Chapter 3
1420 Words
CHAPTER FOUR
Lagos noon burned like hot brass, and Somto Anhemba was already vibrating with a fury he didn’t understand. He wasn’t drunk — not yet — but he was hungover enough for the world to feel like it was built out of noise and disrespect.
He drove his father’s matte-black G-Wagon down Ozumba Mbadiwe at a speed that ignored the existence of brakes or pedestrians. Music thumped through the speakers — loud, violent, matching the rhythm of a heart that had not known peace in years.
Then a silver Toyota Corolla — a mere mortal car — cut in front of him.
Not wildly. Not dangerously.
Just… normally.
But normal was enough to offend Somto.
“Are you mad?” he barked to no one. “Do you know who you just drove in front of?”
He sped up, swung the G-Wagon forward, and slammed the brakes just inches from the Corolla’s bumper. The Corolla squealed, swerved, and hit a street divider.
A small accident. Something that would have ended with apologies if a normal human had been behind the wheel.
Somto was not normal.
He was a man trying to set fire to every shadow inside him.
He got out of the car, sunglasses on, expression carved from cold metal. Lagos drivers slowed. Phones came out. The prince of the Obasi dynasty was a spectacle everywhere he went — sometimes beloved, mostly feared, rarely ignored.
The Corolla driver — a middle-aged civil servant in a cheap tie — stepped out trembling.
“Oga— I’m sorry, I—”
Somto didn’t let him finish. He grabbed the man’s collar and shoved him back against the car.
“Do you have sense?” he shouted. “Do you know how much this car is worth? You want to scratch it and go home to eat garri?”
“I didn’t scratch— sir— please—”
Somto shoved him again. A crowd formed. Nobody intervened.
Because this was not just any spoiled heir — this was the son of Udoka Obasi.
And everyone knew what that meant.
Somto’s anger wasn’t about the Corolla.
It was about a girl named Adaora who had vanished without goodbye.
It was about a heart that had never healed.
It was about waking every day feeling like someone had ripped out a rib.
He let go of the man only when his phone vibrated.
A text from Lola:
Where are you? I need to talk. It’s important.
He scoffed, shoved the man one last time, and walked back to his G-Wagon.
“Fix your car,” he said, voice like ice. “Or don’t. It’s not my problem.”
He drove off, leaving behind a shaking man and a street filled with whispers.
The mansion felt colder than usual when Somto stormed in.
Marble floors, priceless Igbo masks on the walls, a long corridor that smelled of old money and new danger.
Lola was waiting for him in the living room.
Pretty, gentle, soft-spoken Lola — the one who always forgave him.
The one he did not love.
The one he had tried to use like a bandage that wouldn’t stick.
“Somto,” she said in a small voice. “We need to talk.”
He kicked off his shoes and tossed his sunglasses onto a sofa.
“What now?” he snapped. “What did I do this time? Breath wrong?”
“I’m serious.” She stood up, wringing her fingers. “I saw something. I saw—”
“If you say ‘another girl,’ I swear, Lola—”
“You were in our bed, Somto!” she burst out.
Her voice cracked. “In our bed. With the new maid.”
Somto froze.
Then rolled his eyes.
“So?”
The word hit like a slap — but not to Lola.
To himself.
He didn’t recognize the man who said it… and yet he did.
Lola stared at him, stunned. “So? That’s what you have to say?”
“What do you want me to say?” he barked. “You knew what you signed up for.”
“I didn’t sign up to be humiliated,” she whispered.
Her eyes were wet, but her voice wasn’t weak. “You keep hurting me because you’re hurting. But I’m not your punching bag.”
Somto laughed — a sharp, ugly sound.
“Punching bag? Please. Stop acting like a victim. I gave you a car, didn’t I? I gave you an apartment. I gave you—”
“You never gave me you,” she said quietly.
Something in his chest tensed. Something he refused to look at.
“Leave, Lola,” he muttered, grabbing a drink. “Go cry somewhere else. I don’t have the energy.”
She stared at him for a long moment — heartbroken, disappointed, afraid.
Then she left.
Somto didn’t follow.
He never followed.
Instead he poured himself a drink, swallowed it in one shot, and pretended the burn in his throat was stronger than the burn in his heart.
Later that evening, they gathered for dinner — Chief Udoka, his wife Ifunanya,b and Somto.
The table was long enough to host a small election.
Udoka watched him with cold calculation.
His mother watched him with worry disguised as grace.
“You’re spiraling,” Udoka said without preamble.
The man never raised his voice; he didn’t need to.
Power curled around every word he spoke.
Somto smirked. “Define spiraling.”
“Your behaviour in this city,” Udoka replied. “Your reckless spending. Your fights. Your scandals. This family has enemies. You are handing them weapons.”
Somto stabbed a piece of fish harder than required.
“With all due respect, Father, they already fear you. Your enemies don’t need weapons. They need therapy.”
“You live like a man with a death wish,” Udoka said.
Somto laughed.
“If I wanted to die, I’d go sit in your study. I’m sure you’d finish the job.”
His mother inhaled sharply.
“Somtochukwu,” she whispered. “Talk to us. What is really going on?”
He paused.
Just for a second.
A flash of vulnerability flickered in his eyes — so brief that even his mother almost missed it.
Then he masked it with a smirk.
“What’s going on is that I’m young, rich, and bored,” he said. “Nothing more.”
Udoka leaned back.
“You have become a disgrace.”
Somto’s jaw clenched.
He opened his mouth to spit something cruel — then closed it.
Words were useless in that house.
He stood up.
Dinner untouched.
“I’m going out,” he said. “Don’t wait up.”
Somto didn’t go clubbing.
He didn’t drink.
He didn’t visit friends or lovers.
He drove — fast and aimless — until he found himself parked outside a familiar house.
Adaora’s old house.
Empty now.
Her family had moved away the year she vanished.
He sat in the car, breathing hard, tapping his forehead over and over like a man trying to wake himself from a dream he couldn’t escape.
“I should hate you,” he whispered.
“I should forget you.”
But he couldn’t.
Everything he destroyed, he destroyed because her absence carved out a hole inside him that he kept trying to fill with violence, s*x, and alcohol.
He leaned back in the seat, eyes burning.
“I was supposed to marry you,” he said into the darkness.
“You ruined me, Adaora.”
He said it like a confession.
Like a plea.
Like a wound begging for bandage.
And for the first time in years, he let himself feel the truth that had been eating him alive:
He wasn’t angry because people offended him.
He wasn’t cruel because he wanted to be feared.
He wasn’t mean because he enjoyed it.
He was hurting.
And hurting people was easier than healing.
He sat there for hours until dawn stained the sky pink.
Then he drove back home before anyone noticed he was gone — the prince who hid his grief behind fists and arrogance and scandals.
And that morning, when he entered the house and found Lola’s key on the table along with a short note —
I can’t love someone who doesn’t want to live
—he crumpled the paper, threw it into the trash, and pretended it didn’t feel like losing a battle he didn’t admit he was fighting.
- Writer
