CHAPTER TEN-Permanent Ink (Tosin)
440 Words
Prison was quieter than Tosin expected.
Not silent,never silent. There were always footsteps, metal doors, distant shouts, the scrape of chairs but the noise never belonged to anyone. It floated, detached, like sound in a hospital corridor. No one spoke unless necessary. No one laughed without suspicion.
It reminded him of the bank after hours.
Systems still running. Lights still on. Human warmth gone.
He stood by the narrow window each morning, looking at the yard below. Men circled the compound the way thoughts circled his mind repetitive, useless, leading nowhere.
He watched nothing.
He had begun to understand something numbers never taught him: proximity is not innocence.
In banking, closeness to a transaction meant responsibility. Your login. Your approval. Your terminal. Systems did not care about feelings. Systems only recorded presence.
You were either attached to the transfer or you weren’t.
And Tosin had been attached.
Her credentials. His terminal.
That was enough.
Silence could convict faster than evidence.
He had thought his quiet nature would protect him. All his life, he believed that if he kept his head down, did his work, harmed no one, the world would leave him alone.
Instead, quiet men were easy to blame.
They didn’t argue loudly enough to defend themselves.
They didn’t perform innocence convincingly.
They simply absorbed damage.
Sometimes he replayed the first evening Kemi asked him to stay back.
If he had said no.
If he had left at six like everyone else.
If he had ignored the way her voice softened when she said his name.
So many small decisions. None of them dramatic. None of them criminal.
Yet here he was.
Because tragedy was rarely built from one disaster.
It was built from ordinary moments no one stopped.
A guard passed behind him.
“Visitor tomorrow,” the man muttered.
Tosin nodded.
He didn’t ask who.
There weren’t many possibilities.
Later that night, lying on the narrow bed, he thought of her.
Not the scandal version.
Not the headlines.
But Kemi barefoot on cold office tiles.
Kemi laughing softly at spreadsheets.
Kemi saying, You make me feel alive, like it was an apology.
He had loved her.
He could admit it now.
Not recklessly. Not foolishly.
But deeply.
And love, he had learned, did not mitigate damage.
It simply made the consequences heavier.
Some transfers could be reversed.
Incorrect amounts. Wrong beneficiaries. System error,
But others once cleared, once settled were permanent.
His life felt like that.
Settled,
Irreversible.,
he closed his eyes.
For the first time in months, he wished he had been less careful.
Less decent.
Maybe then he would have known how to fight back.
- Writer
