A BIT MONEY PLAN

The dim glow of the phone screen cut through the early morning darkness like a knife. Monday, 30 March, 5:01 AM. Sandra’s gloved fingers hovered over the two fresh tattoo stencils lying on the wooden table in her small Accra studio.On the left: a majestic black raven in mid-flight, wings spread wide, talons extended, every feather etched with obsessive detail. On the right: a grotesque, demonic hand clawing upward, fingers twisted like broken branches, an eyeball embedded in the palm staring back with malevolent hunger. Both designs were inked on transfer paper, still slightly tacky, ready to be applied.She had stayed up all night perfecting them. The raven for power and cunning. The hand for control and the price one pays for it.A soft notification chime broke the silence.PolarisBankCreditAcct:xxxx29865Amt: N1,700,000.00Ref: NIBSS:BEXCHANGE COMPANY LIMITE...Sandra’s lips curled into a slow, satisfied smile beneath her black surgical mask. One million seven hundred thousand naira. Clean. Instant. Just as promised.She leaned back in her chair, the black nitrile gloves creaking as she flexed her fingers. The money wasn’t for the tattoos. The tattoos were just the cover.This was the final payment.Three weeks earlier, everything had started with a whisper.Sandra had been known in certain circles in Accra as “The Ink Witch.” Not just because her black-and-grey realism was some of the best in Ghana, but because people said her tattoos carried something extra. Something that lingered. Clients who got her raven pieces reported sudden bursts of confidence, sharper instincts in business, and uncanny luck in negotiations. Those who took the demonic hand designs… well, they tended to get what they wanted. But they also changed. Some became ruthless. Others started seeing things in mirrors that weren’t there.She never advertised the “extra.” She didn’t need to. Word spread quietly among the ambitious, the desperate, and the dangerously greedy.That’s how Chief Bassey found her.Chief Bassey wasn’t really a chief. He was a mid-level executive at a currency exchange company in Osu, the kind of man who wore shiny suits and gold chains and smiled too widely at politicians. His company, BExchange Limited, handled large volumes of foreign currency—mostly USD coming in from the diaspora and disappearing into accounts that never quite matched the paperwork.But Chief Bassey had a problem. A very expensive problem.He had been skimming. Not small amounts. Over the last eighteen months, he had quietly diverted nearly forty million naira into offshore accounts using clever NIBSS manipulations and fake client profiles. The money was supposed to fund his exit strategy—a quiet retirement in Dubai with a new identity and a much younger wife.Then the auditors started sniffing around.Chief Bassey needed the trail to vanish. Completely. He needed someone who could make numbers disappear the way a magician makes doves vanish—except this time, the doves were digital ledgers, transaction logs, and CCTV footage from the company’s server room.He had heard about Sandra through a mutual contact: a politician who had gotten a full-sleeve raven tattoo six months earlier and suddenly won a disputed contract worth hundreds of millions.“She doesn’t just ink skin,” the politician had said over whiskey at a private lounge in Cantonments. “She rewrites fate. For the right price.”Chief Bassey had laughed at first. Then he got desperate.He reached out through encrypted channels. No names. Just coordinates and a single message:“I need the raven and the hand. Both. And I need something only you can do.”Sandra had replied with one line:“Bring the first half. Come alone. 2 AM. My studio. No phones.”When he arrived, she had been waiting in the near-darkness, only the hum of her tattoo machine and the faint scent of antiseptic in the air. Chief Bassey laid down eight hundred and fifty thousand naira in crisp bundles on the table.Sandra had studied him the way an artist studies a blank canvas.“You want the money to disappear,” she said quietly. “Not just hidden. Gone. As if it never existed.”Chief Bassey had nodded, sweat beading on his forehead despite the air conditioning.“And in return?”“I want the other half when it’s done. And I want you to never speak of this again. Ever.”She had then explained the ritual—not magic in the fairy-tale sense, but something older, something that lived between the lines of code and the curves of ink. The raven would bind his ambition and cunning. The demonic hand would ensure the system itself “forgot” certain entries. But the price was that a piece of his soul would be etched into the designs. Permanently.Chief Bassey had laughed nervously. “As long as the money is safe.”Sandra had smiled behind her mask. “Safe? No. The money will be transferred to a clean account. Mine. As final payment. You will report it as a legitimate business expense—consultancy fees to an art company. The auditors will .