The silence had become a living thing, a third occupant of their opulent room. It wasn't the angry silence of before; it was the absolute, void-like silence of a connection severed. Mina moved through her days with an eerie, mechanical precision. She was a ghost in the machine of the Dared household, performing her functions without a flicker of the woman she used to be.
Adams was drowning in it. Her calm was a punishment far more exquisite than any rage. He would have preferred she scream, throw things, demand reparations. That would have been a fire he could try to quench. This was a slow, psychological suffocation.
One evening, he broke. He found her sitting on the balcony, staring out at the manicured gardens, seeing nothing.
"Mina," he pleaded, his voice raw. "Please. Say something. Yell at me. Curse me. Hit me back. Anything. Just... just look at me."
She didn't turn. Her profile was serene, carved from marble. "What would you like me to say, Adams?"
"Anything! Tell me you hate me! Tell me I'm a monster!"
She was silent for a long moment. "I don't hate you," she said, her voice devoid of any emotion at all. "Hate would require me to feel something. I just want you to leave me alone."
The words were a death knell. He stumbled back into the room, his heart hammering against his ribs. This was it. This was his life now. An eternal penance in a gilded hell of his own making.
He must have fallen into a fitful sleep on the couch, because he was jolted awake by a sound. The soft, definitive click of the bedroom door closing.
He sat up, his pulse racing. The digital clock on the bedside table glowed 2:17 AM. The room was empty. The door to the bathroom was open, the floor bare of her pillow and blanket.
A cold dread, sharper than any he had ever known, seized him.
"Mina?" he called out, his voice hoarse with sleep and fear.
Silence.
He scrambled off the couch and threw open the bedroom door. The hallway was dark and empty.
"Mina!" he called again, louder this time, his voice echoing through the vast, silent house.
He ran downstairs, his heart pounding a frantic rhythm against his ribs. The living room was empty. The kitchen was empty. The patio doors were locked from the inside.
A sudden, terrifying thought struck him. He took the stairs two at a time, ignoring the protest in his healing leg, and burst into the nursery.
Trisha was sleeping peacefully in her crib, her chest rising and falling in a steady rhythm. The sight should have comforted him. It did the opposite. She was here. But Mina was gone.
Gone.
The word echoed in his skull, paralyzing him. He stumbled back into the hallway, his mind racing. Where would she go? She had no money. No phone he could track. No family in Abuja.
Lara.
The thought was a lifeline. He fumbled for his phone, his hands shaking so violently he could barely dial his sister-in-law's number.
It rang once, twice. "Hello?" Lara's voice was thick with sleep, laced with immediate concern. "Adams? What's wrong? Is it Trisha?"
"Lara," he choked out, the panic making it hard to breathe. "Is she there? Please, tell me she's there."
"Who? Adams, what are you talking about? Who's here?"
"Mina!" he nearly shouted, desperation clawing at his throat. "She's gone! I can't find her! Please, if she's with you, just tell me she's safe!"
There was a sharp intake of breath on the other end. "Gone? What do you mean, gone? What did you do, Adams?"
The accusation in her tone was a fresh blow. "I... we... just tell me if she's there!"
"She's not here," Lara said, her voice now fully awake and vibrating with a cold fury. "I haven't heard from her in days. What happened?"
But Adams had already ended the call. The lifeline had snapped. He stood in the middle of the dark hallway, utterly lost.
The sound of a door opening down the hall made him jump. Hajiya Zainab stood in her doorway, wrapped in a silk robe, her expression one of profound irritation.
"Adams, what is all this noise?" she demanded. "It's the middle of the night. You'll wake the entire house."
"Mina's gone," he said, the words sounding unreal even to his own ears.
His mother's face tightened. "Gone? What nonsense. She probably just went for a walk to clear her head. Her dramatics are endless."
"This isn't dramatics, Mother!" he cried, his voice breaking. "It's two in the morning! She wouldn't just leave Trisha! Something's wrong!"
Hajiya Zainab's eyes narrowed. "Lower your voice. This is unbecoming. She is a grown woman. If she has chosen to be irresponsible, that is on her. Not you. Go back to bed."
The cold, dismissive logic of it shattered the last of his control. The perfect, ordered world she valued above all else was crumbling, and she was worried about propriety.
"NO!" he roared, the sound raw and primal. "I won't go back to bed! My wife is missing! Do you understand? MISSING!"
He didn't wait for her response. He turned and ran, barefoot, out the front door and into the cool night air.
"MINA!" he screamed, his voice tearing through the pristine silence of the Maitama neighborhood. "MINA, WHERE ARE YOU?"
He ran down the driveway, his head swiveling wildly, looking for any sign of her in the shadows cast by the security lights. Nothing.
He was a madman, pacing the empty streets in his pajamas, calling her name until his voice was raw. The windows of neighboring mansions remained dark, their wealthy inhabitants undisturbed by the domestic tragedy unfolding next door.
Eventually, his leg gave out, and he collapsed on the curb, his head in his hands. Sobs wracked his body—great, heaving, ugly sobs of pure despair. He had driven her away. His weakness, his anger, his pathetic inability to protect her from his own family had finally pushed her to the edge.
He saw it now with horrifying clarity. Every time he had chosen silence. Every time he had failed to defend her. Every time he had let his mother's poison seep into their marriage. He had handed her the reasons to leave, one by one.
And the slap... the slap had been the final, unforgivable push.
He had lost her. Not just in the practical sense of tonight, but forever. The woman who had looked at him with love, with fire, with partnership, was gone. He had extinguished that light himself.
The panic subsided, replaced by a colder, deeper terror: the certainty of his own damnation. He wasn't just searching for his wife. He was searching for redemption he knew, in his heart, he could never deserve.