SHATTERED💔

‎Seven years ago, she was a girl who believed in promises. ‎Today she put handcuffs on men who made them. ‎Abena Asante adjusted her uniform in the cracked mirror of the Accra Regional Police Station bathroom, meeting her own gaze with the same cold steadiness she gave every criminal who sat across from her interrogation table. ‎Twenty-five years old. A badge. A gun. A past she had buried so deep she even pretended it didn’t exist. ‎” Officer Asante!!” her colleague Kwame’s voice cut through the hallway noise. “There’s a case for you!!” ‎She took one last look at herself. ‎Strong jaw. Tired eyes. A scar on her collarbone she never talked about. ‎” Coming,” she called back, her voice betraying nothing. --------------------------------------------------------- ‎Meanwhile — London, UK ‎Perry Mensah stared at the rejection letter in his hands, the third one this month. The small, cramped apartment he shared with two other Ghanaian guys felt smaller every day. ‎Seven years. Seven years and London had given him nothing but broken dreams and a girlfriend who left him for someone with a British passport. ‎He opened his phone, staring at the Ghana Airways website. ‎One way ticket to Accra — £340. ‎He had £180 in his account. ‎He closed the app. ‎Then opened it again. ‎Somewhere in Accra, a life he had abandoned was moving on without him. He just didn’t know how much it had changed. ‎He didn’t know about the child. ‎He didn’t know about what his uncle did. ‎He didn’t know that the girl he left behind had become someone who would never forgive him. ‎Not yet. ‎Abena heard Myra before she saw her. ‎”Maaaa!! Maaaaaa!!” ‎Six-year-old Myra Asante came barreling through the front door of their small but tidy apartment in Tema, her school uniform already somehow untucked, her ribbons hanging loosely from her afro puffs and a missing tooth grinning at Abena like she had just conquered the whole world. ‎” How did your ribbon come undone AGAIN Myra?” Abena sighed, crouching down to fix it. ‎” Kofi pulled it,” Myra said matter-of-factly, dropping her school bag on the floor like it personally offended her. ‎” And what did you do?” ‎Myra’s eyes sparkled with mischief. “I pulled his ear.” ‎” Myra!!” ‎” He started it, Maa!!” ‎Abena pressed her lips together, trying desperately not to smile. This child. This impossible, wonderful, stubborn little child who made every hard day worth it. ‎” Go wash your hands,” Abena said firmly. “And pick up that bag!!” ‎Myra grabbed the bag dramatically, muttering under her breath as she shuffled to her room. ‎” I heard that!!” Abena called after her. ‎” I didn’t say anything!!” Myra called back innocently. ‎Abena shook her head, the ghost of a smile finally escaping. ‎Six years. Six years of doing this completely alone, and she wouldn’t trade a single second of it. ‎She looked at Myra’s school drawing stuck on the fridge — a woman in a police uniform holding a little girl’s hand. Underneath in shaky handwriting: ‎” Me and Maa. My hero.” ‎Abena’s throat tightened. ‎She would protect this little girl from everything. ‎From the world. ‎From the past. ‎From the truth. ‎Especially from the truth. ‎Some men leave in style. ‎Perry Mensah left London with £23, a duffel bag and a borrowed phone. ‎It wasn’t supposed to end like this. ‎Seven years ago, he had boarded a flight to London with stars in his eyes and Ghana’s red clay dust still on his shoes. He was going to make something of himself. Get a degree. Send money home. Come back for Abena. ‎He had done none of those things. ‎Instead, he had spent three years struggling, two years pretending and two years living in Samaria Volkov’s suffocating shadow. ‎Samaria. ‎He heard her voice in his head even now, sharp and perfectly manicured like everything else about her. ‎” Perry, you can’t wear that to my friend’s dinner!!” ‎” Perry, why are you so embarrassing?!” ‎” Perry, my ex-boyfriend had a car in his second year here. What do YOU have?!” ‎What did he have?? ‎A bruised ego. A duffel bag. And a one-way ticket he couldn’t even properly afford. ‎The Accra flight was full. He had sweet talked his way through a connection in Abidjan, paid a man he probably shouldn’t have trusted and was now sitting in the most uncomfortable seat on the plane, wedged between a large woman with a screaming baby and a man who had already fallen asleep on his shoulder. ‎But for the first time in seven years, Perry Mensah felt something unfamiliar settle in his chest. ‎Peace. ‎He was going home. ‎He closed his eyes and, for reasons he couldn’t explain, a face appeared behind his eyelids. ‎Not Samaria’s perfectly contoured face. ‎Not London’s grey skyline. ‎A pair of dark eyes. A quiet smile. A girl standing under a mango tree telling him she believed him. ‎Abena. ‎He pushed the thought away quickly. ‎She had moved on. She had to have moved on. ‎He had no right to think about her. ‎He had no right to anything. ‎The pilot announced their descent into Kotoka International Airport and Perry pressed his face against the cold window, watching the lights of Accra shimmer below like scattered gold. ‎” I’m coming home,” he whispered to no one. ‎He had no idea what was waiting for him there. ‎He had no idea about the powerful man who had sworn to destroy him. ‎He had no idea about a six-year-old girl with afro puffs and a missing tooth who laughed exactly like he did. ‎He had no idea about any of it. ‎Not yet. ‎ ‎ ‎