She only smiled coldly. “If Enkiru reaches me first, I will tell the truth in the version that saves me best.”
Soon after, Obinna sat across from Enkiru in the conference room of Rising Daughters Sanctuary. But he was not alone with her. Barrister Ada was there. Dr. Akane was there. Records were on the table. Witness statements existed. The truck driver remembered the road. Phone activity showed calls after he abandoned her. Pharmacy records showed sedatives bought repeatedly.
Obinna tried to perform remorse.
“I was under pressure,” he said. “I was not myself.”
Enkiru folded her hands.
“And yet you survived being ‘not yourself’ very well.”
He claimed he had returned to the road.
“No, you didn’t,” she said.
He claimed he did not remember the medications.
Ada opened another file.
When Enkiru finally said, “I was pregnant,” Obinna’s face changed.
For one second, the mask slipped.
“You cannot prove that,” he said.
It was the wrong answer.
Innocent people protest pain. Guilty people protest proof.
Then, in anger, he mentioned Lillian’s name by accident.
The room went still.
Enkiru looked at him and understood.
“So there was someone else in the story.”
That mistake opened the next door.
Barrister Ada found Lillian, and Lillian, sensing that Obinna would sacrifice her first, finally gave a statement. She admitted that Obinna had spoken about Enkiru’s family land before he ever spoke about love. She admitted collecting prescriptions. She admitted hearing him talk about making Enkiru too weak to ask questions. She admitted money had moved through accounts linked to forged land documents.
The truth did not arrive in one dramatic explosion. It arrived piece by piece, document by document, statement by statement.
