Chapter 22: WHAT WE’VE DONE

“I was no stranger to the street, so I knew what to expect,” Aisha began, her voice quieter now—not the firebrand defiance Karim had first seen in her,

but something steadier, almost hollow, as though the words had been rehearsed a thousand times in her

head and were only now given release. “I knew the police would want someone to go down, and I knew that person would be me—regardless of the

circumstances. So I ran. I ran without looking back.”

Her eyes were distant. Though the room was quiet, the weight of her memories filled it like smoke,

creeping into every corner. “I went to the least

expected place. I went to Ìsàlẹ̀ Èkó—the old quarters

of Lagos, where history lay buried under cracked bricks and poverty wore a thousand faces. You could vanish there, not because no one knew you, but because everyone minded their own survival too

much to care.” She let out a breath, shook her head, and her lips curved faintly, bitterly. “I had friends from there—kids who had run away from their homes long before I ever thought of it. They had carved out lives in the underbelly of the city, their names erased from the clean records of society. Most of them lived in clusters, squatting, surviving on scraps and quick hustles. I was lucky—or cursed, depending on how you see it—to find one who lived alone in a small room, a self-contained space barely big enough to fit a mattress, a hot plate, and a chair.

Her name was Halima.”

“She accepted me on the condition that I worked for my survival, paid my share of the bills, and never became a liability. It was an unspoken rule of the street: you pull your weight, or you’re cast out. She made that clear from the start.” Aisha’s lips

tightened, remembering. “Halima was not much older than me—nineteen, maybe twenty—but her eyes were heavy, already old with secrets. She had run away at thirteen, the child of a polygamous home where she was more servant than daughter. Her mother had died young, and her father’s other wives saw her as little more than an extra pair of hands. She told me once about a night when one of her

stepbrothers cornered her. She hadn’t waited for it to

become a story she’d never live down—she had fled,

barefoot, into the city and never returned. By the time I met her, she had done everything the streets could demand of a girl like her: hawking under the hot sun, cleaning the filth of strangers’ homes, dancing in smoky bars, selling herself when there was no other way. She laughed often, but it was a laughter that cracked around the edges. She told me survival had no dignity, and that the earlier I learned that truth, the better.”

“I thought long and hard about what to do,” she

continued, her tone shifting. “And I decided that the price to pay for my survival, for my escape from the law, would be my innocence. I became an escort.” The words seemed to sit between them like a stone.

“I was young, beautiful, and before long, I found

men willing to pay for more than beauty. Some wanted company, others wanted distraction, all wanted something I could sell. My body became currency, and I hated it at first, hated how the city looked at me like I was both prey and predator. But then the money came. Fast. Heavy. For the first time,

I wasn’t thinking about whether I would eat tomorrow.”

Her voice sharpened, a defiance creeping in. “Do you know what it means, Karim, to sleep at night with food in your belly and rent already paid? To walk down the street knowing you could buy tomorrow if tomorrow failed you? That kind of freedom is addictive. And once you taste it, you can’t go back to

hunger.”

“It was in those days I met Jamal. He was a fraudster, but not even a clever one. The kind who thought loud cars and gaudy chains made him untouchable. Reckless. Unintelligent. But he liked me. He liked that I was smarter than him, that I could tell when his friends were setting him up or when his scams were about to fail. He paid me well, not just for my body, but for my mind. And I took his money gladly. I kept the relationship strictly professional. I didn’t love him—never could. But he became a tool. A window into another world of crime where money changed hands faster than conscience could follow. I learned to read men, to predict them, to play the

game without falling too deep into it.”

Aisha’s face softened briefly, almost wistful. “He once told me I was wasted on Lagos, that if I had been born somewhere else, I would have been a lawyer, or a politician, or something grand. I didn’t tell him my dream because I didn’t trust him enough.

But in my heart, I knew I hadn’t buried it. Not completely.”

“But I never forgot my dream,” she whispered. “To become a lawyer. To clear my father’s name. That was what kept me awake when the city drowned me in neon lights and hollow promises. But I knew if I carried the name ‘Abati,’ the system would find me, drag me back, and end me before I ever set foot in a courtroom. So I changed it. Changed everything. I

kept my first name—Aisha—but I buried the rest. I

worked out, hardened myself, made modifications to my body. The girl who had stabbed a man in his sleep and fled into the night ceased to exist. I became someone else.”

Her eyes flickered, sharp and cold. “And for a while, it worked. I gathered enough money for myself and left the slums. I rented an apartment in Ikoyi—quiet, discreet, the kind of place where the neighbors didn’t ask questions if you came home at 3 a.m. in a new car. I maintained a low profile. No police came knocking, but I lived with fear, a constant

companion. I couldn’t even visit my father in prison for three years. Not because I didn’t want to, but because I knew the second I stepped through those

gates, the law would remember me. So I stayed

away. I put off my application to law school, waiting, hoping for the right time. But the right time never came.”

The silence stretched until Karim leaned back in his chair, his brow furrowed, his chest rising slowly as though weighed down by all he had just heard. Then, finally, he spoke. “How did you two meet?” His question was directed at both Aisha and Jemima, his voice calm but heavy, the kind that sought answers not just for understanding, but for judgment.

Jemima’s gaze shifted. Her lips parted slowly, and for the first time that evening she looked away from Karim, her eyes lost in the distance, as though

searching for the right place to begin. “When I left,”

she said softly, “I didn’t know if I would ever return. After that night on the island, when my parents died and I was left screaming in the dirt, an aunt in the States took me in. She thought distance would heal me. She thought America, with its wide streets and

bright lights, would bury the shadows.” Her hands clasped, trembling faintly. “For a while, it worked. I buried everything deep, sealed it away like a coffin I would never open. I lived. I studied. I pretended. But trauma is never buried, not truly. It waits.”

Her voice dropped. “It came back the day I watched a television show—just a simple drama, nothing remarkable. But in it, a child screamed the way I had screamed, alone, helpless. It broke me. Everything

came rushing back. The masks, the gunshots, the

smell of blood in the sand. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t sleep. For weeks, I was haunted. Until I

realized the ghosts weren’t in America—they were here, in Nigeria. And I would never be free until I faced them.”

She looked directly at Karim now. Her eyes

glistened. “So I came back. And when I did, I began searching. For answers. For what was left. For him. The man that had saved me that day. For what was left of him”

The words hung heavy in the room.

And outside, beyond the walls of the suite, Lagos carried on in its restless rhythm, unaware that within

those walls, past and present had collided—and nothing would ever be the same again