It's just after midnight when I return to the study, the soft hum of the ceiling fan the only sound in the room. The documents from the investigator Mariam recommended still sit spread across my desk like a half-solved puzzle. My body is tired, but my mind is wired alert in a way that's become unsettlingly familiar these days.
I glance at the corner where I'd scribbled the words Deyemi Ayoola Ogunlana and beneath it, the name he gave me Kolade Obatayo.
It doesn't feel like a name anymore. It feels like a weapon. One he wielded with deliberate care.
I reopen the PDF file I received from the private investigator. It's a scanned image of an old police blotter entry from a station in Ajegunle dated over a decade ago. The quality is grainy, the ink smudged, but the name stands out clearly: Deyemi Ogunlana.
The report lists him as a 20-year-old suspect in the death of a man named Isaac Folarin. A local mechanic. The details are vague a bar fight gone wrong, a shattered bottle, one fatal blow.
But it's not the murder itself that stops my breath. It's the fact that two weeks after the incident, Deyemi disappears from all local records. No job registrations. No school enrollment. No bills. Nothing.
That's when the alias begins to appear.
Kolade Obatayo.
It is first used to register a prepaid SIM card. Then an account with a microfinance bank. Then later, his National ID renewal with forged documents.
I sit back in the chair, blinking hard.
He didn't just lie to me. He buried a whole identity. Built a new one on the ruins of a life he erased.
My fingers tremble as I trace the edge of the printout. In the margin of one page, the investigator scribbled a note: "Alias appears tied to immediate post-incident survival. No known jail time. Potential witness disappearance?"
A single sentence with a thousand buried implications.
Did he silence someone? Bribe the police? Was it self-defense, or was it calculated?
The air feels thick around me. I stand and pace the room, my steps quickening as if movement might untangle the truth faster.
This isn't about a con anymore. This isn't just a grifter with charm and good lies.
This is a man who changed his name after a body dropped.
I grab my phone and call Mariam.
She picks up on the second ring. "Rita?"
"I need you to look into something urgently," I say. "A man named Isaac Folarin. Ajegunle. Died in a bar altercation about eleven years ago. His name appeared in the background check on Koladeb I mean, Deyemi. Something about a missing witness. I want to know what really happened."
There's a pause. Then Mariam says, "Are you safe?"
The question catches me off guard.
I glance at the locked door. The windows. My phone screen. "Yes. Why?"
"Because people who erase their identities don't usually do it unless they need to disappear. And if someone gets close to unearthing it"
"They might make them disappear too."
"Exactly."
I exhale slowly. "Just… look into it. I'll stay alert."
"Rita?"
"Yes?"
"I mean it. Lock everything. Doors. Files. Even your emotions. This isn't just a man who hurt you. This is a man with a past he's willing to kill to keep buried."
We hang up, but the echo of her voice lingers.
I walk to the window and peer out into the quiet Lagos night. The streets are calm. The wind barely moves the leaves. But it feels like something's watching. Waiting.
My fingers drum on the glass.
Back at the desk, I spread the papers into categories. Financial fraud. Identity forgery. Emotional manipulation. Now… potentially, manslaughter or worse.
In the bottom folder, I find something else an image capture from a CCTV archive.
It's blurry, timestamped nine years ago. A tall man in a black cap walks beside a woman Nse. Her posture is stiff, her eyes focused straight ahead. They're walking out of a police station.
Kolade no, Deyemi is smiling.
The file notes say the station in question destroyed records from that year due to fire damage. Convenient.
But the picture is enough.
They weren't just co-conspirators in some revenge plot. They've been moving like this for years.
And I idiot that I am walked straight into the jaws of a beast trained to charm and consume.
I flip the page.
There's a final document. A marriage registry log from a rural court outside Abeokuta.
Our wedding.
Only it wasn't him who signed.
His name is there. But the handwriting belongs to Nse.
My blood runs cold.
Was it forged?
Did he even marry me legally? Or was it just another piece in their play?
The scream rises in my throat but doesn't escape. I sit, my whole body trembling, as the truth sinks deeper.
There's no part of this untouched by deception.
Even the vows.
Even the rings.
Even the name I whispered when I said "I do."
I reach for my journal and write in all caps:
> I MARRIED A MAN WHO NEVER EXISTED.
And underneath that, I add:
> HE KILLED BEFORE. WHO SAYS HE WON'T DO IT AGAIN?
The fear is real now. Not imagined. Not metaphorical.
It sits with me like a shadow.
I call Gloria. "Come over. Please."
She hears the tone in my voice and doesn't ask questions. "I'm on my way."
When she arrives twenty minutes later, I hand her the file.
Her eyes scan the documents, growing wider with every page.
"Rita," she breathes. "This man… he's not just a liar. He's dangerous."
I nod. "I need to know how much more is buried. I need to know before he resurfaces. Because I can feel it, Gloria. He's watching. Somewhere. Waiting for something."
She doesn't disagree.
We sit in silence. Two women. One truth. A man who wears lies like skin.
Outside, thunder rumbles faintly in the distance.
And inside me, a storm begins to rise.