THE COST OF BREATHING
684 Words
Morning crept in like a trespasser.
Not with sunlight or birdsong, but with a thin grey haze seeping through the broken slats of the hut. Shade woke slowly, the way people do when their bodies already know the truth before their minds catch up.
Her wrists burned.
She didn’t move at first. She listened.
Breathing. Not hers. Chike’s—too shallow, too controlled. Fear disguised as calm. Somewhere outside, a man cleared his throat. Footsteps crunched against dry leaves. A low laugh followed, careless and unafraid.
Shade opened her eyes.
The hut felt smaller than it had the night before. The air was stale, heavy with sweat and dust and the quiet panic of people who had run out of options. Chike sat opposite her, his shoulders tense, eyes alert. He looked like someone waiting for bad news he already expected.
Then there was Khalifa.
He stood near the doorway, phone in hand, posture stiff. Not guarding them—bracing.
The phone vibrated.
The sound cut through the hut like a blade.
Khalifa glanced at the screen once before answering. “Hello.”
His voice was calm. Too calm.
Shade’s heart began to race.
“Yes,” Khalifa said. A pause. “They are here.”
Another pause. Longer.
“They are alive.”
Shade sucked in a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding.
Alive. The word felt both merciful and cruel.
Khalifa stepped outside, but the walls were thin and silence has a way of betraying secrets.
“₦100 million,” he said quietly.
Shade froze.
“One hundred million naira,” Khalifa repeated, slower this time, as if explaining something simple. “For both of them.”
Chike’s fingers curled into fists.
“You have seventy-two hours.”
A faint voice responded on the other end—angry, desperate, breaking. Khalifa listened without interruption.
“No police,” he said at last. “No soldiers. No stories.”
Another pause.
“If we sense anything,” Khalifa continued, his voice dropping, “you won’t need proof of life again.”
The call ended.
When Khalifa returned, something had shifted. The air felt heavier. Final. Like a door had just slammed shut somewhere far away.
“You called our families,” Chike said.
It wasn’t a question.
“Yes,” Khalifa replied.
Shade swallowed. “They’ll panic.”
“They already are,” he said simply.
Silence stretched between them, fragile and electric.
“Why that amount?” Shade asked softly.
Khalifa studied her then, really studied her. There was no cruelty in his eyes—only calculation mixed with something she couldn’t name.
“Because fear listens,” he said. “And because your lives must sound expensive.”
Outside, another phone rang. Then another. Voices murmured urgently. Orders were being given. Lines were being drawn.
Far away, in houses that still smelled of coffee and perfume and safety, phones rang.
Shade’s mother screamed when she heard the words we have your daughter. Chike’s family demanded proof, then wept when they received it. Meetings were called. Bank accounts were checked. Secrets were dragged into the open.
₦100 million.
A number large enough to destroy comfort. Small enough to buy silence.
Back in the hut, Shade leaned her head against the wall, fighting the urge to break. She imagined her mother’s hands shaking. Her father pacing. People making decisions about her life without her voice in the room.
“They’ll try to pay,” Chike whispered. “They have to.”
Shade didn’t answer.
Hope felt dangerous now.
Across the room, Khalifa watched her without meaning to. This was the part he hated—the waiting, the knowing. Once families were involved, things stopped being business. Money made monsters out of fear and heroes out of cowards.
He told himself this was necessary.
He told himself not to care.
But as Shade lifted her eyes to his—tired, afraid, unbroken—something unsettled in his chest.
And for the first time since the abduction, Khalifa wondered not whether the money would come…
…but what would happen if it did.
- Writer
