What's my Crime ?

Chapter Two : The First Strike

The city breathed a false sense of calm. The streets buzzed with people chasing routines, unaware of the quiet war that had begun in the shadows. Chuka stood across the street, cloaked in anonymity. He watched the gate of the pristine white duplex with a silent stare, his heartbeat steady, breath controlled, face void of emotion. Inside that house was his first mark, Bella.

It had been years since their last encounter. Chuka had studied her well. She was still smug, rich, and wrapped in her new world of charity work. A hypocrite. Her image in the media screamed compassion, but Chuka remembered the cruelty that lay behind her smiles, the mask she wore while she destroyed his innocence.

She was always the cautious one, harder to track than the rest. But Chuka, now a man of 25, trained by life and hardened by trauma, had patience. He had stalked her silently for weeks, learning about her habits, her weaknesses, the flaws in her well-fortified life. He knew the day she dismissed her driver early. He knew the alarm code she typed half-asleep. He knew the spare key she hid behind the clay flowerpot.

Tonight was the night.

At exactly 11:47 p.m., Chuka crossed the road. He didn’t run. He walked, calm, determined, detached. He slipped the key into the lock. The door creaked slightly. Silence. He entered like a phantom, steps soundless, eyes sharp. Her scent still lingered in the hallway:rosewater and vanilla. He hated that it still made him sick.

Bella was in the kitchen, humming to herself, her back turned. She didn’t hear the footsteps until it was too late. When she finally turned, her eyes widened in confusion, then horror.

“Chuka?”

He didn’t speak. The silence was heavier than screams.

“What... What are you doing here?” she whispered.

Still, he said nothing. Instead, he pulled out a folded photo, a picture of him at nine, one she had taken herself. She gasped, recognizing it. Her lips trembled.

“Please... I didn’t mean to hurt you. We were just”

“You were monsters,” Chuka said, finally. His voice was deep and still, like thunder hiding behind clouds.

She stepped back, knocking over a glass. The crash echoed. Chuka advanced slowly. There was no panic in him, no excitement, just cold justice.

He pulled the piano wire from his pocket, clean, silent, deadly. Bella’s scream caught in her throat as he lunged. The struggle lasted seconds. The silence returned.

Chuka stood over her lifeless body, breath controlled. He wiped the sweat from his brow. No evidence left behind. No weapons. No fingerprints.

Before he exited, he left behind the same photo on her blood-spattered table, a single white feather beside it.

The next morning, Detective Dapo was sipping his coffee when the call came. A homicide. High-profile. Bella Eze, a known philanthropist and former socialite, was found dead in her home. No sign of forced entry. No surveillance footage. Nothing stolen. Just one thing left behind: a child’s photo and a feather.

Dapo’s brows furrowed.

By the time he arrived on the scene, it had already become a media frenzy. The press hovered like vultures. He pushed through the noise and entered the house.

The crime scene was too clean.

He looked at the photograph left on the table. A boy, maybe nine or ten, smiling with a subtle hint of sadness in his eyes.

“Who’s the kid?” he asked.

“No idea,” one of the junior officers said. No relatives mentioned. Neighbors didn’t see or hear anything.”

Dapo turned to the feather. “What bird?”

“White cockatoo, maybe,” said the forensic officer. “Symbolic?”

“Maybe. Or maybe he’s leaving us breadcrumbs.”

Dapo stared at the image again. Something about the boy’s eyes disturbed him. It wasn’t just sorrow. It was the look of someone who had endured something unspeakable, and remembered it all.

Across town, Chuka sat alone in a sparsely furnished apartment. The news was already on every channel. The headline read: BELLA EZE FOUND DEAD IN MYSTERIOUS MURDER.

He didn’t smile.

Revenge wasn’t about satisfaction. It was about restoration.

He reached for a small notebook. Inside were four names. One was now crossed out.

Three remained: Sandra. Aisha. Mira.

But he wasn’t done yet.

He turned the page. There, taped beside another picture, was a newspaper clipping of Detective Dapo, one of the youngest and smartest in the force.

“I knew you’d come,” Chuka muttered, tracing the clipping with a finger. “Let’s see who finds who first.”

Detective Dapo left the pristine white duplex with a furrowed brow, the image of the blood-spattered photo and feather etched sharply in his mind. The details of the crime scene didn’t sit well with him. There was something too meticulous about it, too intentional. It didn’t feel like a random killing or even a robbery gone wrong. It felt like a message.

Back at the precinct, he dropped his keys on his desk and sat in silence for a moment. He had been on the force long enough to know when a case was going to get messy. This one reeked of layers, history, revenge, secrets.

He fired up his computer and began digging. First, he searched for Bella’s background, her charities, her business affiliations, any recent enemies. On paper, she was golden. Beloved. Powerful. But Dapo knew better than to trust surface records. Everyone had shadows. It was only a matter of how deep they ran.

He clicked into a police database and typed in the keywords: Child abuse, complaints, Bella Eze. The screen blinked. Nothing popped up directly tied to her. Clean. Suspiciously clean.

He tapped his pen on the desk.

Then he looked again at the digital image of the photo left behind. He zoomed in on the boy’s face. Who was he? Why leave that photo?

He rubbed his temples, frustrated. There was no name, no age, no record tied to the image. He tried running it through their database, hoping for a miracle match.

No results.

Dapo sighed. "No way does someone leave a child’s photo like that without a story," he muttered.

He leaned back in his chair, staring at the screen as if the silence could crack open the truth. The killer was deliberate. Calculated. And somewhere out there, he was watching.

"You’ll slip up," Dapo whispered. "And when you do, I’ll

l be there."