Was it a business rival of Chief Segun? Or was the enemy much closer to home?
I remembered the newspaper clippings. “No ransom demanded.” That was the detail that didn’t make sense. If it was for money, they would have asked for a payout. If it wasn’t for money, it was personal. It was about inheritance, bloodlines, or revenge.
I realized with a chilling certainty that I couldn’t just walk up and announce who I was. If the person who orchestrated my kidnapping found out that the dead daughter had returned—and was living under their very roof—they wouldn’t hesitate to finish the job they started twenty-two years ago. I needed proof. Absolute, undeniable proof. And I needed to know who to trust.
I decided to call my aunt.
My hands shook as I dialed her number. It was late evening now, the time she usually sat outside her small provision store in the village. The phone rang once. Twice. Three times. Every beep felt like a countdown.
“Hello? Amara?” her sharp, grating voice came through the speaker. Just hearing it made my skin crawl.
“Good evening, Aunty,” I said, forcing my voice to sound normal, like the obedient, frightened girl she had raised.
“Why are you calling me by this time? Hope you haven’t lost that job? If you lose that housemaid job in Lagos, don’t think of coming back to my house, oh! I have no food to feed a lazy girl.”
I squeezed my eyes shut, swallowed the anger, and took a deep breath. “No, Aunty. The job is fine. They are treating me well. In fact… the owners of the house are very rich. Chief Segun and Madam Beatrice Alabi. Do you know them?”
There was a sudden, absolute silence on the other end of the line. The background noise of the village—the shouting children, the distant music—seemed to vanish. All I could hear was the heavy, ragged breathing of my aunt.
“Aunty? Are you there?” I pressed.
“Where… where did you say you are working?” her voice was no longer sharp. It was trembling, laced with an unmistakable, primal terror.
“The Alabi estate in Ikoyi,” I said slowly, emphasizing every syllable. “Madam Beatrice looked at my face today, Aunty. She said I look exactly like a child she lost twenty years ago. She asked me where I grew up.”
A sharp intake of breath gasped through the phone. Then, my aunt’s voice turned incredibly harsh, almost hysterical. “Listen to me, Amara! Pack your bags and leave that house tonight! Do you hear me? Leave Lagos immediately! Don’t ask questions, just run!”
“Why, Aunty? What are you hiding from me?” I demanded, tears finally spilling over my eyelids. “Who am I? Whose daughter am I?!”
“If you don’t leave that house, they will kill you!” she screamed into the phone. “The person who gave you to me… they found out you are alive! They know you are in Lagos! Run, Amara—”
The call abruptly disconnected.
I stared at my phone screen in horror. “Aunty? Hello? Hello!” I called out, but the line was completely dead. When I tried to dial back, a robotic voice informed me that the number was switched off.
Panic, cold and sharp, seized my chest. My aunt’s words echoed in my ears: The person who gave you to me… they found out you are alive.
Someone in this city, someone connected to this very family, knew I was here.
I couldn’t sleep that night. I sat on the edge of my bed, staring at the small window of my room, watching the shadows of the palm trees sway in the moonlight. Every footstep outside made me jump. Every creak of the mansion’s pipes sounded like an assassin approaching my door.
By 2:00 AM, the mansion was dead silent. The heavy security guards were stationed at the front gates, far from the main house. The rest of the staff were asleep in their quarters.
I knew I couldn’t run away. If I ran, I would go back to being a nobody, looking over my shoulder for the rest of my life, never knowing the truth. I had to find out who wanted me dead. And the answer was in Chief Segun’s office. I remembered seeing a small, digital safe built into the wall behind a painting of a traditional Yoruba king. If there were secrets about the family’s past, the codes, or the identity of the person who paid my aunt, it would be in that safe.
