Their leader, a scar-faced man who called himself Django, leaned across the sticky table. “So, you’re saying you want this man… gone?” Django asked, his voice low and gravelly.
Obinna’s eyes gleamed with a cold, sharp fury. “Not just gone. I want him broken. He humiliated me. He stole my position. And now he lives like a king, while I’m forced to sit in his shadow. I want him to feel what it’s like to lose everything, just like I did.”
Django smirked. “For the right price, we can make that happen.”
Obinna said nothing, but simply slid a thick envelope across the table. Django picked it up, peeked inside, and saw bundles of naira stacked neatly. He let out a low whistle. “It will be done.”
The night before Williams’s wedding, the new mansion was quiet. Juliana was staying at her family’s house, preparing for the big day according to tradition. Williams sat alone in the large living room, flipping through the pages of his old engineering book, a soft, contented smile on his face. He was thinking of the impossible journey from the cold concrete under the bridge to this warm, beautiful home. From total despair to pure joy.
Then, a sharp knock echoed from the front door. He frowned. It was very late. Who could possibly be calling at this hour?
He rose, walked to the door, and pulled it open.
Three men in dark jackets stood on his doorstep. Before he could even ask a question, one of them raised an object. A loud bang tore through the night. Williams gasped as a searing, terrible pain exploded in his upper arm.
He stumbled backward, clutching the wound as he felt a warm wetness—red—soaking his sleeve.
The men didn’t wait. They turned and ran into the darkness, vanishing before the guards outside could even react. Chaos erupted. Security personnel started shouting, alarms blared, and Williams collapsed onto the polished floor, his vision blurring at the edges.
As he felt himself drifting into unconsciousness, one single, terrified thought echoed in his mind. Not again. Please, I can’t lose it all again.
The sirens of the ambulance wailed through the Lagos night, racing down the Third Mainland Bridge toward the hospital. Inside, Williams lay on a stretcher, his face pale, his arm wrapped tightly in soaked bandages. His eyelids fluttered as he fought to stay awake, but the pain kept pulling him down into darkness.
Beside him, Juliana, still in her dressing gown, held his uninjured hand tightly. Her eyes were red and swollen from tears. She whispered frantic prayers through trembling lips. “God, please don’t take him from me. Not now. Not when we’ve only just begun.”
Johnson Uche followed closely behind them in his black SUV, his mind racing. He replayed the scene over and over: the mansion gates thrown open, guards shouting, the dark stain on the beautiful floor tiles where Williams had fallen. His chest ached with a terrible guilt. I should have seen this coming, he muttered to himself, gripping the steering wheel. I should have protected him better.
At Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH), doctors rushed Williams into emergency surgery. For three long days, he lay unconscious in a private hospital bed, his body fighting for its life. The once-vibrant man who had saved Aerospace and won the hearts of so many was now perfectly silent, his breathing supported by tubes.
Juliana never left his side. She refused to eat. She refused to rest. Her head would often rest on his chest, just so she could listen to the weak, faint rhythm of his heart, as though her presence alone could somehow call him back from the edge.
On the third night, just when hope was beginning to slip away, Williams stirred. His chest rose with a shaky, dry cough, and his eyes slowly, painfully, fluttered open…
