It's nearly dusk when I settle into my home office with a tall glass of hibiscus tea AKA zobo, the bitter kind I used to drink in long board meetings. There is a stack of notes in front of me, a spreadsheet Mariam sent this morning, and a folder of printouts Gloria picked up from the court records archive. I'm alone, for the first time in hours. But I don't feel lonely. I feel... steady.
That's new.
My phone buzzes. It's Hauwa. A short message: Check page three of the asset trace. Something odd there.
I open the folder, flip past receipts, ledgers, and notarized complaints. Page three is a scanned asset registry. Multiple aliases. Gloria had mentioned it in passing earlier, but now I see it line 7.
Name: Kolade Babatunde Adebayo Also known as: Deyemi Ayoola Ogundele Birthplace: Ajegunle, Lagos Previous known address: Apapa Road, Lagos Mainland
I blink.
Ajegunle.
He told me he was from Ijebu Ode. That his father was a retired professor and his mother a headmistress. That they were both dead, but he kept their framed photographs in his old flat. I remember those pictures now dusty, old. Were they even real?
I feel my throat tighten.
I scan the page again. Deyemi Ayoola Ogunlana. Born 1982. Prison sentence in 2013 for fraud. Released 2017. No further convictions, but multiple flagged accounts. Several in his other alias: Kolade Babatunde Adebayo.
So Kolade never existed. Not really.
He'd lived entire years under borrowed names.
I rise from my seat, the blood rushing to my head. I grip the edge of the desk. I want to scream, but nothing comes. Just a tight, sharp silence. The kind that fills your chest before the sobs.
Deyemi. Not Kolade.
The man who called me queen. The man who woke up early to warm my bathwater. The man who danced with me barefoot on polished marble floors.
None of it was real.
I walk to the window, breathing hard. Outside, a generator hums in the neighbor's compound. Life goes on. That's what makes this ache unbearable. The world keeps moving, and I'm still trying to understand the shape of my own collapse.
I pick up my phone and call Gloria.
"You saw it?" she says without preamble.
"I saw it," I whisper.
She's quiet for a beat. "You okay?"
I sit back down slowly. "I don't know. It's not just that he lied. It's that he lied so well. So completely. He built a man from scratch, Gloria. A man I fell in love with."
"He didn't just build him," she says gently. "He sold him."
I close my eyes. The walls feel smaller now. My office once a sanctuary feels like a trap of memories.
Gloria's voice softens. "There's more. Hauwa found an old thread on a real estate forum. Deyemi used to pose as a land agent. He conned a widow out of two plots in Ogun state in 2018. Same method. Politeness. Flattery. Disappeared after the land documents were signed."
"He's been doing this for years."
"Six years, at least. Nse shows up in some of the financial records, too. As his 'sister,' sometimes his 'legal rep.' They've been a team."
I let the words settle like dust in the room.
Deyemi. Not Kolade.
I think of the first day I hired him. How humble he seemed. The way he stood by the car, avoiding eye contact. That whole quiet dignity routine. I thought I'd discovered gold in a place most people overlooked.
I chuckle bitterly. I wasn't the one who discovered anything. I was the one being studied.
There's a knock at the door.
Mariam steps in, holding a manila envelope. "Sorry to drop by without calling."
I wave her in. "You always show up when something important happens."
She sits, opens the envelope, and slides a sheet toward me. "This just came in. Court clerk pulled it from a prior case. Deyemi tried to sue someone back in 2020. Claimed breach of contract. Used a third alias."
I raise an eyebrow. "Another one?"
She nods. "Name used: Adewale Ojo. Same birthday. Same handwriting. Same signature flourish on the 'D.' They traced it back through a handwriting analyst. Case got thrown out."
I stare at the document.
"He's a ghost in a hundred skins," I murmur.
Mariam doesn't reply. She just watches me.
"I should have seen it," I say quietly. "I should have looked harder, checked deeper."
"You were in love," she says. "Not doing due diligence on a business merger."
"But I used to do both the same way."
Mariam's face softens. "You're allowed to be wrong about people. What matters now is what you do next."
I look up at her, something settling in my bones. A cold, still kind of clarity.
"I want to see where he's buried his past. Not just his crimes. I want to know who he really is underneath all the names."
She nods. "We'll dig. Carefully. No shortcuts."
As she stands to leave, I walk her to the door. The air outside is cooler now. Still. The kind of quiet Lagos only offers after 11pm, when even the traffic has given up.
Back at my desk, I pick up the journal.
> "Today, I found out the man I married never existed. But someone else did. Someone who knew how to wear masks so well, even I applauded his performance."
> "His name is Deyemi Ayoola Ogunlana. And I will remember it. Not to haunt me. But to hold him accountable."
I underline it.
Then I light a candle beside the window and sit in the glow of it.
Grief has many faces. Tonight, mine is quiet. Focused. Alert.
Let him hide. Let her help. We're coming anyway.