CHAPTER THREE — The City and the Blood
Lagos was a city that never slept — not because it was full of dreamers, but because even dreams were afraid to close their eyes.
The streets hummed with engines and arguments. Market women shouted like warriors; hawkers sprinted between traffic, balancing baskets of groundnuts and water sachets on their heads. It was a place that could make or break you, often both in the same breath.
To Tunde, it was a monster with a thousand faces. But unlike the ones that haunted his past, this monster offered opportunity — if you were bold enough to grab it.
⚙️ The Mechanic's Yard
Uncle Gori's workshop sat at the edge of Mushin, tucked between a row of makeshift shops and a half-collapsed building painted with campaign posters. The air always smelled of diesel, sweat, and metal.
"This place," Uncle Gori liked to say, "is a university of life. You learn fast, or you fail."
And Tunde learned fast. He learned to listen to the engine's hum like it was speaking in code. He learned to tell when a carburetor was lying or when a customer was. He learned that in Lagos, trust was a currency rarer than fuel.
Gori treated him like a son, but he was also strict.
"Never take what's not yours," he'd warn. "And don't ever owe a man more than you can pay — not in money, not in pride."
Under that roof, Tunde found something he hadn't known in years — belonging.
At night, they would sit outside the shed, drinking garri with groundnuts and laughing about foolish drivers and market gossip. Sometimes, Tunde would forget the world owed him pain.
But Lagos always remembers to collect its debts.
🕯 The Stranger Returns
One evening, as the sun melted into orange haze, a man walked into the workshop — tall, with polished shoes and an aura that made the apprentices pause. His voice carried authority.
"I need my car fixed," he said. "Quickly."
When he turned, Tunde's heart froze.
The scar. The eyes. The smirk.
It was Sunkanmi.
Older now, dressed in city wealth — but unmistakable.
For a moment, Tunde couldn't breathe. The man who had burned his world now stood before him, handing over car keys like a casual stranger.
Sunkanmi didn't recognize him. Why would he? To him, Tunde had been just another street rat — a nobody from a forgotten town. But Tunde would never forget that voice, that night, that fire.
His hands trembled slightly as he took the keys. "Yes, sir," he murmured, hiding the storm in his chest.
🌑 A Seed of Fire
He fixed the car in silence, his mind replaying the past like broken film. He saw Mama Kike's smile, the burning hut, Sunkanmi's laughter. When the work was done, he watched the man drive away — his license plate gleaming with the letters "SAD" — Sunkanmi Adeyemo.
The initials carved themselves into Tunde's memory.
That night, he didn't sleep. He sat outside, staring at the cracked cowrie on his chest.
"Now I know your name," he whispered. "And one day, you'll know mine."
The fire inside him — the one that had smoldered quietly — began to burn again.
💔 Blood on the Road
Two months later, tragedy came for him once more.
It was a rainy afternoon. Gori had sent Tunde on an errand to deliver tools to a nearby mechanic. On his way back, he heard shouting from the junction — police sirens, screeching tyres, chaos.
He pushed through the crowd. There, lying by the roadside in a pool of water and blood, was Uncle Gori.
A bullet had found him during a gang shootout — wrong place, wrong time.
People whispered: It was the "Adeyemo boys." The new gang running Mushin. Ruthless men. Connected to a big man up the ladder.
Tunde didn't need to ask who that "big man" was.
He knelt in the mud, rain mingling with his tears. The world blurred around him. Another good soul gone, another scar carved into his story.
He lifted Gori's lifeless hand, whispering, "You told me not to owe any man more than I can pay. But how can I repay this world for taking everything from me?"
That was the moment hope and vengeance became twins in his heart — inseparable, indistinguishable.
🌙 Between Shadow and Destiny
The workshop closed after Gori's death. The landlord seized it for unpaid rent. The other boys scattered. But Tunde stayed in Lagos, sleeping in abandoned taxis, taking small repair jobs, saving every naira he could. He began to study people — their movements, their greed, their weaknesses.
Sunkanmi had become powerful now — known in newspapers as Chief Sunkanmi Adeyemo, a businessman, philanthropist, and silent owner of several transport companies. The same companies that smuggled weapons and controlled the gangs that ruled the streets.
Tunde realized something: to fight a man like that, you cannot stay a boy. You must grow sharper than his knives, colder than his eyes.
So he waited. He planned.
And he refused to die.
🕯 The Angel of Mercy
Fate, strange as ever, gave him a gift in the form of a wound.
One evening, while fixing a generator in a small clinic, a stray piece of metal cut deep into his arm. The nurse on duty — a slim, bright-eyed woman named Aisha — scolded him gently as she cleaned the wound.
"You street boys never rest," she said. "Do you think you're made of iron?"
He smiled weakly. "No, ma. Just trying to survive."
Her eyes softened. "Survive… That's what we all do."
Over the next weeks, she treated him again and again, refusing payment. Their friendship grew naturally — laughter over small things, quiet talks under the flickering bulbs of the clinic. She called him "Tunde the Stubborn," and he called her "Aisha the Kind."
For the first time since Mama Kike, someone looked at him not with pity, but with affection.
And in her smile, he found something dangerous — hope.
⚡ The Blood in the City
But Lagos never lets peace last long.
One night, Tunde overheard two men at a repair shop whispering about a "Chief Adeyemo shipment" — something illegal, something deadly. The name struck him like thunder. The ghosts of Ijebu began to stir.
A plan started forming in his mind — not fully, not clearly, but enough to make his heartbeat feel like war drums.
He looked toward the horizon, where the city lights bled into darkness.
He knew that someday soon, his path and Sunkanmi's would collide again.
And when that day came, the boy who refused to die would no longer be a boy.
He would be the reckoning.