Agnes

The knock came just after 7 a.m., before the house had fully stirred.

Amaka was already awake—she rarely slept through the night now. She was at the dining table, dressed in a soft ivory robe, sipping black coffee when the butler appeared, slightly breathless.

“Madam, there is someone at the gate. He says… he’s family.”

Amaka didn’t look up. “We don’t have unannounced family.”

“He says his name is Ikenna.”

That name.

She placed the cup down gently.

“Let him in.”

The last time she saw Ikenna, she had been 21. It was in the servants’ quarters—Agnes had locked him in for over three hours after he showed up claiming to be her son. The press never found out. Agnes had paid the guards double to swear the boy was a deluded stranger.

But Amaka remembered his eyes. They looked too much like hers not to mean something.

Now, fifteen years later, those eyes stood at her doorstep.

Older. Harder. But still burning.

“You’ve grown into her bone structure,” he said as she stepped outside.

“You’ve grown into her fury.”

“I need to speak with you.”

“Then speak.”

“Not out here. This is a performance space.”

She studied him, then stepped aside. “Ten minutes.”

They sat in the smaller lounge—Agnes’s old reading room. No cameras. No staff.

Ikenna leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “I didn’t come for money.”

“Good,” Amaka said. “Because there isn’t any for you.”

“I came for the truth.”

She tilted her head. “Which version?”

“The one where I was born of her. Hidden. Rejected. The version where you lived in gold, and I lived in gutter water.”

“She denied you existed.”

“She denied a lot of things. Including what she did to our father.”

Amaka’s lips parted. “You knew him?”

“She ruined him. Drove him into a bottle. Then a coffin.”

“I don’t know that story.”

He looked at her. “You don’t know a lot. But you know enough.”

Silence.

Then Ikenna dropped a USB drive on the coffee table.

“She paid a man to track me for over five years. Emails, transfers, voice notes. Your mother wasn’t just ruthless—she was terrified. Of me. Of what I might become.”

Amaka looked at the drive but didn’t touch it.

“What do you want?”

“Nothing.”

“Everyone wants something.”

“I want her legacy ruined.”

Amaka’s eyes flashed. “I’m doing a foundation in her name.”

“Then burn it from the inside.”

Musa received another anonymous message. This time, no envelope. Just an email from a burner account.

“Ikenna is the loose thread. Pull it.”

Attached was a photo of Ikenna in the estate courtyard that morning.

Musa zoomed in.

That face again.

He made a call.

“Get me Ikenna Okoye’s file—birth records, school, arrests, everything.”

“And Amaka?”

Musa hesitated.

“Keep her out of it… for now.”

Later that day, Amaka met Uju at a quiet bistro in Victoria Island. They hadn’t spoken privately in weeks. The air between them still held fractures.

“You look tired,” Uju said.

“You look like you’re about to ask something.”

“Why was I frozen out?”

Amaka sipped her wine. “You weren’t.”

“You’ve been different since the wedding. Since she died.”

Amaka stared at her. “She hurt you. You should be celebrating.”

Uju leaned forward. “That’s the problem. I’m trying to. But you scare me now.”

Amaka tilted her head. “Because I stopped apologizing?”

“No,” Uju said. “Because you look like her. You sound like her. And you’re better at it.”

Amaka didn’t deny it.

That night, Chuka found Amaka standing at the edge of the garden, barefoot, dress soaked from the sprinkler system.

“I’m thinking about drowning,” she said softly, not turning.

He panicked. “What?”

“Not dying. Just the feeling. The surrender. The moment before the fight stops.”

“Amaka—”

She turned. “Do you think I killed her?”

Chuka froze. “Why would you ask that?”

“Because I need to know how well I’m hiding.”

He stared at her.

She smiled.

Then walked past him, dripping.

Musa reviewed Ikenna’s file that night.

Born in Aba. Mother deceased. Father unknown. Expelled from UNN after a fight with a lecturer. Worked odd jobs. Arrested twice—assault, theft. Claimed to be Agnes Emecheta’s son once in 2010. Case buried.

But one document caught Musa’s attention: A bank statement.

There were monthly transfers—N150,000—labeled only “AE Legacy Fund.”

From an account registered under A. Okonkwo Foundation Trust.

He picked up his phone and whispered into it:

“I think I found her blood trail.”

Meanwhile, Amaka stood in front of her mother’s grave.

No flowers. No press. Just silence.

She whispered, “He came.”

She knelt, touched the soil.

“You left him to rot. But you kept a leash. You always did.”

She dug a small hole beside the headstone, placed the USB Ikenna had given her inside, then covered it with dirt.

“Even now, you’re still giving me things to bury.”

She stood.

No tears.

Just the wind.