CHAPTER FOURTEEN: “The Hidden Room”POV: ,
417 Words
CHAPTER FOURTEEN: “The Hidden Room”
POV: Ify Okoye
The suite smelled like perfume and something bitter—maybe sorrow. Maybe secrets. Maybe both.
Ify stood in her sister’s dressing room again, hours after Adanna’s body had been removed, after the guests had scattered, and after her father had been questioned for the second time.
The room looked exactly like before.
Too perfect.
Too... untouched.
But Adanna wasn’t the kind of girl who left things lying in the open.
She hid them. Always had. From diary keys to ex-boyfriend photos to love letters no one was supposed to see. Ify remembered.
> “If you can find my hiding place,” Adanna once said,
“you can keep any of my secrets.”
It used to be a game.
Now it was life or death.
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Ify moved slowly.
Pulled open every drawer. Checked under the carpet. Behind the mirror.
Nothing.
Then she turned to the wardrobe.
Inside: hangers, bags, a shoebox, and—
Wait.
She tapped the back panel.
Hollow.
Her heart thudded.
She pressed it gently. The wood creaked.
Then popped open.
Behind the panel, a black folder. A phone. And a small silver USB stick taped to the back.
---
She pulled them out, hands trembling.
The phone was dead. But the folder was full. Pages and pages of names, dates, account transfers, passports, phone numbers. Every single paper labeled in Adanna’s handwriting.
One page had Chuka’s name. Another had Lola’s. But most of them? People Ify didn’t even recognize.
But at the very top, circled in red ink:
“Senator F. Lawal – The Final Thread.”
And under it, in Adanna’s handwriting again:
> “If anything happens to me, don’t cry. Just finish what I started.”
---
Ify sat on the floor.
The air felt heavier. Like even the walls knew something big had just been uncovered.
She heard a knock on the suite door.
It was Alabi.
He walked in, saw the open panel, and froze.
“What did you find?” he asked quietly.
Ify didn’t speak. She just handed him the folder.
His eyes scanned the contents. His face changed.
“You’re not safe anymore,” he said.
“We need to move. Now.”
---
Downstairs, sirens wailed.
Because Akin had just been found.
Half-dead in an alley.
Burns on his arm.
The flash drive gone.
But he was alive long enough to whisper one name:
> “Lawal.”
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End of Chapter 14.
- Writer
