The first time Adesuwa heard her father's name in over ten years, it came from a stranger.
She was standing under the rusted awning of Mama Bisi's convenience shop, watching rain turn the Lagos street into a muddy mess. The storm came fast, out of nowhere — same as the man.
He wore a navy suit, far too sharp for this side of town. His accent wasn't quite Nigerian. Not quite foreign either. Just… unsettling.
"Are you Adesuwa Omoregbe?" he asked.
She nodded slowly, grip tightening on her umbrella.
He handed her a white envelope. No words. Just a nod. Then he was gone.
Inside the envelope was a plane ticket.
Lagos → Milan.
Business class. Her full name printed in bold.
She blinked.
Behind the ticket was a short note written in unfamiliar handwriting:
"It's time you knew the truth. – D."
Her heart stopped. D?
There was only one D she could think of.
Drey.
Her half-brother. The one her mother never spoke of. The one she once saw in a grainy photo, with sharp eyes and her father's chin.
She stood frozen in the rain, envelope clutched in hand, until a horn jolted her back to reality.
That night, she paced her room like a lion in a cage. Her mother hadn't come home yet — stuck at her cleaning job in Ikoyi, as usual. And the power was out. Again.
Only the soft glow of her phone screen lit the room.
She opened the envelope again, rereading the ticket, the note, every detail.
*Milan.*
She didn't know what scared her more — the thought of going, or the truth she might find there.
When her mother finally walked in past 10pm, soaked and exhausted, Adesuwa couldn't hold it in.
She shoved the envelope toward her.
"What is this?" she asked.
Her mother froze.
She stared at the ticket, the note… and something in her face cracked.
"You shouldn't have that," she whispered.
"But I do."
Silence hung in the room like wet laundry.
"I thought you said he left us," Adesuwa said.
"He did."
"Then why is Drey sending me tickets like I'm expected?"
Her mother sank onto the edge of the bed, face shadowed.
"Because lies don't stay buried forever," she said.
Adesuwa had never heard her mother sound so tired.
"I tried to protect you," her mother continued. "From him. From all of them. That life is not for you."
"But it *is* my life," Adesuwa snapped. "You kept it from me."
"I had to. Your father—he's not the man you think he might be."
"What man? I don't even know him."
Her mother looked up, eyes glassy. "Good. Keep it that way."
But Adesuwa couldn't.
Something inside her had already shifted. A door cracked open. A voice — maybe her own — whispering that her story had always been incomplete.
She wasn't just Adesuwa from Surulere.
She was something else. Something more.
And Milan was the key.
Her mother stood up slowly, the mattress groaning beneath her weight.
"You think I'm hiding something because I want to hurt you?" she asked, voice low.
Adesuwa didn't answer.
Her mother walked to the window and pulled aside the curtain. Rain streaked the glass. The darkness outside mirrored the silence in the room.
"I left Milan with nothing but you in my belly," she said. "No money. No friends. Not even my passport. That man—your father—he didn't ask me to leave. He made me leave."
Adesuwa's heart thudded. "But why?"
Her mother turned around. "Because I found out he wasn't who I thought he was. He had a wife. A second family. A life I was never going to be a part of."
The room tilted slightly.
"You were the only real thing I had left," her mother said. "I came back home and started over. Do you know how many nights I scrubbed rich people's toilets with your name on my lips just so I could feed you?"
Adesuwa looked down at the ticket in her hand.
"I didn't mean to—"
"I know," her mother said gently. "But going back there? That's no fairytale."
Adesuwa sat on the bed , suddenly unsure.
"It's just… I need to know where I come from."
Her mother gave her a long, tired look. "Then I'm coming with you."
Adesuwa blinked. "What?"
"If you're going back into that house," she said firmly, "you're not doing it alone. I'll face him again — for you. For both of us."
There was a beat of silence between them.
Then, her mother added, "But understand this: Milan isn't just a place. It's a wound. And some wounds don't close clean."
Adesuwa didn't sleep that night.
Instead, she sat on the floor, flipping through old photographs her mother had hidden away — fragments of a life erased. A blurry image of her father. A woman with eyes like hers in the corner of one photo. A man who could've been Drey.
That night, the rain didn't stop.
And for the first time in years, Adesuwa felt like the storm wasn't just outside — it had begun inside her too.