Chapter 1: The Funeral of a Living Wife
The smell of antiseptic was the first thing that hit me—sharp, bitter, and cold. It was the scent of a place where people came to be healed, but as I lay in the sterile white room of the St. Nicholas Hospital in Lagos, I knew I was only there to be buried. Every time the heart monitor spiked, the rhythmic beep-beep-beep felt like a hammer striking a nail into my coffin.
I struggled to breathe through the oxygen mask. Only three hours ago, I had been rushed into emergency surgery. My baby—the boy I had prayed for, the heir I thought would finally make the Adenuga family love me—was gone. He had slipped away before I even got to hear his first cry. My womb felt like a hollow, aching canyon, and my heart was nothing but a pile of ash.
The door to the private ward creaked open. I expected to see Tunde. I expected my husband to rush to my side, kiss my forehead, and tell me that we would get through this together.
Instead, the room was filled with the clinking of heavy gold jewelry and the rustle of expensive lace. My mother-in-law, Chief Mrs. Adenuga, marched in like a general surveying a battlefield. Behind her stood her two daughters, Bolanle and Funke, their faces twisted in expressions of disgusted pity.
"Sign it, Nneka. Don't make this more difficult than it already is," the Matriarch hissed. She didn't ask how I was. She didn't mention the grandson she had just lost. She simply tossed a thick stack of papers onto my bandaged stomach.
The weight of the documents sent a jolt of white-hot pain through my surgical incision. I gasped, my hand trembling as I reached for the papers.
"Divorce...?" I rasped, the word tearing at my throat like broken glass.
"It's an annulment, actually," Bolanle, the eldest daughter, interjected as she checked her manicured nails. "Since you couldn't produce a living child in five years, the marriage is technically a failure. A 'bad investment,' as Papa used to say."
"Where is Tunde?" I ignored them, my eyes fixed on the door. "I want to talk to my husband."
"Tunde is where he should have been five years ago," Chief Mrs. Adenuga sneered, smoothing her ironed iro and buba. She leaned over me, her cloying, expensive perfume suffocating me. "He is with a woman of his own status. A Senator's daughter who doesn't come from a dusty village in the East. A woman whose blood isn't cursed. You were an experiment, Nneka. We wanted to see if a 'pure' girl could be trained. But your blood is thin. Your womb is a graveyard. You've wasted enough of our time."
Just then, Tunde walked in. He didn't look at me. He kept his hands in his pockets, his gaze fixed on his polished Italian leather shoes.
"Tunde..." I choked out his name, a desperate plea for him to wake me up from this nightmare. "Tunde, look at me. Our son... we lost him."
"Exactly," Tunde said, his voice flat and devoid of the warmth that used to make me feel safe. He finally looked up, but the man I had loved was gone. In his place was a stranger with cold, cowardly eyes. "And I've lost my patience, Nneka. My mother is right. This family needs a future, and you clearly aren't it. I've had my lawyer set up a separate account for you. There is ₦500,000 in it. Consider it a 'thank you' for the years you spent cleaning the house."
"₦500,000?" I felt a hysterical laugh bubbling in my chest. "Five years, Tunde. I stood by you when the EFCC froze your accounts. I sold my mother's gold to pay our rent when your family turned their backs on you. I took the slaps from your mother and the insults from your sisters because I loved you! And you think my life is worth the price of a used generator?"
"Sign the papers, Nneka," Tunde snapped, his irritation rising. "The house in Lekki, the cars, the jewelry—they all belong to the Adenuga Trust. You came with nothing, and you will leave with nothing."
Chief Mrs. Adenuga leaned down again, her voice a deadly whisper. "Sign, or I will ensure your younger siblings lose their university scholarships by tomorrow morning. I know who pays their fees, Nneka. One phone call, and they are back in the village hawking plantain."
The threat hit me harder than any physical blow. My siblings were the only reason I had endured this hell for so long. With a sob that felt like it was tearing my soul in half, I took the pen. My hand shook so violently that the signature was barely legible, but it was done.
"Good," the Matriarch said, snatching the papers. "Now, get her out of here. This ward is for members of the family. She is a stranger now."
They didn't even wait for the doctors to discharge me. Two men I didn't recognize—orderlies who looked more like thugs—lifted my weak, bleeding body onto a gurney. I was wrapped in a thin, hospital-grade blanket, my surgical gown still stained with the blood of my lost child.
As they wheeled me out, I saw Tunde walking toward the elevator. He was already on his phone, laughing at something a woman on the other end said. He didn't look back. Not once.
I was loaded into a white van with tinted windows. There was no medical equipment inside, just the smell of stale tobacco and grease. I was too exhausted to fight. I lay on the floor of the van as it sped away from the bright lights of Victoria Island, headed toward the outskirts of the city.
We had been driving for hours when the van slowed down on a deserted stretch of the Ore expressway. The driver pulled over into the tall grass and killed the engine.
I heard the door lock from the outside. Then, a rhythmic splash, splash, splash. The sharp, pungent scent of petrol began to seep through the floorboards.
My heart hammered against my ribs. "Hey! What are you doing? Open the door!" I dragged myself toward the window, my fingernails scratching at the glass.
Outside, the driver was walking away. He stopped a few yards off, pulled out a lighter, and watched the flame dance for a moment. He looked back at the van with a bored expression, then flicked the lighter into the trail of fuel he had laid down.
Whump.
The world exploded into orange and red. The heat was a physical weight, a monster that began to peel the skin from my arms. I screamed, but the smoke filled my lungs, turning my voice into a wet rattle.
In that moment, as the flames licked at my hair, I didn't see my life flash before my eyes. I saw theirs. I saw Tunde's smug face. I saw his mother's gold jewelry. I saw the sisters laughing at my pain.
"I will not die," I whispered, the words bubbling through the blood in my mouth. "I will not die until I see you all in hell."
Suddenly, the back door groaned. A heavy crowbar smashed through the lock, and the door was ripped off its hinges. A man silhouette against the fire reached in. He didn't flinch at the heat. He grabbed me, pulling me out of the furnace just as the fuel tank gave way, sending a pillar of fire into the dark Nigerian sky.
I lay on the cool, damp earth, my body charred and broken. A man stood over me, his shadow long and imposing. He looked like a king from a forgotten era.
"Do you want to live?" he asked, his voice deep and calm amidst the chaos.
I reached out with a blackened hand, grabbing the hem of his trousers. I left a smear of blood and ash on the expensive fabric.
"I want..." I coughed, a spray of crimson hitting the dust. "I want to murder their peace. I want to burn their world. I want them to wish they had never heard my name."
The man knelt, lifting me into his arms as if I weighed nothing. "Then welcome back to the world of the living, Nneka. Let's go sharpen your blade."