Sarewagba 3 (Final Part)

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That Saturday, Chime was at the office of an estate agent, signing the papers of the new apartment he had gotten, when Anu called.

“Where are you, love? You need to come over to my place as soon as possible,” she said with all the urgency in the world.

“Why? What happened?”

“Please, just come, it is not something we can talk about over the phone.”

So he rushed the signing of the documents and rushed over to her place, which was about twenty minutes’ drive from where he was. When he got there, she showed him a text message she had received from a strange number. It simply said, “Tell Chime to call me, or the whole world shall know our secret.”

Chime felt his heart deflate in his chest. He knew without a doubt that this was the handwork of Dara. This girl is really something else. But how did she manage to lay her hands on Anu’s number?

“Chime, what’s going on?” Anu asked him, worry creasing her beautiful, elegant features. “Are you into some kind of dirty business or something with someone? Because I don’t understand what this person means by secret.”

Thankfully, Anu was seeing it in a different line from infidelity. Chime quickly latched on to that. “No…no, not at all. Some people are just trying to force my hand to do something that is unethical at work. Look, you don’t have to worry yourself at all. I will put a stop to it once and for all by reporting the whole situation at work,” he stuttered in more lies.

“But I am worried, I am really worried. That message is quite threatening. This is less than a week to our wedding, we don’t need things like this now.”

“Don’t worry, I will fix it by reporting it at the office tomorrow.”

“Okay, love, if you say so,” Anu nodded, believing every single word he had told her.

The moment he got back to Tunde’s house, Chime went straight to his traveling bag and dug out the phone he had discarded in there. He turned it on and saw numerous messages from Dara. He dialed her number, anger exuding from every pore of his being. He felt like ripping her neck out of her body at that moment for her daring to send Anu such a text message.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” he yelled when she picked. “How dare you send my fiancée that kind of message? In the first place, where did you get her number from, you little witch?”

“Oh, so you can call me now? After all these days? I knew this would get you. How dare I send your fiancée a message, you say? How dare you call her your fiancée? You told me you are not getting married to anybody only for me to go to your Facebook page and see you all lovey-dovey with some woman, and when I checked her page, I saw an IV to your wedding with her. You are a liar!”

“Come, are you completely out of your mind? I told you straight up that I was getting married but you refused to believe it, so I told you what you wanted to hear. Look, I am sick and tired of this rubbish! Now you know for certain I am getting married, so stop disturbing me; stop calling and stop trying to reach me in whatever desperate way you can!”

She at once started wailing at the other end of the line. “Oh, so now I am a pest that is disturbing you? After you have used me, you now want to dump me? Never! I am never going to leave you alone. It is that ugly thing you call a fiancée that should leave you alone…

“Shut up! Don’t you ever…”

“No, I will not shut up. And you know what? You better come over to pick me up tonight, latest 8pm, so we can be together or I will tell your so-called fiancée all what we have been doing – how you made love to me in your house more than once. In fact, you better call off your wedding with her or I will call it off for you by telling her everything!”

And with that, she cut off the phone, leaving Chime in a fit of almost mindless rage that had him shaking from head to toe. “That little witch! Why did I even get myself into this in the first place? If only I hadn’t listened when Tuna talked me into having a fling… Tuna, Tuna, where are you? See what you have caused…”

He stormed into the sitting room where Tunde was so engrossed in the PS2 he was playing that he did not hear any of the fiery conversation he had just had with Dara in the bedroom.

“Do you know Dara dug up Anu’s identity on Facebook, somehow got her hands on her phone number and had the guts to send her a message asking me to call her or my secret will be in the open? Thank God Anu did not suspect that the message was from a woman, or I would be in hot shit by now. Now the Dara girl just told me on the phone that she will tell Anu all about us if I don’t come over to see her in school today and also wants me to call off my wedding with Anu. What kind of nonsense is all these now? What kind of witch did you hook me up with?”

“Are you serious? Na wa o. Which kind girl be this? I just tire. Do you know that even Amaka is shocked by her behavior, and what’s more, she is not the kind of person she can really talk to, because they are not so close, just acquaintances.”

“I’m completely tired. Imagine I abandoned my house because of her, still I can’t seem to shake her off,” Chime lamented.

“You know what, you just need to handle her with sense. Just string her along and give her the attention she wants, then after you are safely married to Anu, you can cut her off once and for all…”

“No, no, no, Tuna. Enough of these crazy ideas of yours. Keep stringing her on and keep having sex with her right up to the day of my wedding? I can’t do that. I need to put a final stop to this. It’s time I do this my way. I will go to Anu and confess everything that happened to her myself, that’s the only way I can stop the blackmail.”

“Dude, are you out of your mind? How can you tell Anu you slept with another woman just a week to your wedding? She would dump your sorry ass.”

“I will rather take that risk at this point, before the situation gets even worse than this. Didn’t you hear the ultimatum I said that girl gave me? I will rather confess my sins than go through with those demands of hers,” Chime insisted. And without wasting more time debating the issue with Tunde, lest his friend cajoled him to do otherwise, he picked up his car keys and drove back to Anu’s house.

When he got there, one look at her trusting, angelic face and he almost changed his mind about the confession he was about to make. He couldn’t bear the thought of her reaction when she heard what he had to say; she would be so disappointed in him! But he had to steel himself up. He was caught between the devil and the deep blue sea and must choose one.

“Anu, I have a confession to make…”

And he narrated it all; right from the night at the beer parlour to the call he had just received from Dara. It was by far the most difficult thing he had even done in his life, opening his mouth to tell the love of his life that he had cheated on her just days to their wedding.

“It’s because of her that I abandoned my apartment and not because of thieves like I had told you. She was also the one that sent that message to you earlier; it had nothing to do with work like I had made you believe,” he choked out in conclusion. “I am so sorry, dear…I know I have really messed up, please forgive me…”

The look on Anu’s face squeezed at his heart, it was a look of utter hurt and disappointment, she just kept staring at him speechlessly as tears built up in her eyes till they looked like twin dams about to flood over.

Finally, she gasped, “You are already cheating on me? What will then happen when we are married?”

Chime at once dropped to his knees. “I would never cheat on you when we are married; this was supposed to be a one-off before my lifetime of fidelity. It was wrong of me, and I am really sorry. I promise this sort of deed will not come from my hands again. Please, Anu, forgive me. I am really sorry.”

“And then you told me those huge lies? How can I ever believe anything you say? How can I go ahead and marry a man who can do these things?”

“Anu, please…”

She silenced him by holding up her hand and then covered her face as sobs shook her whole body in waves. The next 15 minutes or more was spent with her crying in a mixture of anger and hurt, while Chime remained on his knees, eyes begging for forgiveness, and repeatedly saying, “I know I really messed up, please don’t take away your trust from me. Forgive me, Anu, it will never happen again.”

Finally, she said, “I will forgive you this one time, but if this ever repeats itself, I swear, that is the end…”

“It will never ever happen again, I promise you that.”

She dried off her tears and a determined look came upon her features. “Did I hear you say the girl is trying to blackmail you into calling off our marriage?”

Chime nodded in the affirmative.

“Really? What nerve!” Anu scoffed. “I know what to do.”

She picked up her phone and began scrolling angrily while Chime watched, got Dara’s number from the text she had sent to her and said, “I will use this number to search for her on Facebook. She’s not the only one that can blackmail someone.” And after typing in the number on Facebook and clicking search, “Yep! Got it. Her full name is Daramola Adepoju. So this is the girl, such a small girl!” The picture on Dara’s profile had just her face with its misleading babyish innocence, making her look like a teenager in it. “Good, she has her parents listed on her profile. Imagine! Her Dad is a Pastor, his name is Pastor Gbenga Adepoju. Ha ha! You are in for it little girl, just wait till Daddy G. O. hears what his daughter has been up to.”

Anu looked up at Chime. “This is going to be very easy. Give me your phone, we need to call her right away.” Chime brought out his decoy phone, dialed Dara’s and put it on speakerphone.

“Hello, Daramola Adepoju,” Anu said immediately Dara picked up the call. “This is Anu, Chime’s wife, whom you sent a message to earlier today. Now listen and listen good, he has told me everything that transpired between the two of you, and I am calling to tell you right now to get yourself out of my man’s life, never call him again and never dream of blackmailing him again.”

“Chime’s wife indeed!” Dara’s voice came through very viciously from the other end of the line. Chime was taken aback. He had never heard this sort of tone from her; it was quite different from the girlish voice she usually spoke to him with. “You listen, you have no right to tell me what to do. As far I am concerned you are not his wife because you guys are not married yet. So fuck off, bitch!”

Anu remained cool and unruffled. “You don’t want me to reach out to your Dad, Pastor Adepoju, and tell him what have been up to, do you?”

Complete silence from the other end of the line.

“Or you think you are the only one that can blackmail? Though this is not blackmail, in my own case, you can call it whitemail. Once more, listen to me carefully, if you do not want me reaching out to your Dad (which I can very easily do, because he has his phone number on his Facebook page), and telling him how his daughter goes around sleeping with men at the drop of a hat and then blackmailing them into continuing sleeping with her, you will delete Chime’s phone number off your phone this instant and never reach out to him again. And you will never step one mile close to anywhere he is. Have I made myself crystal clear?”

“Okay.” Dara’s voice immediately reverted back to the girlish one Chime was used to. “I’m sorry.”

And Anu cut off the phone. “Done! That is how you handle a blackmailer.”

Chime’s heart overflowed with admiration and his love for Anu instantly doubled. What smart, swift thinking!

“I swear, Anu, this would never repeat itself again. I would never cheat on you again,” he professed as he pulled her into his arms and gave her an impassioned kiss. “Finally, it is all over…”

Or was it?

D-day arrived. The Day of Chime’s and Anu’s wedding. An excited Chime got into his appropriately decorated car with his best man, Tunde, eager to get to the venue on time. “Guy, hurry up. We can’t be late for anything.”

Tunde got behind the wheels and they were soon on their way to the wedding venue. Chime could not sit still beside him, unable to conceal his joy. The day he had been waiting for for a long time was finally here. In a few hours, Anu would be his wife.

They were caught up in a slight hold-up, less than a kilometer from the venue, when three rough looking men walked up to the car; two at the driver side and one at the passenger side. They showed Chime and Tunde their guns and beckoned to them to open the door. Thinking it was a robbery, both men wound down and held out their phones and wallets to them, but one of the men simply reached in and unlocked the door at Tunde’s side, then physically pulled him out. He then got into the driver seat and unlocked the other doors. His companions got into the back seat and the man at the wheel spun the car around and sped off in the opposite direction with Chime still in the vehicle with them.

“What’s going on?” Chime tried to ask, but he was silenced by the sensation of something prickling his neck. He looked down and saw that it was some sort of injection. Then he blacked out.

He came to in a dim room, inadequately lit by a single green bulb, the kind they use in dingy beer parlours or night clubs. The memory of his kidnap came back to him along with the thought that Anu would be frantically waiting for him at the venue of the wedding by now. He tried to jerk up to his feet but felt too weak to move. He looked around the room, it was almost bare, with just the mattress he lay on, a traveling bag at one corner and a chair at the other corner. There was someone sitting on the chair. The person stood up now as he struggled again to get up, and he saw it was Dara.

“Dara, what’s the meaning of all this? Are you out of your mind?”

“Maybe, maybe not,” she answered him with a happy smile on her face. “All that matters is that finally, we are together again. I don’t care what I had to do or the price I had to pay for getting you here. I am just happy to have you here to myself, all mine.”

She laid down on the bed beside him.

“You have just ended up putting yourself in a whole lot of trouble. Anu would immediately guess that you are behind whatever happened to me. She would inform the police and they would come looking for you. Your father too would know everything you’ve been up to now.”

“My father? Like I care anymore. He would never find me. I have run away from home, school, everything… just so we can be together. You know, I would have killed myself than see you marry that bitch.” Anger crowded her face briefly, then the smile returned again. “When you people did that thing you did the other day, threatening to expose me to my Dad, I simply started thinking of what next to do; there was no way I was letting anyone take my man away. So I came up with this plan. I stole some of my father’s money, ran away from home and got this place. It’s not too great a place, I know, but that’s the best I could get in such a short time. Then I contracted those men that kidnapped you. Didn’t cost me too much, trust me, since they also get to do whatever they like with your car. I was able to give them the information they needed to successfully pull off the job; told them you will go through that road to get to your wedding – I got that fact from the details on your IV that bitch, Anu, put online. I also gave them the details of your car including the plate number. And voila, here we are happily ever after.”

“Dara, this all very crazy. You are too young to throw away your life like this. The police will find you.”

“No they won’t. And I am not throwing my life away. I am simply going to spend every minute of it with you from now on.”

“What? You’re going to tie me up and lock me up in this room forever?” Chime scoffed.

Dara shook her head. “I won’t have to do that. I am just going to continue giving you this injection that will make you too weak to get away from me.” She waved a syringe in his face. “I heard its side effect is that it makes people lose their memory after several days of continued usage. Once that happens, you will never remember Anu again; all you will know is this life we are starting together.” She laughed again with pleasure at this thought.

“We will be together forever, my love. No more will you see me as someone to use for sex and cast away, you will love me the rest of your life.”

Chime tried to struggle off the bed again, trying to get away from the love-crazed girl and her sick plan, but was still too weak from the effect of the injection. He felt a prick in his neck as the syringe’s needle once again dug into him. Then everything began to fade.

“Anu… Anu…,” he called out weakly, as though that would magically bring her to his rescue, but all he heard was Dara’s voice promising, “It’s you and me together now, Chime. Together forever…”

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