The rain began like a whisper and turned into a warning.

In Abuja, the sky didn’t just fall. It pressed down, heavy with dust turned to water, drumming on roofs and windshields until every road looked like a mirror someone had cracked. Headlights cut through the gray, and the city moved with that familiar wet impatience, people late to places they couldn’t afford to miss.

Daniel Wike stepped out of his black SUV with rage burning so clean it felt like purpose.

He was a billionaire, yes. But that morning, wealth meant nothing.

Inside the glass tower behind him, a board meeting had ended in chaos. Voices had sharpened. Smiles had slipped. A ₦500 million government contract was dangling over his empire like a blade, and the men circling it were not the kind you could negotiate with using PowerPoint slides and polite handshakes.

“Sir,” his assistant had whispered as they walked out, “they’re pushing for the audit committee. They want access to the procurement records.”

Daniel’s jaw had tightened. Access. That single word tasted like poison.

Because in his inside pocket, behind the calm of his tailored suit, was a small black flash drive that carried the future of his company. The drive wasn’t just storage. It was leverage. It held documents that could save him or bury him depending on whose hands it fell into.

He adjusted his jacket, strode through the rain, and didn’t notice the small black object slip free.

It fell into the mud without ceremony, a tiny sound swallowed instantly by the storm.

And Daniel drove off, unaware that he had just dropped control itself.

A few streets away, long before most of Abuja woke fully into the day, Ene had been working for hours.

The construction site was a world built from noise and weight: metal clanging, gravel crunching, men shouting instructions over engines. The air smelled like wet cement and hot oil. Rain made everything heavier, as if even the sky wanted to test their backs.

Ene’s boots were torn. Her palms were blistered. Her shoulders ached with the kind of tired that lived under the skin.

At twenty-four, she should have had softness left in her face.

Instead, life had carved quiet lines of pain into her eyes, the kind you only saw if you looked long enough to feel guilty for looking away.

She bent to lift a plank when she saw it, half-buried in mud near the edge of the site.

Something black.

Small.

Blinking faintly like it was alive.

She picked it up slowly.

A flash drive.

Not ordinary.

It had weight. It had a finish that didn’t belong in this place, among rusted nails and broken concrete blocks. It looked expensive. It looked important.

Her stomach tightened.

Rent was overdue.

Her supervisor had already threatened to replace her with someone “stronger” if she complained again about her hours. And back in her mind, always like a drumbeat behind everything, was her uncle’s voice.

Opportunity does not knock twice.

She wiped the mud with the edge of her scarf, her fingers trembling slightly, and stared at the object as if it might speak.

It didn’t.

But she felt it anyway.

This tiny thing carried more weight than all the cement bags she’d lifted in her life.

She could sell it.

People would buy this. Men she didn’t want to know. Men who smiled too easily. She could disappear. Start a new life far from the memories she kept locked away.

For a brief moment, temptation wrapped around her heart like a warm lie.

Then another voice rose, softer but firmer, one she hadn’t heard in years except inside herself.

Her father.

Poverty is not a license for wickedness, my daughter.

Ene swallowed hard.

She didn’t know why she ran.

She didn’t know why her feet moved before her mind finished arguing.

But she saw the black SUV from earlier, cutting through traffic like it owned the road, and something in her chest made a decision.

Rain soaked her clothes as she waved frantically, shouting until her throat burned.

The SUV slowed, then stopped with irritation.

The driver leaned out first, eyes hard. “Are you mad? Do you know who—”

But Daniel Wike stepped out, his expression already sharpened for dismissal. He looked like a man who had spent years training his face to show nothing he didn’t approve. His suit was immaculate despite the rain. His eyes were controlled, cold, unreadable.

Then he saw her.

Mud-stained. Rain-soaked. Boots torn. Hands scraped raw. Yet standing with a dignity that refused to bend.

Ene stretched out her hand.

“Sir,” she said, voice hoarse from shouting, “you dropped this.”

The moment Daniel saw the flash drive, his face drained of color.

For a second, the world stood still.

Even the rain seemed to hesitate.

He took it from her with careful fingers, like it might explode or evaporate if he breathed wrong.

“Do you know what this is?” he asked slowly, voice low.

Ene shook her head. “No. I just know it’s not mine.”

That answer hit him harder than any insult.

He studied her, really studied her, not as a passerby or a nuisance but as a person. Torn boots. Scarred hands. Eyes that held fatigue, yes, but also something unbroken. Something honest.

“Why didn’t you keep it?” he asked.

Ene hesitated. The rain ran down her cheeks so evenly it looked like she was crying without permission.

“Because some things don’t belong to us,” she said quietly, “even when we are desperate.”

Daniel felt something unfamiliar stir in his chest.

Not gratitude. He was used to transactions.

This was different.

This was… respect.

His driver coughed impatiently. “Sir, we should go.”

Daniel didn’t move. His gaze stayed on Ene.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

She blinked, surprised the question even existed. “Ene.”

“Ene,” Daniel repeated, like he was storing it somewhere safe. “Where do you work?”

She pointed back toward the construction site behind her. “There.”

Daniel nodded slowly, as if fate had just handed him a thread, and he wasn’t sure whether to pull it.

“Thank you,” he said finally, the words sounding strange in his mouth, like a language he hadn’t spoken in years.

Ene gave a small nod and turned to walk back into the rain, clutching her scarf tighter against the wind.

Behind her, Daniel stood still, watching her go.

He didn’t know the woman who saved him had been sent to destroy him.

And she didn’t know the man she spared was the son of the man she believed ruined her life.

Above them both, secrets slept.

Waiting.

Ene’s uncle, Mr. Okoliko, had always smiled like a man who knew the ending of a story everyone else was still reading.

When Ene was ten, she learned what it meant to live inside someone else’s grief.

That was the year her father was murdered.

The memory was a frozen photograph in her mind: dusk bleeding into night, her father’s voice calling her name, the sound of a struggle, then the sharp silence that followed. The land they lived on had been disputed for years, and that night it was taken with blood. Men came with papers and guns, with names that meant power. Her father died trying to stand his ground.

After the burial, Mr. Okoliko arrived with condolences that sounded like commands.

He took Ene in, gave her food, gave her a bed, gave her “protection.” But every gift came tied to one truth he repeated until it became the air she breathed.

“The Wike family did this,” he would say, eyes shining with righteous fury. “They stole our land. They killed your father. They made us nothing.”

Ene grew up under that story like it was a roof. Every time she laughed, guilt knocked. Every time she dreamed, anger reminded her she wasn’t allowed to want peace.

Okoliko trained her with patience that looked like care and felt like chains.

He taught her how to listen without reacting. How to watch men without being seen. How to carry a secret smile and a hidden knife.

“Your face must be soft,” he told her. “But your heart must be iron.”

And then one day, news spread that Daniel Wike was expanding his construction empire. New government contracts. New land acquisitions. New projects swallowing neighborhoods like hungry machines.

Okoliko saw destiny align with revenge.

“You will go to Abuja,” he told Ene, voice calm, eyes bright. “You will enter his world through the cracks. Workers. Cleaners. The people he never sees.”

Ene had stared at him, stomach twisting. “And then?”

Okoliko’s smile had been gentle, almost fatherly.

“Get close,” he said. “Gain his trust. And when the moment comes… destroy him.”

Ene had nodded because nodding was safer than questioning. Because her life belonged to a story she hadn’t written.

But in the rain that morning, when she returned the flash drive instead of keeping it, she felt a crack form in that story.

And cracks, once they exist, have a habit of widening.

Two days later, Daniel Wike visited the construction site.

He didn’t arrive with sirens or excessive drama. Just two SUVs, quiet security, and the kind of presence that made supervisors suddenly stand straighter and wipe their hands on their trousers.

Ene was carrying bricks when she saw him.

He walked through the muddy site like he was measuring the world, his shoes somehow staying clean. People stepped aside. Men murmured greetings that sounded more like prayers than respect.

Daniel’s eyes moved over the workers with practiced detachment, until they landed on her.

Ene’s heart stuttered.

He stopped in front of her, ignoring the foreman’s panicked attempts to intervene.

“You,” Daniel said simply.

Ene froze, hands still holding the brick.

“Sir?” her foreman rushed in. “She’s new. If she did anything—”

“She returned something I lost,” Daniel said without looking away from Ene. His voice was calm, but it carried authority like gravity. “What’s your full name?”

Ene swallowed. “Ene… Ene Okafor.”

The lie tasted bitter. Okoliko had insisted she use a different surname. Protection, he had called it. Control, it really was.

Daniel nodded slowly, like he knew people lied because they were afraid, and fear was common currency.

“I want her transferred to my office building,” Daniel said. “Facilities. Maintenance. Better pay.”

The foreman blinked. “Sir, she’s a laborer. She doesn’t have—”

“She has integrity,” Daniel cut in. “That’s rarer than certificates.”

Ene’s hands tightened around the brick until her fingers hurt.

This wasn’t part of the plan.

Getting close was part of the plan, yes. But not like this. Not with him choosing her. Not with him seeing her at all.

Okoliko had always said Daniel Wike would be arrogant, blind, careless.

But the man standing in front of her looked tired.

His eyes held exhaustion that money couldn’t purchase away.

And when he looked at her, there was something in his gaze that wasn’t suspicion.

It was curiosity.

As if her honesty had disturbed him in the best way.

Ene nodded slowly, because refusing would raise questions.

“Thank you, sir,” she said, voice steady.

Daniel studied her a moment longer, then turned away.

“Start Monday,” he said over his shoulder.

And just like that, Ene’s mission stepped into a new room.

Daniel’s office building was made of glass and silence.

Everything gleamed. Everything smelled like expensive air-conditioning and ambition.

Ene wore a uniform that didn’t fit her properly, and her hands felt strange holding cleaning supplies instead of construction tools. She moved quietly, the way she had learned to move in Okoliko’s house, not because she was timid but because she didn’t want attention.

But attention found her anyway.

Daniel noticed things. He noticed how she didn’t gossip with the other staff. How she flinched slightly when men spoke too loudly behind her. How her eyes always tracked exits and corners, as if her body expected danger.

He told himself he was simply observant.

He did not tell himself the truth, which was that her presence disrupted the emptiness that usually lived inside him.

He had built an empire in a world where love was a liability. His boardroom was full of smiles that meant hunger. His friends were allies until they weren’t. His relationships were negotiations disguised as romance.

And then there was Ene, returning a ₦500 million flash drive like it was nothing more than a dropped wallet.

The first time they spoke again was late one night.

Daniel had been in his office long after everyone left. Abuja slept outside in scattered lights. Rain tapped softly against the windows, gentler now, as if the sky had spent its anger.

Ene was mopping the corridor when she heard his voice.

“Do you ever get tired of being honest?” Daniel asked.

She stopped, startled. She hadn’t realized he was there, sitting in the dark conference room with a single lamp on, his tie loosened, his suit jacket off. He looked less like a billionaire and more like a man who had forgotten how to rest.

Ene’s throat tightened. “Sir?”

Daniel gestured toward the chair opposite him. “Sit. For a minute.”

Ene hesitated. This was dangerous. Okoliko had warned her about this exact thing, about soft moments that made you forget your purpose.

But something in Daniel’s voice wasn’t command. It was… request.

She sat carefully, hands folded in her lap.

Daniel watched her like he was trying to read a language he’d never studied.

“You could have taken that drive,” he said. “People have done worse for less.”

Ene’s eyes dropped. “I thought about it.”

Daniel’s brow lifted, surprised by the honesty.

Ene looked up, and for the first time, the words came out without rehearsal.

“I’m not rich,” she said. “I’m not safe. But if I do something wicked because life is hard… then I become one more reason the world stays hard.”

Daniel stared at her.

Something shifted in his face. A crack, tiny but visible, in the armor he wore.

“My mother used to say things like that,” he murmured, more to himself than to her. “Before…” He stopped.

Before what? Ene wanted to ask.

Instead she remained quiet.

Daniel leaned back. “Why are you here, Ene? Not in this building. In Abuja.”

Ene’s pulse spiked.

This was the moment her uncle’s training screamed about. Questions. Curiosity. A rich man noticing patterns.

She could lie. She should lie.

But exhaustion, real exhaustion, lived in her bones. So she gave him a half-truth that felt like a small betrayal of the mission and a small loyalty to herself.

“I came because I had no choice,” she said.

Daniel’s eyes softened. “That’s a familiar story.”

Ene stood quickly, afraid she’d already said too much. “I should finish my work.”

Daniel didn’t stop her. He only watched as she left, and his voice followed quietly behind her.

“Thank you,” he said again. “For that day. And for speaking to me like I’m a person.”

Ene walked away with her heart loud in her chest.

Because the worst part was this:

It felt good.

Okoliko called her that night.

His voice on the phone was velvet over steel.

“You’re inside,” he said. “Good.”

Ene swallowed. “Yes.”

“Have you found the weakness?” Okoliko asked.

Ene stared at the ceiling of her small rented room, the fan rattling above her like a warning.

“He’s cautious,” she said carefully. “Not careless.”

Okoliko’s chuckle was soft. “They all bleed the same.”

Then his tone sharpened.

“Remember why you’re there,” he said. “Remember your father.”

Ene’s chest tightened at the mention.

Okoliko continued, slower now, each word chosen like a nail.

“We did not raise you to become his maid forever. We raised you to become justice.”

Justice.

Ene repeated the word in her mind, and it felt heavy.

Because somewhere along the way, justice had been shaped into vengeance without her consent.

And yet she had worn it anyway, because it was the only purpose she’d been given.

“Soon,” Okoliko said. “You will get access. You will find what hurts him. And you will press.”

The line went dead.

Ene sat in the darkness, phone cold in her hand, feeling the battlefield inside her shift again.

Her father’s memory on one side.

Daniel’s tired eyes on the other.

And in between, a question that would not leave her alone:

What if the story she’d been fed was not the whole story?

The answer arrived the way truth often did.

Not loudly.

Not dramatically.

But through an accident of timing.

One afternoon, Ene was cleaning Daniel’s private office. The room was immaculate, a place that looked lived in only by ambition. She wiped the desk carefully, avoiding the framed photograph near the lamp.

She had seen it before.

Daniel as a teenager. A woman beside him, smiling softly, her hand on his shoulder.

His mother, probably.

That day, her gaze lingered longer than usual.

Because the woman in the photo wore a necklace Ene recognized.

A small pendant shaped like a star, slightly crooked.

Ene’s breath caught.

Her mother had worn that same pendant.

Her mother had kept it in a cloth bag after her father’s death, whispering that it had belonged to someone important, someone who had tried to help them once.

Ene’s fingers trembled as she leaned closer to the photo, heart pounding.

On the back of the frame, a label.

Helena Wike. 1998.

Ene staggered back as if the air had been punched from her lungs.

Helena.

Her mother had spoken that name once, years ago, when Ene was half-asleep and feverish. A name mixed with tears and regret.

Okoliko had never mentioned Helena.

He had only ever said, “The Wikes killed your father.”

But why would Daniel’s mother have her mother’s necklace?

Unless…

Unless she wasn’t a villain in their story.

Unless she had been there.

Unless the truth was tangled in ways Okoliko never allowed.

Ene’s stomach rolled.

She reached for the frame, intending to hide it, to run, to pretend she had not seen.

The door behind her opened.

Daniel stepped in.

His eyes flicked to her hand on the photo, then to her face.

“What are you doing?” he asked, voice calm but alert.

Ene froze.

In that moment, every version of herself collided. The worker. The spy. The orphan. The woman who had begun to care for the man she was supposed to destroy.

“I…” Her throat tightened. “I recognize that necklace.”

Daniel’s expression changed, subtle but sharp. “How?”

Ene’s eyes filled with sudden, unwanted tears. “My mother had one. The same star.”

Daniel stared at the photo as if seeing it for the first time in years.

“That necklace belonged to my mother,” he said slowly. “She never took it off.”

Ene shook her head, confusion breaking into fear. “Then how… how did my mother have the same one?”

Daniel didn’t answer immediately.

He walked to the window, looking out at the city as if it held the explanation. His voice, when it came, was lower.

“My mother used to help people,” he said. “Quietly. Without telling anyone. She funded scholarships, shelters, legal aid…”

He swallowed.

“She died in an accident,” he added. “Or that’s what everyone said.”

Ene felt her heart thud.

Accident.

The same word that always appeared when someone didn’t want to name a crime.

Daniel turned back to her, eyes narrowing.

“Who is your uncle?” he asked.

Ene’s mouth went dry.

“Okoliko,” she whispered.

Daniel went still.

The name landed like a match in gasoline.

“Okoliko,” Daniel repeated, almost soundless. “That man…”

He stepped closer, and Ene saw something raw flare in his eyes.

“My mother warned my father about him,” Daniel said. “She said he was dangerous. That he was connected to land disputes, extortion… blood things.”

Ene’s knees felt weak.

Blood things.

Her father.

The land.

The murder.

Her world tilted.

Daniel’s voice sharpened. “Why are you here, Ene?”

Ene’s lips trembled. She could lie. She should lie.

But the photo sat between them like a judge.

So she told the truth.

“I was sent to destroy you,” she said, the words tearing out of her like a confession and a wound. “My uncle told me your family killed my father. He trained me. He… he planted me here.”

Silence filled the office, thick and unbearable.

Daniel didn’t move. His face didn’t twist into anger the way Ene expected.

Instead, his expression shifted into something like grief.

“God,” he whispered. “So that’s why.”

Ene’s eyes widened. “Why?”

Daniel’s jaw tightened. He looked at the photograph again, then at Ene, and when he spoke, his voice sounded like someone opening a door he had kept locked for years.

“My mother died because she tried to stop Okoliko,” Daniel said. “She tried to protect a man on disputed land. A man who refused to sign papers he didn’t understand.”

Ene’s breath caught.

“A man with a daughter,” Daniel added softly. “A little girl.”

Ene’s vision blurred.

Daniel swallowed hard. “My mother died trying to save you.”

Ene’s knees buckled, and she gripped the edge of the desk to stay upright.

No.

That couldn’t be real.

Okoliko had told her the Wikes were monsters.

But this… this sounded like her father’s voice, his stubborn honesty, his refusal to sell their land like it was nothing.

Daniel’s face was pale now, eyes shining. “If your father was that man… then you and I…”

Enemies, she thought automatically.

But Daniel shook his head slowly.

“We were both used,” he said. “And the man who raised you did it on purpose.”

Ene’s sob broke free before she could stop it.

Because if Daniel was telling the truth, then her uncle hadn’t raised her out of love.

He had raised her as a weapon.

And she had almost become it.

Okoliko did not like loose ends.

Two nights later, Ene was walking home from work when a car slowed beside her.

The windows were tinted dark. The streetlight flickered overhead. The air smelled like wet dust and danger.

A voice called her name.

“Ene.”

She froze.

The car door opened, and a man stepped out wearing a cap low over his face.

Okoliko’s man.

Her body reacted before her mind did, adrenaline surging.

She turned to run.

Hands grabbed her arm.

A blade flashed.

“Stop struggling,” the man hissed. “Uncle wants you.”

Ene fought, nails scratching, heart pounding, the world narrowing to survival.

Then another sound cut through the night.

A growl.

A dog?

No.

An engine.

A second vehicle screeched to a stop, headlights flooding the street. Doors slammed. Heavy footsteps.

Daniel’s security.

“Drop her!” someone shouted.

The man holding Ene cursed and tried to drag her toward the car.

Ene kicked hard, her torn boot connecting with his shin. He yelped, grip loosening.

She tore free and stumbled back just as Daniel stepped out of the SUV.

He didn’t look like a billionaire in that moment.

He looked like a man who had decided he would not lose another person to the same darkness.

His voice was cold enough to cut stone.

“Tell Okoliko,” Daniel said, “that the story ends tonight.”

The man lunged.

Daniel’s security tackled him. The blade clattered to the ground.

Ene stood shaking, rain starting again, soft at first, as if the sky had been listening.

Daniel walked to her slowly, careful not to startle her like she was a wild animal.

“Are you hurt?” he asked.

Ene shook her head, unable to speak.

Daniel’s eyes held something fierce and tender at once.

“You came to destroy me,” he said quietly. “But you returned my flash drive. You told me the truth. You saved me.”

Ene’s voice finally broke through. “I didn’t mean to… I didn’t plan to… I was supposed to—”

“I know,” Daniel interrupted gently. “That’s why it matters.”

Because love, she realized, was not the absence of darkness.

It was the decision to step out of it.

Daniel reached for her hand, and Ene flinched instinctively, then forced herself to stay.

His fingers were warm.

Human.

Not the hands of an enemy.

Not the hands of a monster.

Just a man who had been lonely for so long he had mistaken it for strength.

“We’ll protect you,” Daniel said. “And we’ll expose him.”

Ene stared at him, rain sliding down her face.

“What if the world doesn’t believe me?” she whispered.

Daniel’s expression hardened, the businessman returning for a moment, the strategist who knew how to build cases and break lies.

“Then we make the truth impossible to ignore,” he said.

The final confrontation didn’t happen in a dramatic hall with spotlights.

It happened in a small office where Okoliko believed he was untouchable.

Because men like him always did.

Daniel had evidence now, pulled from the same kind of documents he’d once stored on a flash drive. Payment trails. Land records. Witness statements. Security footage of Okoliko’s men threatening villagers. And the last piece, the cruelest: a recording of Okoliko admitting he framed the Wikes, admitting he engineered Ene’s life as revenge bait.

When federal officers arrived, Okoliko smiled like a man greeting guests.

Until Ene stepped into the room beside Daniel.

Her hands trembled, but her spine was straight.

Okoliko’s smile faltered.

“Ene,” he said softly, as if affection could erase the years of weaponizing her grief. “My child. You’ve come home.”

Ene’s voice came out steadier than she expected.

“I never had a home with you,” she said.

Okoliko’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t be foolish. You owe me your life.”

Ene stared at him, the man who had fed her and controlled her, the man who had kept her father’s death bleeding inside her like an open wound.

“I owed you nothing,” she said. “I owed my father truth.”

Okoliko’s face twisted. “The Wikes—”

“Your lies killed my childhood,” Ene cut in, surprising herself with the sharpness. “And you would have killed me too, if I didn’t obey.”

Daniel stepped forward. “It’s over,” he said.

Okoliko laughed, but it sounded thin now. “You think you can erase what I built? I made her. I shaped her.”

Ene felt something rise in her chest, not vengeance this time, but clarity.

“No,” she said quietly. “You tried to shape me into a weapon. But you forgot something.”

Okoliko tilted his head, mockingly curious.

Ene met his gaze.

“My father’s voice stayed in me,” she said. “Even when you tried to replace it.”

The officers moved in.

Cuffs clicked.

Okoliko’s eyes burned as he was led away, and for a moment, Ene saw what he truly was: not destiny, not justice, not even power.

Just a man terrified of losing control.

Ene’s legs went weak after he disappeared through the door.

Daniel caught her elbow, steadying her.

Outside, the rain had stopped again, as if the sky was exhausted by violence too.

Months passed.

Healing was not a single moment. It was a series of choices made on ordinary days.

Ene entered therapy, something she had never thought she was allowed to do. Daniel listened more than he spoke, learning that power meant nothing if it couldn’t sit quietly with someone else’s pain. He offered her options, not commands. Safety, not cages.

And slowly, trust grew.

Not the trust that arrives like a lightning strike.

The trust that builds like a wall, brick by brick, honest and unglamorous.

One evening, Daniel took Ene back to the construction site where she had found the flash drive.

The ground was dry now. The air smelled like dust and sunlight. Workers moved around them, unaware they stood on the birthplace of something that had changed two lives.

Daniel held out his hand.

In his palm was a small black object.

The flash drive.

Ene stared.

Daniel smiled faintly, sadness and gratitude mixing.

“This thing almost destroyed me,” he said. “And you handing it back almost saved my soul.”

Ene swallowed hard. “I didn’t know.”

“I know,” Daniel said gently. “That’s why it was real.”

He looked at her, eyes steady.

“I built an empire because I thought control was the only way to survive,” he said. “But control is just fear in an expensive suit.”

Ene’s eyes filled.

Daniel stepped closer. “You were sent to kill me,” he said. “And instead you reminded me I was still human.”

Ene’s voice shook. “And you reminded me my life was never meant to be revenge.”

They stood in the fading light, the city humming in the distance, and Ene realized something she had never dared to believe:

Love could grow in soil that once held vengeance.

Not because vengeance was romantic.

But because love was stubborn.

Because truth, once spoken, refused to be buried again.

The wedding was small.

No spectacle. No politicians. No performance.

Just a quiet gathering by the coast near Whitmore House, where sea wind carried laughter lightly and the sky looked wide enough to forgive.

Ene wore a simple dress, hands still marked by labor, eyes still carrying history.

Daniel wore a suit, yes, but his face looked different now. Softer. As if he had finally allowed himself to be seen.

When Ene walked toward him, Daniel’s eyes shone.

Not with ownership.

With awe.

After the vows, Ene stepped aside for a moment and looked out at the water.

Daniel joined her, slipping his hand into hers.

“Do you ever think about that day?” he asked softly. “The rain?”

Ene nodded. “All the time.”

Daniel smiled. “You returned a flash drive,” he said. “And somehow, it returned both of us to ourselves.”

Ene turned toward him, her voice quiet but certain.

“My father used to say poverty is not a license for wickedness,” she whispered. “I used to think it was just a lesson for poor people.”

Daniel’s brow lifted.

Ene squeezed his hand. “Now I know it was a lesson for everyone.”

Daniel leaned down and kissed her forehead, gentle as a promise.

Because the man she had been sent to destroy was never her real enemy.

Her real enemy had been a lie, fed to her until it sounded like truth.

And the bravest thing she had ever done wasn’t returning a ₦500 million flash drive.

It was choosing love when vengeance was the easier script.

As the waves rolled in and out like steady breathing, Ene felt something she hadn’t felt since she was a child:

Peace.

Not perfect.

Not painless.

But real.

And for the first time, she wasn’t living inside someone else’s story.

She was writing her own.

THE END