he said, and his voice sounded rougher than before. “What exactly does that mean?”

Dr. Edwards turned toward him, but his answer remained directed to Ezinne. “It means I believe there is a strong possibility that surgical intervention can improve her condition. I cannot tell you the extent of improvement today. It would be wrong to do that without further imaging and a full review. But from what I have seen, I would not advise leaving things as they are without exploring surgery.”

Ezinne still said nothing.

Mofe looked at her, then back at the doctor. “What do we need to do next?”

The question should have annoyed her. He was speaking because she could not, and a part of her wanted to remind him that she had told him not to speak for her, but the words were trapped somewhere behind the shock in her chest.

This time, she let him.

Dr. Edwards’s voice remained calm. “If Miss Ezinne agrees to proceed, I’ll have my team prepare a full written recommendation. We’ll include the additional tests we need, the type of surgery we believe may help, the risks, the expected range of possible outcomes, and the timeline. We can send everything by email as soon as it is ready.”

Mofe nodded slowly. “How soon?”

“I’ll ask them to treat it as urgent.”

“And the surgery…” Mofe stopped, as if forcing himself not to run too far ahead. “Would it have to be done in the United States?”

“That will depend on the final recommendation. It may be best done there, but I won’t confirm that until the team reviews all the details.”

Mofe inhaled carefully. “All right.”

Ezinne finally found her voice, but it came out thin and unfamiliar.

“You are saying surgery could help me?”

Dr. Edward’s tone softened. “Yes. I am saying I believe surgery could help you. I am not promising a miracle. I am not promising full restoration. But I am saying, with professional confidence, that there is something worth pursuing.”

Her throat worked.

For years, she had trained herself not to ask the question. Not even in the privacy of her own mind. She had buried it under routine, motherhood, work, charity, strength. She had told herself that acceptance was peace. She had told herself wanting more was dangerous.
But now the question rose anyway, fragile and trembling.

'Could I see again?'

She did not say it aloud.

She could not bear to.

Mofe’s hand was still holding hers. His grip was careful, almost reverent, as if he too understood that they were standing at the edge of something neither of them knew how to name.

Dr. Edwards gave them a moment before speaking again. “There is no need to decide everything today. Take time. Ask questions. When the email comes, read it carefully. If you want another opinion, get one. This is your decision, Ms. Ezinne.”

It was her decision.

The words entered her slowly. Not Mofe’s. Not the doctor’s. Hers.

She reached blindly for her glasses on the desk, and before she could fumble, Mofe placed them gently into her hand, an she put them back on with fingers that were not quite steady.

The shield returned to her face, but it could not cover what had happened inside her.

“Thank you, Doctor,” she whispered.

“You’re welcome.”

Mofe did not speak again immediately, and she was grateful. For once, silence was kinder than any reassurance he might have offered.
Because Ezinne was still sitting there, still breathing, still trying to understand how one sentence had opened a door she had spent years teaching herself not to knock on.

She had come into the room prepared for disappointment.

She had not prepared herself for possibility.

**

Mofe knew Ezinne had not heard half of what the doctor said after the word "surgery." He’d noticed it immediately.

The moment Dr. Edwards began explaining timelines, recommendations, imaging, and next steps, Ezinne had gone strangely quiet beside him. It was not the guarded quiet she often used like armor, but something more fragile. Her fingers had loosened around his, her breathing had changed, and even the sharpness that usually sat in her posture had softened into something almost unsteady.

Shock, and beneath it, fear.

He’d answered most of the doctor’s remaining questions because Ezinne barely spoke again. Once or twice, Dr. Edwards directed something toward her, and she nodded faintly, but it was obvious her mind was no longer fully in the room.

Mofe thanked the doctor quietly when the consultation finally ended. Dr. Edwards assured them again that his team would begin preparing their recommendations and send everything by email as soon as possible. Then he stepped away, giving them privacy.

For a moment, neither Mofe nor Ezinne moved.

Then, gently, Mofe crouched beside her chair.

“Ezinne?”

She turned her face toward him slowly, almost as though she had forgotten he was there.

“We should go,” he said softly.

A pause, then she nodded once.

Mofe rose and held out his hand automatically, lightly grazing her fingers. He expected her to refuse out of pride, annoyance, or sheer stubbornness. Instead, after only the briefest hesitation, her fingers slid into his.

The trust of it hit him harder than he expected.

Carefully, he helped her to her feet.

The moment she stood, he felt the slight unsteadiness in her body. Not physical weakness exactly. It was more like the ground beneath her certainty had shifted and she had not yet found her balance again.

His other hand instinctively went around her waist.

“I’ve got you,” he murmured, steadying her and catching a deep whiff of her lovely scent that did things to his body he wasn’t ready to acknowledge at the moment.

Ezinne did not answer.

Together, they walked toward the door. Mofe guided her slowly, his free hand hovering near her waist without fully touching her, ready in case she stumbled.

Outside the office, the noise of the charity event flooded back immediately. Voices. Footsteps. Laughter. Someone making an announcement over a microphone. The clatter of trays and chairs. Life continuing as though nothing monumental had just happened inside that room.
Ezinne stopped walking.

Mofe looked down at her at once. “What is it?”

Her fingers tightened around his hand. “I can’t go back there yet.”

Concern sharpened through him. “Are you alright?”

“No.” Her voice came out thin and strained. “I just… I need a moment.”

Without another question, Mofe nodded. “Okay.”

He looked down the hallway quickly before guiding her toward another office farther down that was being used for storage during the event. The lights were dimmer inside, the air cooler and quieter away from the crowd.

Mofe closed the door softly behind them, and silence settled around them almost immediately. Ezinne stood in the middle of the room without speaking.

Mofe waited.

He had learned that about her recently. That sometimes rushing toward her emotions only made her retreat further into herself. Sometimes she needed silence first. Space. Time to gather whatever storm she was trying desperately to hold together.

Then suddenly, without warning, her shoulders trembled.

Mofe’s chest tightened.

Ezinne lifted one hand to her mouth as if trying to stop the sound escaping her, but it was too late. A broken breath left her, followed by another, and then she was crying.

Not loudly, and that somehow made it worse.

Tears slid silently beneath the edges of her dark glasses while she stood there fighting for composure she no longer had the strength to maintain.

“Oh, Ezinne…” Mofe crossed the room immediately.

She turned away from him at once, embarrassed. “Don’t.”

“Don’t what?”

“Don’t look at me like this.”

His heart nearly broke.

He reached carefully for her glasses. “Can I?”

After a second, she nodded weakly.

Mofe removed them gently and set them on the desk nearby. When he turned back, her face looked unbearably vulnerable without them. Tears clung to her lashes and slipped helplessly down her cheeks while she struggled to breathe steadily.

Mofe pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and placed it carefully into her hand.

Ezinne laughed shakily through the tears. “A handkerchief?”

“Yes,” he admitted softly. “It’s either this or my sleeve.”

That earned the smallest, most broken smile from her before she covered her face again.

“I don’t want this,” she whispered.

Mofe frowned slightly. “The surgery?”

“The hope.” Her voice cracked painfully. “I don’t want it back.”

Ezinne lowered the handkerchief slowly, her expression raw now, stripped bare of all the composure she usually fought to maintain.
“I spent years teaching myself how to live like this,” she said quietly. “Do you understand? I had to. I had no choice. I had to stop thinking maybe one day I’d wake up and things would change because every time I hoped, it hurt all over again.”

Mofe listened silently.

“I learnt how to move around. How to work. How to raise Azora. How to stop reaching for things I couldn’t see anymore. I finally…” She swallowed hard. “I finally made peace with the darkness, Mofe.”

The words hit him hard.

“And now one doctor walks into a room and suddenly everything is open again.” Her breathing shook. “What if it doesn’t work?”

Mofe stepped closer carefully. “Ezinne—”

“What if I go through all of this for nothing?” she whispered. “What if they cut me open and give me pain and recovery and false promises and at the end of it I still can’t see? I don’t know if I can survive losing it twice.”

Mofe reached for her slowly, giving her every chance to pull away. When she didn’t, he placed his hands gently on her arms.

“You won’t lose yourself,” he said quietly.

“You don’t know that.”

“I do.”

She shook her head immediately. “No, you don’t understand. Right now, in this moment, some stupid part of me is already imagining things.” Tears slipped down her face again. “I’m imagining Azora’s face older now. I’m imagining colours. Your face. Sunlight. Mirrors. I hate that my mind is doing that.”

Mofe’s throat tightened painfully.

Because he was imagining those things too.

“You know what scares me most?” she whispered. “That I want it so badly.”

Her voice broke completely on the last words, and Mofe could not stop himself anymore.

He pulled her gently against him.

At first her body stiffened in surprise, but then the fight slowly left her, and she sagged into his chest with a soft, broken sound that nearly destroyed him.

Mofe wrapped his arms around her carefully, one hand moving up into her hair while the other held her against him.

“It’s okay,” he murmured against her forehead. “It’s okay to want it.”

“I’m scared.”

“I know.”

“I don’t know how not to hope.”

His eyes closed briefly.

“Then hope,” he whispered.

Ezinne shook her head against his chest. “You say that now because you think it will work.”

“No.” He pulled back just enough to look at her face. “I say it because even if it doesn’t, you will survive it.”

Fresh tears gathered in her eyes.

“You are one of the strongest women I know, Ezinne. You always have been.” His voice deepened with emotion. “Do you think blindness is what made you extraordinary? It isn’t. You were extraordinary before it happened. And if this surgery works, then thank God for that. But if it doesn’t…” He brushed a tear carefully from her cheek. “It won’t take away your strength. It won’t erase who you are. It won’t change your drive, your brilliance, your heart, the way you love Azora, the way you built a life from almost nothing.”

Ezinne stared blindly toward him, breathing unevenly.

“You survived years of darkness,” Mofe continued softly. “Not because you were weak, but because you were strong enough to rebuild yourself inside it. Surgery failing would hurt, yes. Of course it would hurt. But it would not destroy you.”

Her lips trembled.

“I don’t know if I believe that.”

“I do.”

She let out another shaky breath.

Mofe rested his forehead lightly against hers. “And honestly? I think it’s better to try and fail than spend the rest of your life wondering what might have happened if you had tried.”

Silence filled the room again. The kind that comes when truth settles slowly into wounded places.

Ezinne’s fingers curled weakly against the front of his shirt.

“I hate that you’re making sense,” she muttered tearfully.

That startled a soft laugh out of him.

“There she is.”

“Don’t get excited. I’m still angry with you.”

“I know.”

“You violated my privacy.”

“I know.”

“You are overbearing.”

“I know.”

“You interfere too much.”

“Ouch .. that one hurts because it’s true.”

Despite herself, a small wet laugh escaped her.

Mofe smiled faintly and wiped another tear from her cheek with his thumb. “Better.”

“No, it isn’t.”

“A little.”

She sighed shakily and leaned her forehead against his chest again. For several long moments, neither of them spoke.

Mofe simply held her while she cried quietly against him, his hand moving slowly up and down her back in a soothing rhythm. And standing there with the woman he had once hurt so badly trembling in his arms, Mofe made a silent promise to himself.

Whatever happened next, whatever the doctors recommended, whatever the surgery involved, whatever fear or disappointment or hope waited ahead ... He would not let her face it alone again.

**********

Present day


Ezinne sat in the ophthalmologist’s makeshift consulting room with her back too straight and her fingers locked together in her lap.
One of the centre’s quiet offices had been hurriedly transformed for the day. The regular chairs had been pushed against the wall. A narrow examination couch stood near the window. A small desk had been covered with files, disposable gloves, bottles of eye drops, sealed instruments, and equipment she could not name but could hear clearly.

Every sound felt too sharp. The soft click of a machine being adjusted … The faint roll of a stool across the tiled floor … the careful rustle of paper … the doctor’s low voice speaking to someone beside him.

Even the smell unsettled her. That clean, sharp scent of antiseptic took her back to too many rooms, too many tests, too many doctors who had sounded kind just before saying something that broke another piece of her.

She told herself she was calm, and this was only a consultation. She told herself she had agreed to one meeting, nothing more, but her body did not believe her. Her shoulders were stiff beneath her dress. Her mouth felt dry. Beneath her dark-shaded glasses, her eyes burned with a pressure that had nothing to do with pain and everything to do with fear.

The door opened quietly, and she heard Mofe step in.

She knew it was him before he spoke. She knew the weight of his footsteps now. She knew the pause he often made before coming close to her, as if he was always measuring how much space she would allow him to take in her life.

“Ezinne?” His voice was gentle.

She turned her face toward the door. “Come in.”

He did, but only a little. She could sense him stopping just inside the room.

“You asked for me,” he said.

“I did.”

A small pause followed. “Are you sure?”

Her lips pressed together. Of course he was surprised. After everything he had admitted outside, after the anger still sitting hot and heavy in her chest, he had probably expected her to keep him as far away from this room as possible.

“Yes, Mofe. I’m sure.”

“I don’t want you to feel like you have to let me stay.”

“I don’t feel like that.”

“If you change your mind at any point, I’ll leave.”

“I know.”

“And if-”

“Mofe.”

He stopped.

She drew in a slow breath, trying to keep her voice steady. “I asked you to stay because I want you to hear whatever the doctor says directly from him. That way, you won’t disturb me later with questions about what was said or what I understood.”
For a second, he said nothing.

Then, very quietly, he replied, “Fair enough.”

It was not the whole truth.

The whole truth sat inside her, small and trembling and too embarrassing to admit. She wanted him there because she was afraid. She wanted him there because she did not trust her own strength in that room. She wanted someone else to hear the doctor’s words with her, especially if those words turned out to be painful. She did not want to walk out later and repeat bad news with a brave face. She did not want to be alone with another disappointment.

And, God help her, Mofe’s presence comforted her.

The doctor came closer, his voice warm without sounding sugary. “Ms Ezinne, good day to you, ma’am, I’m Dr. Adrian Edwards. ”

“I know,” she said softly.

“Yes, of course.” There was no awkwardness in his tone, and she appreciated that. “Still, I prefer to introduce myself properly. I also want to make something very clear before we begin. This consultation is yours. Nothing happens without your permission. If you want to stop, we stop. If you want to ask questions, ask. If you want Mr. Mofe to leave, he leaves. If you want to leave, you leave. You are in control here.”

The words were meant to soothe her. They did, a little. But not enough, because the truth was, she did not feel in control. Not really. Not with her medical records already seen by a stranger. Not with a specialist flown in from the United States because Mofe, in his usual way, had decided to move heaven and earth before asking whether she wanted heaven moved. Not with that tiny, wicked thread of hope winding around her heart again.

She nodded. “All right.”

“I’ve reviewed the history available to me,” Dr. Edwards continued carefully. “But records are not the same as a patient. Today, I want to hear from you, examine you myself, and understand what your eyes are doing now, not just what reports from years ago say they were doing then.”
Ezinne’s fingers tightened in her lap.

“What exactly are you looking for?” she asked.

“I’m looking at the structure of the eye, the optic nerve response, the condition of the retina, and whether there is any pathway we can work with surgically or medically. I don’t want to make promises before I examine you properly.”

There it was. That careful doctor language. Not a promise, not a no. It was a door left open just enough for her foolish heart to look through.

She swallowed. “I’ve heard that before.”

“I imagine you have.”

“I’ve had doctors say they wanted to check. I’ve had them say they wanted to be thorough. I’ve had them ask me to come back for more tests.” Her voice tightened despite her effort to control it. “Sometimes it feels like they keep examining what they already know is broken.”

The room became quiet.

Then Dr. Edwards said, “That must have been exhausting.”

The simple kindness of it struck her in a place she had not protected.

She looked away, though she could not see anything to turn toward. “It was.”

Beside her, Mofe shifted slightly, but he did not speak. She knew he wanted to. She could almost feel all the words pressing against him, all the apologies, all the promises, all the things he would say if he believed words could fix this.

For once, he held them back.

Dr. Edwards moved gently into the silence. “May I ask you a few questions before I examine you?”

“Yes.”

“When did you last perceive light?”

Ezinne’s breath caught.

It was such a simple question that was clinical and necessary, but it opened a door in her memory she preferred to keep shut.

Light.

There had been a time when light had been ordinary. Morning sun through curtains. Headlights at night. The shine on Azora’s baby cheeks. Mofe’s face in the past, young and stubborn and handsome in the way that had ruined her good sense.

Now light was only a memory her mind kept like an old photograph.

“I don’t know,” she said at last. “After the accident, there were times I thought I could sense brightness. Maybe I could. Maybe I only wanted to.”
“That distinction matters,” Dr. Edwards said. “We’ll test it.”

She nodded, but her throat felt tight.

“Do you ever see flashes? Shadows? Movement?”

“Sometimes I think I sense movement. But I’m never sure if I’m seeing it or hearing it. When someone comes close, the air changes. The floor shifts a little. People breathe differently. I have learned to notice those things.”

“That is very important.”

“Is it?” she asked before she could stop herself.

“Yes.”

The answer was firm enough to unsettle her.

Mofe leaned forward. She heard the creak of his chair and almost imagined his face, his eyes sharp with attention, hope already rising in him faster than she could bear.

“Mofe,” she said quietly.

He stopped at once. “I’m here.”

“That is not what I meant.”

“I know.” His voice lowered. “I’m sitting back.”

She almost smiled. Almost.

Dr. Edwards continued with more questions. Pain. Headaches. Pressure. Previous surgeries. Medications. How she moved around at home. Whether she ever sensed changes in daylight. Whether both eyes were the same. Whether the blindness had changed over time or remained stable.

Each answer cost her more than she expected, because answering meant remembering.

And remembering meant returning to the first months after the accident, when everyone spoke in soft voices around her and she pretended not to hear pity gathering in the corners of rooms. It meant remembering waking up and waiting for sight to return like a late visitor. It meant remembering the day she finally understood that the darkness was not temporary.

“Would you be comfortable removing your glasses?” Dr. Edwards asked.

Ezinne’s hands went cold, and the room shrank. Her fingers rose instinctively to the frame of her dark-shaded glasses. She had removed them for doctors before. Many times. It should not matter.

But Mofe was there. And somehow, with him in the room, the glasses felt less like an accessory and more like the last wall she had left. They hid what she did not want people studying. They protected her from reactions she could not see but could always feel and allowed her to decide how much of her loss the world was allowed to look at.

“I can leave,” Mofe said softly.

“No.”

The word came too quickly, too sharply.

She heard him go still.

Ezinne forced herself to breathe. “Stay.”

“All right.”

Only that. There was no argument, no tenderness heavy enough to embarrass her, and no unnecessary reassurance.

Slowly, she removed the glasses. The cool air touched the bare skin around her eyes, and she felt exposed in a way that made her want to put them back on immediately. She kept her chin lifted. Pride had carried her through worse moments than this. It would carry her through another.

Dr. Edwards’s voice remained steady. “Thank you. I’m going to come closer now. I’ll tell you everything before I do it.”

She nodded.

“I’m shining a light into your right eye.”

Nothing.

No glow.

No warmth.

No brightness pressing against the dark.

Just nothing.

Even though she expected it, grief still moved through her quietly, like a hand closing around her throat.

“Now the left.”

Again, nothing.

Her fingers tightened so hard that her nails dug into her palm.

Then Mofe touched her hand ... Barely. Just the lightest brush of his fingers over hers, asking without words.

She should have pulled away. She was still angry. She had every right to remain angry. But the room was cold, and she was tired, and his hand was warm. So she let him stay.

Dr. Edwards examined her with careful patience. He checked her pupil response, used instruments that hummed softly close to her face, asked her to hold still, to turn slightly, and to keep her eyes open if she could. He placed drops in her eyes after asking permission. He waited when they stung. He warned her before every touch. He never spoke over her. He never spoke around her to Mofe.

Slowly, despite the fear, despite the ache in her chest, Ezinne began to feel something she had not felt in a very long time inside a medical room. She felt respected.

Still, the tension did not leave her. It sat beneath her ribs, growing tighter every time the doctor went quiet. Doctors were always quiet before they said something important. She had learned that too. Silence meant they were thinking. Silence meant they had seen something. Silence meant they were choosing words.

She hated doctors choosing words.

After what felt like too long, Dr. Edwards moved back. The room became still. Ezinne could hear Mofe’s breathing beside her. Controlled, but not calm. He was waiting too.

Dr. Edwards took off his gloves. The sound was soft, but to Ezinne it felt as loud as a door closing.

“Miss Ezinne,” he said.

Her heart began to pound.

“Yes?”

“I want to be careful with how I say this.”

Her stomach dropped.

Next post comes up on Monday. Thanks for reading.

Present day

Mofe stepped closer to her, then stopped himself. He wanted to touch her, to hold her hand, to anchor them both, but he knew this was not the moment to use tenderness as a shield.

“There is a doctor here today,” he said carefully. “A consultant from the United States.”

Ezinne frowned. “There are many doctors here today.”

“This one came specifically for you.”

The silence between them sharpened.

“For me?” she repeated.

“Yes.”

“Why?”

Mofe drew in a breath. “He specializes in complex visual impairment cases. He reviewed some information about your condition, and he believes it would be worth examining you personally. Not to promise anything. Not to raise false hope. Just to assess you properly and give another opinion.”

Ezinne went still. Very still.

Then her face closed in that way that always frightened him more than anger. Anger meant she was still standing there with him, still willing to fight. This quietness felt like a door being slowly shut.

“I don’t need another doctor,” she said.

“Ezinne—”

“No.” She shook her head. “No, Mofe. I don’t know what you think you are doing, but I have been examined. I have been tested. I have been told things. I have been disappointed by things. I do not need some foreign consultant flying in to poke at my eyes and give me another version of pity dressed as professional concern.”

“It is not pity.”

“It feels like pity.”

“It isn’t.”

“Then what is it?”

He hesitated. That hesitation was enough.

Ezinne’s chin lifted. “How did he review anything about my condition?”

Mofe’s chest tightened.

“Ezinne…”

“How?” she asked again, her voice quiet but dangerous.

He looked away for a second, ashamed of the answer before it even left his mouth. “I got access to some of your medical records.”

Ezinne went completely still behind her dark shaded glasses. For a moment, she did not speak at all. Then she laughed once, but there was no amusement in it. It was a short, wounded sound that cut him worse than shouting would have.

“You did what?”

“I know.”

“No, don’t say you know. You clearly don’t know anything.” Her voice trembled now, not with weakness but with the effort to contain herself. “You got access to my medical records? Without my permission?”

“Yes.”

“My private medical records?”

“Yes.”

“And you sent them to a doctor overseas?”

Mofe closed his eyes briefly. “Yes.”

Ezinne stepped back from him as if he had touched her with dirty hands, and the movement gutted him.

“Ezinne, please listen to me.”

“Why?” she demanded. “So you can explain how violating my privacy was actually for my good?”

“No.”

“Then what explanation could you possibly have?”

He dragged a hand through his hair, his composure cracking under the weight of her hurt. “At first, it wasn’t for the right reason.”

Her lips parted.

Mofe rushed to explain, “when I first came back, when I found out about Azora and everything that had happened, I was angry. I was hurt. I was not thinking like a father. I was thinking like a man who had lost ten years and wanted to punish someone for it.” His voice grew rough. “I thought I might need information if it came to a custody fight.”

Ezinne made a small sound and turned away from him.

“God .. Ezinne, I was acting from a different mental space, I am sorry, believe me.”

She pressed her fingers against her forehead, and he could see her breathing change. “You were going to use my blindness against me.”

The statement came out so softly that they almost disappeared into the air, and Mofe felt them like a blade.

“Yes,” he said, because a lie now would be another cruelty. “At first, yes.”

She wrapped one arm around herself. “Of course … I knew it.”

“Ezinne—”

“No, it makes sense.” Her laugh came again, brittle and broken. “It makes perfect sense. Why stop at abandoning me for years? Why? When you could come back and finish the job properly.”

“Don’t say that.”

“Why not? Is it too ugly when I say it out loud?”

“It is ugly because it is true, and because I hate that I ever thought that way.” He stepped closer, his voice low and desperate now. “But I did not bring him here for that. Not anymore. I swear to you, Ezinne, I did not bring him here to build any case against you. I brought him because when I had time to really think .. when I understood even a fraction of what you went through, I wanted to do something. Anything. I wanted to find someone who could look again, someone who might know something others missed.”

“You had no right.”

“I know.”

“No, you don’t get to keep saying that as if it fixes anything.”

“It doesn’t fix it.” He shook his head. “Nothing I say fixes it. I crossed a line. I invaded your privacy. I made a decision about your body, your history, your pain, without asking you. I know that was wrong.”

“Then why am I only hearing about it now? Wait! Is that why you did all this? So that you could provide a soft landing for yourself when you told me about this doctor and my medical records that you stole?”

When he didn’t immediately reply, she shook her head, “You crafty son of a …”

“Ezinne…” he cautioned her, before he continued, “You’re just hearing about it because I was afraid.”

That made her pause.

Mofe swallowed hard. “Because every time I thought of telling you, I imagined this exact look on your face. I imagined you pulling away .. I was afraid it would destroy the progress we’ve been making. Ezinne, I am tired of being the reason you have to protect yourself.”

His voice dropped further. “I’m .. tired of being another thing you survived.”

Ezinne was seething with so much raw anger that she held her tongue back from speaking because she didn’t want to say something hurtful that she’d regret later. Just when they’d seemed to reach a steady truce, he decided to pull this!

Mofe could feel the depth of her anger towards him. But underneath it was something else too. Pain. Exhaustion. Perhaps even the reluctant understanding that he was not hiding behind excuses.

“The doctor is here,” he said quietly. “ He will not examine you unless you agree. If you say no, I’ll send him away, and apologize for wasting his time. But I am begging you to consider it. Not for me. Not because I arranged it. Not because I think I know better than you. Consider it for yourself .. please.”

Ezinne turned her face away. “I have made peace with some things, Mofe.”

“I know.”

“Do you?” Her voice softened, and somehow that hurt more. “Do you know what it takes to make peace with darkness? Do you know what it takes to stop waking up every morning expecting the world to return to you the way you knew it before? Do you know how many times hope becomes cruelty when people keep handing it back to you carelessly?”

Mofe’s throat worked. “No,” he admitted. “I don’t know, and I can’t pretend I do.”

“Then don’t bring me hope like a gift unless you are sure it will not cut me.”

“I am not sure.” His honesty came out raw. “I am not sure of anything, but the doctor was quite confident he could help. He needs to do a fresh assessment since it’s been a while …”

Ezinne’s lips trembled slightly. “Don’t… don’t raise my hopes, Mofe .. please, just don’t.”

He nodded. “Okay.”

The wind stirred the leaves above them. Somewhere in the distance, Azora laughed, bright and carefree, and the sound seemed to reach both of them at once.

Ezinne wrapped her arms tighter around herself. “You should have asked me.”

“I should have.”

“You should have trusted me enough to ask.”

“I should have.”

“You should have respected me enough to let me choose.”

Mofe bowed his head. “Yes.”

“And now you are standing here begging me after already making half the decision for me.”

“Yes,” he said again, because there was nothing else clean enough to say.

For a long moment, Ezinne was silent. Mofe could almost hear the old walls rising inside her, brick by brick. He had spent weeks trying to show her that he could be safe, that he could be patient, that he could be present without taking over. And now, with one confession, he had reminded her of every reason she had ever had to fear his return to her and her daughter’s lives.

Finally, she said, “I don’t want to see him.”

Mofe’s heart sank, but he nodded. “Okay.”

Her brows pulled together at his quick acceptance. “That’s it?”

“Yes.”

“You’re not going to argue?”

“No.”

“You’re not going to tell me I’m being stubborn?”

“No.”

“You’re not going to remind me that he came all the way from the United States?”

“No.” His voice was gentle. “You said no.”

Ezinne looked unsettled by that, as if she had braced for a fight and found empty air instead.

Mofe continued, “I wanted you to say yes. I still want you to say yes. But I will not force you. I have forced my way into enough parts of your life already.”

Her expression shifted, pain flickering over her features before she could hide it.

He looked at her helplessly. “I am sorry, Ezinne. Not the kind of sorry that expects forgiveness. Not the kind of sorry that asks you to make me feel better. I am sorry because what I did was wrong.”

She swallowed.

“And if you change your mind,” he added carefully, “he will be available today before my private jet takes him back later tonight. He can do a basic consultation here, in a private room. No pressure. No audience. No one has to know. If you still say no, that is the end of it.”

Ezinne’s fingers tightened around the edge of her sleeve.

“I hate this,” she whispered.

“I know.”

“I hate that a part of me wants to know what he will say.”

Mofe went still.

She shook her head, anger returning, though this time it seemed directed at herself as much as at him. “I hate that after all these years, after everything, there is still one foolish part of me that hears ‘specialist’ and starts wondering.”

“That is not foolish.”

“It feels foolish.”

“It is human.”

Her mouth pressed into a thin line.

Mofe kept his voice low. “You don’t have to hope. You don’t have to believe anything. You can go in expecting nothing. You can ask him questions and walk out whenever you want. I will not even be in the room unless you ask me to be.”

Ezinne turned back toward him slowly. “You will not speak for me.”

“No.”

“You will not answer questions on my behalf.”

“No.”

“You will not make decisions with him behind my back.”

“Never again.”

Her face tightened at that, like she didn’t believe him, and Mofe accepted the blow of it. He had earned her doubt.

“And after this,” she said, “you will give me every copy of whatever records you have.”

“Yes.”

“And you will tell me exactly who has seen them.”

“Yes.”

“And if I find out there is anything else you have hidden from me, Mofe…” Her voice broke slightly, but her chin stayed high. “I will not forgive you for it.”

“I understand.”

She was quiet again.

Then she inhaled slowly, as if the decision cost her more than she wanted him to know.

“One consultation,” she said.

Mofe’s heart lurched.

“Ezinne—”

“One,” she repeated firmly. “I am not agreeing because of you. I am agreeing because if there is something I should know about my own body, then I deserve to know it.”

“Yes,” he said quickly. “Of course.”

“And if he starts sounding like one of those doctors who talks to me like I am a tragic charity case, I am leaving.”

“I will personally open the door for you.”

She scoffed, and almost smiled.

Almost.

But the anger was still there, sitting between them like a wounded thing.

“Mofe?”

“Yes?”

“I am very angry with you.”

“I know.”

“No, I need you to hear me. I am not touched by this. I am not impressed. I am not suddenly forgetting what you did because you wrapped it in concern.”

He nodded slowly. “I hear you.”

“You broke my trust again.”

The words landed heavily.

Mofe’s eyes burned, but he did not look away. “Then I will earn it again. Properly this time. With no tricks. No secrets. No shortcuts.”

Ezinne sighed, before speaking again, “take me to him.”

Mofe did not move immediately.

Not because he had not heard her, but because those four words had struck something deep in him. She had not forgiven him. She had not softened completely. She had not absolved him.

But she had chosen. And this time, he would honor that choice.

Carefully, he stepped beside her, close enough to guide but not to crowd.

“May I hold your hand?” he asked.

Ezinne hesitated. Then, slowly, she placed her hand in his. Her fingers were cool against his palm. Her grip was not soft, not trusting in the way he longed for, but it was there.
Mofe held it like something sacred, and together, they walked back toward the makeshift consulting room.

***********

Present Day

Mofe knew the moment had come long before he found the courage to take it.

He had been watching Ezinne from across the charity grounds, pretending to listen while one of the doctors gave him a brief update about the number of people they had attended to so far. The doctor’s voice was calm and professional, but Mofe’s attention kept drifting, helplessly, to the woman standing a short distance away with Azora tucked against her side.

Ezinne looked tired, but not in a defeated way. There was a soft glow around her today, the kind that came from seeing something she had poured her heart into become bigger than she had imagined.

People were everywhere. Volunteers moved between the tents with bottled water and forms. Nurses guided elderly men and women toward the screening stations. Representatives from different companies explained devices that could help visually impaired people move around more easily, read better, and live with more independence. Every few minutes, someone came to thank Ezinne, to hold her hands, to bless her, to tell her what the event meant to them.

And every time she smiled, Mofe felt something twist inside him. Pride … regret …. And love. All of it tangled together until it almost hurt to breathe.

She had survived so much without him. She had built something meaningful out of pain he had helped create. She had raised his daughter. She had lost her sight. She had endured betrayal, fear, loneliness, and years of believing he had abandoned her. And he, foolish, angry, desperate man that he had been, had almost used that same suffering against her.

His jaw tightened as the thought passed through him.

He had collected information about her health for the wrong reason. A shameful reason. He had told himself it was strategy. That he needed facts. He'd told himself that if Ezinne wanted to keep him away from Azora, then he had every right to fight with whatever weapon he could find. But the truth was uglier than that.

He had wanted ammunition. He had wanted proof that she was not strong enough to raise Azora alone. He had wanted to win.

Now, standing here and watching her guide their daughter’s fingers over the raised print on one of the brochures, Mofe once again felt the full weight of what he had almost become. He had stolen parts of her private life, sent her medical records overseas without her permission, and justified it because he was hurt. Because he was angry. Because he was still that boy who had lost everything and blamed the wrong person for it.

The ophthalmologist from the United States was already here.

Dr Adrian Edwards and his team had arrived that morning, flown in privately by Mofe. He was a quiet and composed man, with the kind of confidence that did not need to announce itself. He had reviewed Ezinne’s case from afar, had asked careful questions, and had explained that while he could not promise miracles, he wanted to assess her properly before making a final opinion. Mofe had held on to that one small sentence like a man holding on to a rope in deep water.

He could not promise miracles. Still, Mofe wanted Ezinne to have every chance. Every answer. Every possibility. But how did he tell her?

How did he stand before a woman he had already wounded and admit that he had crossed a line again, even if this time the intention had changed?

He drew in a slow breath, then walked toward her before cowardice could make him delay.

Azora noticed him first. “Daddy!” she called, her whole face brightening as if he were still something new and wonderful in her world.

That one word still had the power to break him.

Mofe smiled and crouched slightly when she ran to him. He pressed a kiss to the top of her head. “My princess. Are you enjoying yourself?”

“Yes. Mummy said I can help give out water later. But only if I don’t run.”

“That sounds like a very serious job.”

“It is,” Azora said solemnly, then ruined it by grinning.

Ezinne turned toward his voice. “She has asked me five times already.”

“That means she is committed.”

“That means she is impatient,” Ezinne corrected, but there was laughter hiding in her voice.

Mofe looked at her for a moment longer than he should have. She must have sensed the shift in him because her smile faded slightly.

“What is it?” she asked.

He swallowed. “Can I speak to you privately for a few minutes?”

Her brows drew together. “Now?”

“Yes.” He softened his voice. “Please.”

Azora looked from one parent to the other, immediately curious. “Is it a secret?”

Mofe touched her nose lightly. “Adult secret.”

“That’s not fair.”

“Most adult things are not fair,” Ezinne murmured, and Mofe almost smiled despite the storm gathering in his chest.

He turned to one of the volunteers nearby. “Could you stay with Azora for a few minutes?”

Before the woman could answer, Azora held up both hands. “I can stay with Auntie Dara.”

Dara, who had been speaking with one of the nurses not far away, heard her name and turned. “What did I do now?”

“You are watching me,” Azora announced.

Dara laughed and came toward them. “Am I? Thank God someone told me about my new assignment.”

Ezinne hesitated for a second, then nodded. “Stay where Auntie Dara can see you. No running.”

“I know, Mummy.”

“And no touching equipment.”

“I know.”

“And no—”

“Mummy…,” Azora groaned with the full exhaustion of a child who had clearly been burdened with too many rules in life.

Mofe’s lips curved faintly, but the amusement did not last. He placed his hand lightly near Ezinne’s elbow, not quite touching her until she allowed it. She did not move away, and that small permission felt larger than he deserved.

“Can we take a walk?” he asked.

Ezinne tilted her head slightly. “You are making me nervous.”

“I know.” His voice dropped. “I’m sorry.”

“That does not help.”

“I know that too.”

She studied him in the way she did now, with her face turned toward him, her eyes unfocused but still somehow seeing too much. Then she sighed. “Fine. But if this is about your overbearing need to control every detail of this event, I am sending you to the registration desk.”

“It’s not about the event.”

That made her quieter.

They walked away from the busiest part of the grounds, moving past the medical tents and the shaded seating area where some elderly guests were resting after their checkups. The noise slowly thinned around them. The cheerful voices, the announcements, the shuffle of chairs, the laughter of children, all faded into a softer hum behind them.

Mofe guided her toward a quieter path near the side garden of the centre. He had chosen the place earlier without admitting to himself that he was choosing it for this conversation. There were trees there, old ones with wide branches that threw generous shade over the walkway. The air was cooler, touched by the scent of trimmed grass and the faint sweetness of flowers blooming along the fence.

Ezinne stopped when they were far enough from everyone else.

“Now talk,” she said. “What is going on?”

Mofe looked at her, and for once all his carefully arranged words deserted him.

He had negotiated with ruthless men. Faced boardrooms filled with people waiting for him to make one mistake. He had rebuilt parts of his life from nothing. He had learned to speak with authority, to command rooms, to hide weakness behind silence.

But Ezinne had always been the one person who could strip him down to the truth with a single question.

He rubbed a hand over his jaw. “Don’t be mad.”

Her expression changed immediately. “Mofe.”

“I know that is a terrible way to start.”

“It is the worst way to start.” She replied, and he could hear the impatience behind every word.

“I know.”

“Then why would you start like that?”

“Because you are probably going to be mad.”

Ezinne’s mouth parted slightly, and for one terrible second, he thought she might turn and walk away before he even got the chance to explain.

“What did you do?” she asked, her voice cooler now.
*****