Steve's POV
Rachel Abegunde.
The name should've meant nothing to me. Just another name in a city of masks.
But the moment Korede whispered it over the phone, I remembered the faded photo Jomi kept tucked in a journal—an old woman in blue lace, holding her as a child.
Smiling.
Trusted.
Gone.
She'd disappeared six months before the kidnapping. No trace, no trail—just vanished, like dust on the wind.
Until now.
"She's in Ibadan," Korede said. "Hiding under a different name. School matron at a girls' home."
I loaded my gun, grabbed my coat, and didn't look back.
Some ghosts don't stay buried.
Some need to be dug up.
Jomiloju's POV
He didn't say goodbye.
He left a note on the side table.
"You don't need to carry this weight. I'll do it for you. Rest."
But I wasn't tired.
I was done resting.
I called Korede, voice flat. "Tell me where he went."
"Jomi—"
"Now."
A pause. Then an address.
I dressed in silence, my body still aching from the surgery, my soul buzzing with something sharp and dangerous.
This wasn't about a woman who vanished anymore.
This was about the girl I used to be.
And the people who helped kill her.
Steve's POV
The orphanage sat on the outskirts of Ibadan, shrouded in banana trees and silence. The children were in class when I arrived. Laughter echoed faintly from the back.
The front desk matron looked up.
"I'm here for Mrs. Raquel Adebayo," I said.
Her eyes narrowed. "We don't have anyone by that name."
I smiled—but not kindly.
"Let's try again."
Ten minutes later, a door opened at the far end of the hall.
And I saw her.
Older.
Thinner.
But still the same eyes.
Rachel.
The woman who'd sung lullabies to the girl I loved—and who may have betrayed her from the crib.
Rachel's POV
I knew he'd come one day.
The shadow always returns to the light it once hid behind.
Steve Adewale. Taller than I remembered. Colder. But the same haunted gaze.
He didn't ask permission.
He just walked in and shut the door.
"You implanted a chip in a child," he said. No hello. No softness.
I didn't flinch.
"I tried to stop it."
He tossed a photo on the desk.
"You were the one who sedated her. Age eight. Private clinic in Surulere."
My lips tightened.
"I sedated her… so she wouldn't feel it. Not because I wanted it done."
He leaned closer.
"But you still did it."
Jomiloju's POV
I arrived just as he was walking out.
Steve didn't see me at first.
His fists were clenched. His jaw locked. I could tell something inside him had fractured again.
I stepped out of the car, body still healing, soul too restless to stay away.
"She's inside?" I asked.
He nodded. "She won't run."
"Did she confess?"
He looked at me.
Long.
Dark.
"She didn't need to."
And just like that, I knew what he wasn't saying.
Rachel was the one who saved me.
But she also broke me.
Rachel's POV
When she stepped inside, I stopped breathing.
Jomiloju.
The baby I'd rocked to sleep. The toddler I taught to tie shoelaces. The girl I left behind.
"I used to think you were magic," she said quietly. "You always knew when I was scared."
"I still do," I whispered.
She sat across from me, arms folded. Stronger. Older. Eyes like her mother's.
"You let them put something inside me."
"Yes."
"Why?"
I closed my eyes.
"Because they said your father ordered it."
She flinched.
And I felt the weight of every lie I'd lived.
"But later," I added, voice cracking, "I learned it wasn't your father. It was Koleosho. He'd bribed someone in your family's inner circle. I tried to remove it—faked your illness, got access to your files—but I couldn't extract it completely."
Jomi stared at me.
"You left."
"I was being hunted. If I stayed, you'd be next."
"You left me anyway."
That was true.
And unforgivable.
Jomiloju's POV
I didn't cry.
Not because it didn't hurt.
But because I didn't want her to see the power she still had.
She'd been the only mother figure I truly remembered.
And she broke that.
She gave me to them.
And then ran.
Still, some part of me believed her.
Because she didn't look like someone who was hiding guilt.
She looked like someone who'd buried regret.
I stood.
"I won't turn you in."
She blinked. "You should."
"I'm not done turning myself into something stronger first."
I walked out.
Steve was waiting.
I didn't need to speak.
He opened his arms.
I stepped in.
Steve's POV
As we drove back to Lagos, the silence between us wasn't cold.
It was steel.
Welded between two people who had now seen the very roots of their pain—and hadn't flinched.
"We're not victims anymore," Jomi said, watching the highway blur.
"No," I agreed. "We're what the fire couldn't kill."
She looked at me.
Eyes wet. But smiling.
And in that moment, I saw something rise in her.
Not vengeance.
Not rage.
Sovereignty.
She wasn't a girl stolen anymore.
She was becoming the woman who would rule the ashes.