Yemisi
Lagos, Nigeria

It was difficult for me to sleep since the previous week when Karen told me everything. It has even been harder to close an eyelid seeing Gifty every single day and knowing that she tried to cover up a crime. It's just been so hard for me to believe that my daughter can do that to me and Ebunoluwa.

Certainly, I could understand why Zion was having so many issues with her. Just what on earth had we done to her as a family to have her turn her back against us all?

I knew for a fact that I wasn't a terrible mum. It's of no doubt that I can be strict and quite the disciplinarian sometimes but I always have my children's backs. My family at large. I was always there to fight for everyone so how could she?

Fighting back tears that have been wanting to fall for the past week, I pick my bag from the sofa and slip into my orange suit. I'm heading to my law office like I've been doing for the past week but when I hear the opening of a door, I turn to look and it's Gifty in her pajamas with swollen eyes and dried tears on her cheeks.

A huge part of my heart hated to see her like that. Heck! I couldn't even believe the first thing that came to my mind was to hug her but I figured it would be best for her to cry as she should. She did something wrong and deserves to feel the guilt for a good while.

"Can I meet with Gaius today? Has his father lifted the ban on his movements?" I ask the same question that I've been asking all week because the fact that I've not been able to meet with Gaius since I arrived from Germany has also been driving me crazy.

"Today is the only day he's allowed to move out of the house. He'll be playing basketball today so you can meet him at the court. I came out to tell you that," she fiddles with the rope of her bathroom robe.

"Ah! That's amazing. That means I have to arrest him today, " I think out loud but don't fail to observe the way Gifty shivers slightly at the sound of that.

Bowing my head in frustration, I close my eyes for a second, and when I open them again, the tears have gathered up in my eyes, almost blurring my vision.

"Gifty..." I sniff in. "Do you think your father would be happy with what you did if he was alive to see it? Was this who he raised you to be?" I ask the question but didn't wait for her response before I continue to talk. "You are surrounded by great men. Your late father, Your stepfather, even if he used to be a bit of a coward. Your Uncles... Even your younger brother. These people would do anything to protect their women and stand against every form of harm done to them without giving it a thought. I can't believe you didn't learn anything from these people."

When the tears start to fall down my cheeks, I decide to stop talking. What matters most is that she has received a piece of my mind so quickly, I wipe the tears away and try to retouch my makeup. "Karen is outside waiting for us. You're going to follow us to the basketball court right now."

"I don't think I will wait though, " Karen butts in loudly from outside. "Remember Christopher is arriving from Germany today. So I'll just drop you off at the basketball court and take Gifty with me to the airport so she can meet with her stepfather. He wants to see her."

"Oh..." I expressed. "Okay then. That's nice. We should start going."

***

The ride to the basketball court didn't take a while. It wasn't far from Gifty's music school. Leisurely as I sat in the back seat, I tried to imagine what Gifty and Gaius must have been doing together after school hours.

Did they have sex? Did he try to abuse her? Did he?

Wait a damn minute.

Could it be that? Was that why...she was trying to cover up for him? Because he's brainwashed and manipulated her?

My heart started to beat multiple times. Quickly, I remembered everything Karen told me about Gaius. His sheer honesty and willingness to pay for his crimes and even ratt out his father and Barrister Peret's plans to us.

Could the same guy do such a thing to my daughter? Most criminals have a warped sense of freedom but I couldn't seem to figure out what Gaius' own was. Maybe because there was nothing warped about him wanting to redeem himself?

So...why? Just why would Gifty cover up for him at the expense of everything? Or...did he want to redeem himself so no one would point fingers at him when he comes back from prison and starts to abuse my daughter? Was that it? Had he bewitched my daughter to support him through flesh and bone? Thick and thin?

Gah!

Where are the answers when I need them? Such traitorous things!

"Aren't you getting down? We're here already!"
Karen's yelling and knocking at the car window snatches me away from my endless thinking. Quickly, I open the door and step out. As I take a look around the basketball court and its surroundings, I can only spot five players.

I wasn't sure if I knew what Gaius looked like as the only idea I had of him was a sketch from thirteen years ago but there was no cause to worry with Karen and Gifty being here. A few minutes after we waited, Gifty points in a certain direction. I follow the direction and see a tall, light-skinned guy walking out of the loo dressed in a sleeveless jersey and mid-length shorts with a face towel in hand.

"That's him!" Gifty and Karen chorus.

"Okay, " I rub my palms. "You guys can go now."

"Um...I think you should be careful though. If his dad only allows him to go out on Saturdays, then it's only expected that he must have some guards watching over him, " Karen warns.

"Yeah, that's right. But I believe it won't be a hassle for me to deal with them in whatever way I can."

I might not be as good as Ebun when it comes to exchanging fists but I have a pass mark at least. Manipulation could be another effective tool in this case too as it has always worked for me. I leave the middle of my best friend and my daughter and head for the court quickly and I see Gaius.

He stops walking as soon as our eyes meet. It's our first time seeing each other but he already knows it's me. Quickly, he steps out of the court and walks close to a bench beneath the oak tree. Standing firmly and waiting for me to approach him, knowing fully well that today is his day of doom.

I open my phone and turn on the recorder after thinking of what Karen told me the last time. Gaius shouldn't be interrogated for the second time without being recorded especially with Barrister Peret on the move.

We're close to each other now and I take a little time to study him before I sit down but the non-verbal observation takes longer than I expect it to be because the more I studied, the lesser my anger was. I was trying to look for reasons to be angry and I tried to hold on to the anger I was feeling but it slipped away with each second.

I'd mastered the way criminals tend to behave but this guy and the genuine remorse in his eyes? There was no way he must have abused my daughter. That wasn't it. This guy in front of me just wanted to go to jail for his crime.

"You're Gaius Giakas right?" I ask after I give up on staring at him.

"Yes, " he nods.

"Are there guards in this place?" I look around and take a seat on the bench.

"Pardon?"

"Your Dad... He's been trying to protect you from me but thought to give you some breathing space on a day like this. I'm sure he must have given you an hour when you must return home. Am I wrong?"

"No you aren't, " he takes a seat too. "But he didn't assign any guards to watch over me today. I would've felt it if he had."

"He didn't?" my jaw nearly dropped. "No. I'm sure he did but very secretly. There's no way he'd set you free like that and I'm sure you know it deep down. We are being watched. I'm sure of that, " I reasoned. "By the way... I don't know if it's right for me to thank you for exposing your father and Barrister Peret's plans to Karen but you've saved me from a foe that I thought to be a friend and I'm impressed by that so thank you."

"Please d-don't thank me, ma'am. I just want to be able to go to jail, " he looked at his palm shyly and started to play with his fingernails till I see a teardrop on his hands.

"Ha!" I couldn't help but chortle in amusement. This guy was something. Just like Karen told. "Tell me something. Have you had sex with my daughter?"

With shock, he looked me straight in the eye. Nervously, he wiped his tears away and answered: "N-no."

"Then why does she love you so much to the point of covering up for you when you want to pay for your sins?"

"Gifty needed someone who would love her without chastising or scolding her. I met her in Australia and at the time she was having problems with everyone at home. Some that I knew about and others that I didn't. When we met and became friends, she confided in me with some of these issues but I didn't want to give her advice that would make her turn her back against her family.

All I did was make her feel better in several other ways that I knew I could. I didn't want to get too close to her because of my past and how the realization of it would break her heart but she came closer even when I tried to avoid her. Then I fell in love with her.

I couldn't help it. I didn't know what effect the revelation of my past would have on her so I started looking for ways to redeem myself so I could love her with no hindrances."

"What family issues did she tell you about?"

"They were mostly issues affiliated to her health and a syndrome she once had. She spoke about how you were always so protective of her for fear of what people would think which wasn't what she wanted. She didn't feel loved that way. When she told me that, I didn't know what to say because I could understand where you were coming from. People tend to stigmatize people with physical peculiarities and look at them in some kind of way and you didn't want that. So all I did was try to make her feel beautiful and tell her often that she was beautiful regardless of her imperfections."

"But I did tell her very often that she was beautiful so what makes it different coming from you if it wasn't for the fact that you had sex with her?"

Tears spilled down my eyes now. I couldn't control it. I just needed to get to the root of the matter and that made me voice out the questions that had been on my mind since I got there even when I tried to convince myself otherwise.

"I didn't have sex with your daughter. I couldn't even bring myself to do it even if I dared to try." 

Slowly, it started to click that he was saying the truth. My daughter was insecure and needed love from an external body which was something most teenagers were prone to do and while it was very much possible that this guy right here took advantage of her and twisted her sense of acceptance and love, It was somehow reasonable to know that he couldn't have sex with her even if he tried.

The guilt. The flashback of that incident. He would always feel like a rapist and every sexual activity he tries to indulge in would always feel forced even if the other party consented to it. I understood it quickly. The problem was with my daughter. Not him. He didn't make her turn her back against us. She chose to.

"Did you know how old she was before you started dating her?"

"No. Even when I could have easily figured looking at how emotionally unstable she was, I still couldn't until she told me later on that she was eighteen. I was twenty-three then but I just figured it was okay to date someone of that age since the age gap wasn't much."

I wanted to question that and ask him if he was ignorant of the law but just deemed it unnecessary. He was innocent and he'd proved it already. For a solid minute, I didn't know what to say but when I did, I asked.

"I'm aware you didn't penetrate my sister on the day of the incident but why did you move with rapists? Why were you an accomplice on that day? They chased her around the house, carried her on their shoulders, pushed her head against a nail, and hit her severally. Why didn't you try to stop it?"

The flashbacks from thirteen years ago. The day we interrogated Ebun at the hospital and I instructed her not to seek vengeance and now, she decided to do just that. The pain I felt. The wound opened up again, fresh and severe.

"I know my answer won't make any sense but I was a part of the group before I could realize that I was. I was just twelve and my Dad had attempted to kill my mother and in revenge, my mother set his company on fire. It was a mess that I couldn't stand so I ran away from home and met a guy that was nice and willing to help me with some accommodation and feeding on conditions that I do what he did for a living."

"So...you were my sister's agemate thirteen years ago and they lured you into...those guys raped girls for money?" more tears slid down my eyes as I uttered words incoherently.

"Y-yes. But I didn't know then so I just agreed to do whatever it was till I met the other guys in the group and on the day of their 'job', I followed them to a house... Your sister's house and before I could say anything, everything unfolded before my eyes and it happened very quickly. It was in the moment of the atrocity that I realized what the job was and I froze for a good while before they forced me to rape her. Then I started to cry."

"My God..." I covered my mouth. "And how were you able to escape from those guys after that day? They didn't try to kill you for being the different guy?"

"I had to run back to my Dad. Then we fled to Australia. I told him what happened and I thought he would punish me but he didn't and later on I wasn't surprised but I lived with guilt as my biggest burden for many years."

"How old were the other guys?"

"The other guys were between seventeen and nineteen. The oldest was twenty years old and that was the leader."

"The leader of the rapists...What's his name?"

"His name is..."

Just then, a gunshot was heard. A gunshot that was meant for me but I'd luckily happened to miss. That was when I realized that Gaius being at the basketball court was a trap. His father would NEVER let him out. Breathing space or not. He knew that if he let Gaius out, either Karen or I would come looking for him. That way, he would be able to kill either of us.

That was it.

When I turned, I saw one of the guards that Karen talked about.