Roses And Thorns #15

There was something tugging at his mind, but he couldn’t place his finger on it. It had been three weeks since the saga with Tehilah at her house, and since he decided to give up on the feelings he had for her.

“Yes it is Tehilah, she is the one tugging at my mind” he thought. He was baffled that just three weeks since Haliru proposed to her, they were getting married. It seemed rushed, and it could only be rushed if they were trying to cover something.

“Something like what” he didn’t know he spoke out loud.

“What are you talking about?” he heard Onome ask. He didn’t even realize she was in the bedroom with him. She had to answer a call.

“When did she begin to take calls she couldn’t take in his presence?” he wondered, not bothering to answer her question. Everything around him was shady, and yet he did not know how he got to that point.

  He gave up on Tehilah because he realized whatever happened with them was all his fault. If only he had been straight with her, they would still be together and she wouldn’t be marrying a man she didn’t love.

“How do you know she doesn’t love him?” an inner voice asked.

“I have seen how passionate she is, and I don’t see that now. They look good together…but only as friends” he mused.

Wale became restless. How could he move on with his life, when there were unresolved questions nagging for answers?

   While he was wrapped up in his mind, Onome was having her personal victory celebration. She thanked the universe for giving her the plan she had put into motion. If she hadn’t, Wale would probably be arguing over the paternity of the child Tehilah was carrying, and their marriage would have been washed into the drain. Thanks to her friend who had shown her a doctor who could get her baby and make her pseudo-pregnant. Now she was going to build a home with Wale, with a child that belonged to neither of them.

“I am glad we got a chance to rebuild our marriage” Onome came over to Wale and wrapped her arms around him. She had neglected her marriage before, in the pursuit of her career, and now she was not going to make that mistake again.

If only she knew that an egg already broken could never become whole again.

  Meanwhile, Tehilah was planning the biggest destination wedding Lagos had seen. Personally, she had wanted a quiet affair, because it was after all, not how she wanted to get married. When she was younger, she had dreamed of the perfect man and the perfect fairytale wedding, but life had happened. Though somehow life had given her a perfect man, he was not the man in her heart. She was getting married to a man, while she loved another. Still, that was not going to stop her from having her wedding at Seychelles. She told herself it was all part of publicity for her new book.

“Is this the right thing?” Bimpe asked. Since she announced her nuptials, Bimpe had walked around with sadness in her eyes, and no matter how hard Tehilah tried to convince her she was doing the right thing, Bimpe still felt she was making the biggest mistake in her life.

“Arranged marriages happen every time, and the couples get to love themselves while in the marriage. Haliru is the best man I have ever seen and I doubt I would ever regret it”

“You don’t love him, this is a disaster waiting to happen” Bimpe was exasperated. She wished she could knock some senses into her friend.

“Bim, I know what I am doing. No matter how bad the marriage turns out, I will never regret it, because it was the only way I could keep child away from that bastard and his wife”, Tehilah had a determined glint in her eyes. “Besdes, what do you suggest I do, go back to Wale because I love him?”

   There was another person who was unhappy about the most talked about wedding. Adara was beside herself with bitterness. There was no way she could sit still and watch Haliru marry someone that wasn’t her.

“So I messed up by fucking father and sons, but still somewhere deep inside, I loved Haliru”

“Shut up, you loved his money, his fame and the name” an inner voice chided her.

“So what if I do” Adara scoffed and brought back her thoughts to the problem at hand. Tehilah had to go, but how? Could she really get to the point where she would kill?

“Perhaps, I could force her to call off the wedding. I will scare her so bad; that she would curse the day she met Haliru”.  She took out her phone and called someone whom she knew from her days on the street.

   Adara was not born with a silver spoon; she had grown up on the streets, hustling from prostitution to baby factories, and finally blackmailing. Everyone thought she meet Bamanga Snr. When she came to the company, but the truth was they met long before then. She remembered the night she had scouted for a rich man to take her home for the night, at a popular bar in town. She had played her game right, and Bamanga snr. Had taken her to a hotel of her choice, where she had already put things in place to blackmail him. It was the blackmail that made her come to the company to ask for a job, because she knew she would not be turned away.

   On the street, she had a partner in her crime, who doubled as her pimp and her lover. But when she met the Bamangas, she had said goodbye to that life, without a backward glance at Romeo.

“Hello Romeo”, she said colly into the phone. She was hoping that the obsessive love Bruno had for her was still there, and that he would forget the past and help her now.

“Adara”, the baritone voice called and broke into a mocking laugh. “I knew you would call someday, because you never change”

“I need your help”. Adara moved straight to business. She had not called for chitchat.

“I will do anything you want, but you have to do something for me. You know where to find me”.

Adara hung up the call and held the phone to her mouth thoughtfully. She had no choice, but to go back to the mud, just to have her one wish. This time, she was determined not to wait around for another woman to come into Haliru’s life. She would marry him, one way or another.

“And then, I will take away everything that belongs to the Bamangas”. Adara smiled, with a wicked glint in her eyes.