“Guy, stop,” Ebun giggled and commanded Sean in a sing-song voice as he showered kisses down the sides of her neck. His hand rested around her abdomen, fingers firmly securing her in his hold. 

“Guy? I’m going to be your husband in a couple of minutes,” he chastised her and planted more kisses. 

“That’s precisely why you should stop trying to get me back to bed,” a small smile played at the corner of her lips. “Allow me to get dressed so we can actually have this wedding,” she managed to pull away and picked her bathrobe from the floor. Quickly, she slipped it on to shield her bareness. “By the way…” she let the words linger as she tied up the cotton belt to keep the bathrobe in place. “Isn’t it bad luck when the bride and the groom see each other before the wedding ceremony?” 

Ebun knew she was being hypocritical by saying that because if she firmly believed in the superstition, she would have told Sean to drive back to his apartment when he sent a text the previous night that he was at her doorstep and was dying to see her face. She would have yanked off his hands politely while they groped her derriere as he whispered how much he missed her between kisses. She’d wanted all the things he’d given her – including the waking up in the morning to the dimly lit room and humid temperature with him spooning her from behind, providing her with the most delightful form of warmth. She was only asking now because she wasn’t sure what her sisters would think if they learned that Sean had spent the night with her in her place. 

“We’re doomed if that’s the case,” Sean smirked as he grabbed his towel from the wardrobe and wrapped it around his naked waist. “Ugh!” he groaned, covering his face with his hands. The muscles on his upper arms contracted, following suit with the movement. “Why do we have to follow tradition?” 

“Well…because I care to wear a wedding dress and post pictures on the net?” Ebun shrugged. She turned fully to face him and wore a broad smile. “Anyway, I’m leaving to get dressed. Bye-bye and see you soon,” she turned to leave after waving at him. 

“So you’re not going to hug me?” his words didn’t stop her from making her way to the door, but it elicited a smile and a slight shake of her head. “Do you know how long ‘see you soon’ is?” 

Ebun sagged her shoulders and gave up. She met a feigned expression of sadness on his face when she stopped and swerved – it was similar to the countenance of a child whose Lego toys had been seized. “You are such a baby! We’re literally going to spend the rest of our lives together. You get to see me every day.”

“That’s what marriage is about,” he curved and straightened his fingers repeatedly as he stretched out his arm, motioning for her to walk into his arms quickly. When she sat on his thigh, and he wrapped his arms around her midriff comfortably, he continued talking. “It’s about missing your partner even after spending the entire day with them. I’m doing well already as a husband, aren’t I?” he looked up at her, momentarily raising his head from her bosom. 

“Whatever,” she relaxed under his comforting embrace and spoke with an eye roll. “We’re going to be married,” Ebun expressed her profound shock after some minutes of tranquil silence. “It’s baffling to me, to be honest – for so many reasons. I don’t want to start mentioning them because it feels like I’ve said it too many times, but each milestone reached with you makes me realize the fact that I’m doing life with you for real. The revelation of it is always sparkling to me.” 

“I understand, and frankly, I love it. I see it that way too very often. Having such fresh disclosures helps one to see their relationship with their lover as a privilege and to never stop valuing the person that one is doing life with,” he rubbed his fingers on her arm. “But you see, I don’t find this day surprising. For some reason, I feel like I earned it – being with you, that is. I feel this way because of that whole ordeal with your older sister. I’m happy she eventually approved of me.”   

Yemisi had not been joking when she’d insisted that she wanted to study Sean. He became an open book to her, and even an excessive twitching of his fingers became suspicious. If he held Ebun too tightly, she drilled holes into the back of his head with her murderous stares. Eventually, she saw that he really loved her sister and wasn’t out to hurt her and so she let it be. 

“I apologize on her behalf,” she chuckled. 

“There’s no need to be sorry. You already told me about her,” he conveyed the rest of his thoughts about the matter through the prolonged raising of his eyebrow. “You really should go now.” 

“Yeah, I should,” she rose and made her way to the door. Before she turned the door knob open to leave, she stole one last glance at her betrothed and smiled. All of a sudden, she too, didn’t feel like leaving him. Screw a social media post. She didn’t have an Instagram account. Up until that moment when she stopped and beheld his face, which a part of the rising sun had rested on like a halo, she’d never felt butterflies in that stomach. It was only then that she did and heck, did they fly! She’d never felt those even though she’d always known she was in love with him.

Perhaps, it was true that love was more than electrical zaps and starry feelings in the gut. It was a decision – a daily one. Admiration feasts on mystery, but love thrives on full knowledge and vulnerability. So she was glad she chose Sean despite knowing all there was to him, both the good and the bad. He winked at her, and she returned the gesture. Finally, after more continued chuckling and beaming from both parties, she mustered the courage to walk away from the room. 

***

Immediately Ebun stepped into the dressing room a few floors below, a group of well-meaning ladies consisting of her mother, Folake, her sisters, and some of her sister’s friends jammed their hands together in thunderous applause and noises of rejoicing. 

“Congratulations, Ebun!” most of them chorused with genuine, flashy grins on their faces. 

“You will make such a gorgeous bride in the next couple of minutes,” Cassandra, her immediate older sister, cooed. 

Ebun blushed hard, laughed gleefully, and lost count of the number of times she’d mouthed the words, ‘thank you.’  She really was thankful. She didn’t have any friends (the only person who could closely qualify for that title was Nurse Zoya, but she had to remain at Khovrino Hospital. The clinic was undergoing a major change since Ebun had quit being an assassin) but seeing all of the beautiful women show up for her to uplift and cheer her on her happy day was a gift of inestimable value. 

Her mother’s prayer session had been the best part for her. It was a sacred moment filled with shared grievances.  It wasn’t as if Folakemi had gone through such an ordeal personally but watching her daughter go through it hurt as terribly as though it had been her. Thus, her exhortations had emanated straight from the depths of her soul, and with hot tears streaming down her cheeks, she prayed with all her heart that Ebun would never know excruciating pain anymore. Ebun didn’t mind remaining on her knees for what felt like forever. She needed all the good luck, a farewell stamp for all her agony. She could not afford to go through another tough, grueling time, so she was receptive to the prayers. 

When it was time for her to start her make-up session, Yemisi asked the make-up artist to spare her a few minutes so she could have a brief, private chat with Ebun. 

“Remember the discussion we had a month ago?” Yemisi’s voice was barely audible to Ebun as she spoke to her in the corner of the room. 

“Yeah?” Ebun retained her smile, making conscious efforts not to allow the topic ruin her mood. 

“Gaius is around, you know? To help us be on the lookout. Gift is on her way too. Would you like to meet them later?” 

“Yes, later. They need to talk to each other first. I can always meet with them after my wedding and make them understand that I’ve forgiven them. Sean will arrive in an hour to take me to church, so I must be prepared.” 

“Okay,” Yemisi nodded as though the discussion involved some plan she had to ponder upon. “I’m sorry if I scared you.” 

“Not a problem at all, sis.” 

***

While Gaius sat in the lounge, waiting for Yemisi to leave the dressing room and accompany her to the wedding venue, Gifty ascended the stairs and stopped in her tracks when she saw her ex-boyfriend sitting on the chair, looking feathery and much darker in complexion but almost as handsome as she’d remembered him to be. Watching him sit there with his elbows rested on his thighs made her heart pound. She wanted to hug him at the very least, to touch his skin to be sure he was the one. 

She wanted to ask him how prison had been; if he had gotten bullied by hefty rogues who had turned jail into their home; if he ever ate something close to a manageable meal; if mosquitoes paid regular visits at night and made humming sounds next to his ears. She wanted to know the scariest insect he’d ever seen in the walls of his cell. She was curious about the size of his prison uniform – if they fit his lanky frame just well or made him look like a cockroach in a sac. She wondered if he’d missed her, resented her, or had felt both emotions simultaneously. 

But she held herself back. She could not touch or ask him all the burning questions in her mind. It was a risk she had to take. If he was real or not, she could not confirm with the feel of his tender skin on the tip of her fingers. All she could do was look at him like a mirage, a fog that could float away at any time. It was the price she had to pay and would never stop paying for falling in love with the man who had been a part of the gang that raped her aunt. Gaius had become a stranger to her. She didn’t even know the look he would wear on his face if she tried to exchange pleasantries with him or catch up on the old times. 

Her only consolation to the painful constraint was that he was alive. She could see him. After he’d been dragged away to jail on the day of her violin competition without a proper chance to say goodbye, she wasn’t sure if he was going to live through all of the years that they had to spend being apart from each other. So she allowed the gratitude within her to find a medium of expression. It flowed with the tears that streamed down her cheeks. When Gaius raised his head and saw his ex-girlfriend crying, he wanted to stretch out a hand and wipe off the sorrow from her face, but he couldn’t. He was restricted for the same reasons as she was. 

Eventually, Gifty got a grip, wiped her tears, and moved closer. 

“Hi,” she mouthed the greeting stiffly as she sat next to him. 

“Hi. It’s been a while.” There was a wry smile on his face. It almost didn’t seem like it. 

“Yes, it has,” She nodded, still stiff. “Why are you here today?” 

“Um… I’m here on an assignment of some sort. Your mother authorized it.” 

“Oh,” she smiled awkwardly and fiddled with her index finger. “It has to do with my aunt, right?” the last word came with a painful resignation, like an acceptance of a cruel fate – one that a person could foresee but the predictability of it didn’t make it hurt any less.

“Yeah,” he nodded. “Have you mended your relationship with your aunt? Ever since…then?” 

“No,” Gifty sighed. “I haven’t seen her in years. Today will make it the first time in forever. I don’t know what she thinks of me right now.” 

“When she asked about you, I told her that you did the right thing by ratting me out to your mom. So I don’t think she’s mad at you. She had issues with me for even dating you. She didn’t put any blame on you,” Gaius spoke helpfully with the intent of lifting some of her burdens. 

“Oh,” she lowered her gaze and studied the patterns on the floor tiles absentmindedly. “About that…Do you still resent me for being hesitant to tell my mom?” 

“No,” His no had almost sounded like ‘how could you have thought that?’ “I never did. I always loved you, Gifty. I loved you more than my life,” he didn’t need to exert much stress on the words for Gifty to believe them. In fact, it was the calmness and the laxity with which he’d proclaimed his sentiments towards her that planted a seed of reassurance in her heart. “I pressured you so much because of my affection for you, but I never felt spiteful towards you even when you delayed it.” 

“Thank you, Gaius.” Tears formed on her eyelids and it was coming from a place of overwhelming relief. However, her comfort didn’t provide enough security or confidence to ask the burning questions in her heart. She was afraid his answers might not be as positive, and she didn’t have the bravery to handle it. So she diverted to a different topic. 

“So…why are you here, really? It seems like you are on manageable terms with my mom. I mean, for her to give you an assignment, it means a level of forgiveness has been reached.” 

“I came here to be on the lookout for the leader of the rapists. It’s a lot of back history involved, to be honest. But you know your mom has been looking for the leader for years, right?” 

“Yeah,” Gift affirmed. 

“So that’s why I’m here. I’m not here for the wedding, and I don’t even know the man she’s marrying. I don’t deserve to be here with the trauma I’ve caused your aunt,” he shrugged. “Can you do something for me, though?” 

“Oh,” Gifty found it odd how excited she was to hear Gaius ask her for a favor. It meant that he still trusted her and deemed her worthy of a request. There was something about it that lifted her spirit. “What’s it?” 

Gaius leaned closer and spoke in a low voice, scared that someone would eavesdrop. 

“If I’m able to find the leader in this event but cannot reveal the information to your aunt or mum for some reason, promise you will do it for me, please?” his eyes widened with a slice of desperation. “You are not doing it for me this time. You’re doing it for your aunt. You have to do it for her. Please,” he reached out and touched her hand. 

Gifty lost her mind. He’d broken the unsaid law, but she was grateful that he’d done so. His hands felt different. They were rough like sepia bark, calloused and the skin of palms needed a moisturizing routine, but the warmth that seeped from them hadn’t been lost. It still retained the power to render her knees weak. 

“I will, Gaius. You don’t have to beg me so much. I value my family a lot more now,” her smile had turned from stiff to carefree. It had to be the liberating effect that his hands were having on her. 

“Thank you,” he squeezed her hand gently. 

“Yeah.” The questions she wanted to ask burned more ferociously now. She could even feel the alphabets on the roof of her mouth. 

Still, she was scared. She didn’t want to rush the process. He’d only touched her hand. That didn’t mean it was the right time to ask if he still had feelings for her. So she decided she was going to try and collect his phone number first. If she were lucky to receive a response from Gaius through a text message, that would be lovely. At least, it was easier for her to shoulder embarrassment from an online rejection or jab. 

“You mentioned that you haven’t seen my aunt’s husband-to-be, right?” 

“Oh, yes. I wonder who he is. But I’m glad that she found love despite everything.” 

“I know!” Gifty’s eyes glistened with joy. “I have only seen a picture which is in my gallery, but from the photograph, I can tell that they are so happy together,” she pulled out her phone, typed in the password, and gave it to him. Surprised, Gaius collected the device. 

“Here, do what you please with it,” she spoke suggestively. What she’d hoped for was that he’d type in his number. She didn’t care to show him the photograph. He could always see the couple on the altar, after all. 

Before Gaius could explain to Gifty that he hadn’t had access to a phone ever since he was released from prison (because he was staying at the tenement), she’d disappeared from his sight. He could tell she’d been trying to get his number because he was familiar with her ways. Gaius would have loved to punch in his digits because he still cared about her. Since he didn’t know what else to do with her phone, he went through her gallery to check for the photograph of Ebun and her husband-to-be that she’d spoken about. It didn’t take much scrolling for him to find the picture. 

It was a pre-wedding photo shoot that was taken at a studio. There was a peacock-blue backdrop. Ebun was sitting on a stool, wearing a red sequin strapless dress. She was smiling widely with her eyes on the camera. Her fiancé was standing behind her, his hands on her shoulders. He was dressed in a –

Gaius was about to swoon in his admiration for the color of the suit that her fiancé was wearing until he took a good look at the man that she was getting married to. Even after gazing for the umpteenth time, he blinked twice. Blinking helped to reset the brain. After all, facts said so. Maybe he had hallucinated because he hadn’t eaten breakfast. But he gazed back into the photograph and saw the wicked face of Grigory Levin staring right back from the photo. Suddenly, Gaius felt acid from his stomach rise to his throat. 

They looked so in love. How did fate manage to work so severely against Ebun? What must have led to this tragic ending for her? Did she know that she was getting married to Grigory Levin, the leader of the men, including him, that raped the living daylights out of her fifteen years ago? How in the world did this ever happen? How did their abominable paths ever cross? What the actual hell? 

Gaius was so baffled that a tear trickled down his eyes. He really wished this wasn’t true. He wanted to have seen Grigory Levin as a random man among the crowd; as a menace who was out to hurt Ebun; as someone who had no business with her other than to ruin her special day – not as a man she’d fallen in love with; not as a person she was about to share her vows with on the altar. How was he going to break it to her? 

This wasn’t something he could keep to himself until the wedding was over. He had to tell her before the pledges were exchanged so she wouldn’t begin her journey to a disastrous matrimony. Gaius didn’t know much about Grigory Levin since he didn’t get to work under him for a long time. Still, one thing he could never forget was his ability to turn the life of anyone into an irredeemable mess with the appropriate doses of manipulation and a charming aura. Gaius had seen him do it to other people at the barracks. It was little wonder why he was able to remember his face after thinking so hard. The face of a devil could not be wiped out of one’s memory completely. 

Gaius didn’t know what Grigory must have done to deceive Ebun so greatly, but the few things he was aware of from what Yemisi had told him, for instance, the time when two of the men from the gang, Stephen and Gordon, came to her office to attack Ebun, he was so sure now that Grigory had been behind it. He must have assigned them to attack her as a means to scare her away and stop her from looking for him. The same thing must have applied to the time when Gilbert was interrogated in Russia and had refused to say a word. It was all in a bid to frustrate her efforts. 

As Grigory was capturing Ebun’s heart and ensuring that he was the last person she could ever suspect, he was also taking extra measures to stop her from trying to look for him. He wondered just how perfect his deceit must have been. His heart felt so sore, and he could no longer bear the weight of keeping all of it in. He had to tell her right away. 

So he stood up with the phone and began making his way to the dressing room. It was better to shatter her heart now. 

As he walked briskly down the stairs, a queue of emotions mixed up in his heart, and all his feelings tightened up into a thick ball. He could not break into it to decipher what sentiment was overwhelming him so much to the point of tears. He couldn’t wait to let it out because the horror of the truth was beginning to upset his stomach to the point of torture. Suddenly, at the near speed of light, a black sac covered up his face, and he could hear himself gasping and struggling for air as he inhaled a weird chemical gas from the fabric of the cloth. 

Then Gifty’s phone slipped out of his hand, and the last thing he could recall happening to him while he was conscious was his body being dragged down the stairs. 

***

An hour later, Ebun was fully dressed in her wedding gown and her face was fully made up with the perfect powder application and meticulous brush strokes. Now, she was in the car with Sean as the chauffeur drove in the direction that led to the city’s cathedral. There were only ten minutes away from getting to church and Ebun was trying her best not to sweat out her anxiety for fear of ruining her make-up. 

On a side note, Ebun had noticed that Sean looked, or rather, smelled a bit weird. Had he visited the laboratory before getting dressed for the wedding? Or was she being delusional? Why did his hand bear the remnants of an unfamiliar odor once it touched hers in an effort to calm her down? She’d wanted to ignore it just like she’d overlooked Yemisi’s worried expression before she left the hotel but decided to ask anyway since there was no reason for her to suspect anything. Knowing why wouldn’t hurt. 

“Babe…your hand smells like chemical.” 

“Really?” he looked at his palm but didn’t bring it close to his nostril to inhale for confirmation. “It must have been the mixture of sanitizers I used. You know I do that weird stuff once in a while, right?” 

“Oh…yeah,” Ebun raised a skeptical eyebrow and then shrugged. The sanitizer mixtures he used once in a while never smelled like this, but she chose to let it go and not question him any further. Perhaps, it did. What did she know anyway? 

“We’re here already,” The driver announced as he stopped the car next to a spacious lawn on which a tall building sat upon. On the roof of the construction, there was the sculpture of a cross. 

They’d arrived at the church. Ebun took a deep breath and stole a gaze at Sean, her husband-to-be. Her breathing felt heated. 

“Oh my God, we are really about to do this.” 

“Yes, my love,” he stretched out his hand but quickly withdrew it because she’d complained about the smell. 

“It is fine,” She took his hand and held it. 

Together, they walked into the church to put a stamp on their profound affection toward each other. 

The End.