The silence Kabir left behind was a physical presence, heavy and suffocating. It pressed down on Mina's chest, making it hard to breathe around the knot of pure dread. Chosen, sensing the shift in the atmosphere, began to fuss, his tiny face crumpling.
"Shhh, my love, shhh," she murmured, rocking him automatically, her eyes locked on Adams.
He stood with his back to her, still facing the door, his shoulders a rigid line of tension. He was a statue of a man, every muscle coiled for a fight that had already found them. The fragile peace of the last hour lay in shards around them.
"He's going to tell her," Mina whispered, the words tasting like ash. It wasn't a question.
Adams didn't turn. "Yes."
That single word, so flat and final, was worse than any panic. It was an acceptance of their doom. The carefully constructed walls of their secret life had been breached by the one person who enjoyed watching things burn.
They didn't speak of it again. The rest of the day passed in a haze of forced normalcy—doctors' checks, feeding Chosen, pretending to rest. Every footstep in the hallway, every murmur outside the door, made them both flinch. They were waiting for the axe to fall.
It fell the next morning.
They were discharged, the process feeling less like a celebration and more like a stealth operation. Adams carried Chosen's carrier as if it were a priceless, fragile bomb. Mina clung to his arm, her body aching, her heart pounding a frantic rhythm against her ribs.
The taxi ride to their new apartment was silent. Mina stared out the window at the bustling, uncaring streets of Lagos, seeing none of it. She was mentally tracing the path Kabir would have taken to the Dared compound in Maitama. She could picture it perfectly: his casual saunter into the grand living room, his faux-concerned tone as he broke the news…
You'll never guess what I just discovered, Auntie Zainab…
She squeezed her eyes shut.
Their new home was a modest two-room apartment in a building that was clean but undeniably ordinary. To Mina, it was a fortress. To Hajiya Zainab, it would be a hovel. Adams unlocked the door and ushered her inside, quickly closing and locking it behind them, as if he could physically barricade them against what was coming.
For three days, they existed in a state of suspended animation. They jumped at every creak in the building, every ring of a phone. Adams's new, pay-as-you-go mobile felt like a live wire on the kitchen counter. Each time it buzzed—a wrong number, a spam text—Mina's heart would lurch into her throat.
The reprieve was a cruel illusion. They were just giving the storm more time to gather its strength.
On the fourth day, it broke.
The knock on the door was not the soft tap of a neighbor or the polite rap of a deliveryman. It was a series of firm, authoritative, and impatient thuds that shook the thin wood in its frame.
Mina, who was nursing Chosen on the small sofa, froze. Her milk let down in a sudden, painful rush of fear. Across the room, Adams, who was attempting to assemble a bassinet, went perfectly still. Their eyes met, wide with a shared, terrified recognition.
They knew that knock.
Adams slowly rose to his feet. His face was pale, but his jaw was set. He looked like a man walking to the gallows.
"Adams, don't," Mina breathed, her voice barely audible.
"She already knows we're here, Mina," he said, his voice low and grim. "There's no hiding now."
He walked to the door and peered through the peephole. Mina saw his entire body tense. He closed his eyes for a brief second, a silent prayer or a curse, then turned the lock.
The door swung open.
Hajiya Zainab Dared stood on their welcome mat, though her expression promised she felt anything but welcome. She was a vision of impeccable, furious elegance. Her navy-blue bubu and matching hijab were starkly out of place against the chipped paint of the hallway. She looked like a queen who had somehow, disgustingly, found herself in the slums.
Her sharp eyes didn't even glance at her son. They scanned the small room behind him, taking in the unpacked boxes, the second-hand furniture, the humble space with a look of utter contempt. Finally, her gaze landed on Mina, on the baby at her breast, and the contempt curdled into something far colder and more dangerous.
"So," she said, and the single word was laced with a venom that could kill a smaller woman. "This is where you have been hiding my son."
She didn't wait for an invitation. She stepped inside, her presence instantly making the room feel smaller, shabbier, wrong. Her perfume, a subtle, expensive blend of oud and roses, invaded the space, overwhelming the scent of new baby and simple soap.
"Mother," Adams began, his voice strained. "How did you—"
"Did you think you could simply vanish?" she interrupted, her voice a low, controlled tremor that was more frightening than any shout. She finally turned her gaze on him, and the disappointment in it was a physical blow. "Did you think a mother's heart would not break with worry? That I would not move heaven and earth to find my only child after you so cruelly abandoned your home?"
"We didn't abandon it," Adams said, a sliver of the old defiance surfacing. "We left. We needed a place of our own. To be a family without… interference."
"'Interference'?" she repeated, as if the word were absurd. Her eyes flickered to the half-built bassinet, the stack of Adams's job applications on the table. "You call this a family? You call this… this squalor 'your own'? You hide away in this… this room," she spat the word, "like a shameful secret?"
It was then that her eyes, burning with fury, fell fully upon Chosen. She took a sharp, involuntary step forward. The mask of anger slipped for a microsecond, revealing a flash of sheer, unadulterated shock. Then the mask slammed back down, harder and colder than before.
"What," she breathed, the word a deadly whisper. "What is that?"
Mina's arms tightened around her son, her body curving around him protectively. A primal instinct roared to life within her. "This is your grandson," she said, her voice surprisingly steady. "His name is Chosen."
The name, their act of defiance, hung in the air between them.
Hajiya Zainab's lips pressed into a bloodless line. "Chosen," she repeated, the name a blasphemy on her tongue. Her eyes, blazing with a new kind of fire, locked onto Adams. "You had a child. A son. An heir. And you hid him from me? You deprived your father of his grandson? What kind of unnatural son are you?"
"We needed time—" Adams tried, but his voice was losing its strength under the onslaught of her wrath.
"Time?" She let out a short, harsh laugh that held no humor. "Time for what? To ensure this… this branch of the family was rooted in deceit and disrespect? Was this her plan?" She jabbed a perfectly manicured finger in Mina's direction without looking at her. "To isolate you? To drag you down into her world of… of this?" Her gesture encompassed the entire apartment, dismissing it and everything in it.
The accusation was so monstrous, so perfectly designed to inflict maximum damage, that Mina felt a white-hot anger burn through her fear. "This was our decision. Together. To protect our son from the poison of your judgement!"
"My judgement?" Hajiya Zainab's voice rose, sharp and piercing. "You speak of my judgement when you act like common street rats hiding a litter? You speak of poison when you have injected nothing but shame and division into this family from the moment you entered it?"
She took a final, sweeping look around the room, her expression one of utter, unshakeable revulsion. The silence was absolute, broken only by Chosen's soft, snuffling sounds.
She turned her back on them and walked to the door. She paused on the threshold, a silhouette of imposing fury against the bright hallway light.
"This is not over," she said, her voice dropping back to a chilling calm. She looked directly at Adams, and her eyes held a promise that made Mina's blood run cold. "You have made your choice. You have chosen to divide your loyalties. You have chosen to shame your name. Remember that choice when you face the consequences of it."
Without another word, she was gone. The door swung shut behind her, the click of the latch echoing in the small room like a gunshot.
The expensive scent of her perfume lingered, a ghost of her presence.
Adams remained standing by the door, his head bowed, his shoulders slumped in defeat.
In Mina's arms, Chosen began to cry in earnest, wailing at the sudden, chilling tension that had swallowed his home.
The cold war was over. Hajiya Zainab had declared open war. And as Mina met her husband's devastated eyes across the room, she knew their fragile peace had not just been shattered.
It had been annihilated.