"Gaius Giakas shall be sentenced to six years imprisonment with hard labor!" the judge hit the gavel against the desk after passing on his verdict as he yelled, "COURT!" and everyone present in the court rose to their feet, watching as procedures required that the judge leaves the courtroom first.

Yemisi heaved a sigh of relief as she pulled the cream wig off her head. She was so happy it was over. No class had stressed her this much emotionally. She never even thought a case could affect sentiments she didn't know existed in her. It was never not surprising to see life throw surprises.

Now, she could have six years at most to ensure that Gifty's unhealthy attachment to Gaius dissipates completely. As the policemen walked Gaius side by side to prison, Yemisi pondered on whether to look at Gaius' face or not.

What did she expect to see in his facial expressions? Why was she expecting a facial expression? And why was she interested in knowing whatever his face looked like at that moment? She knew he'd been showing remorse, but she didn't like him very much talk more of caring about how he was feeling about the verdict.

Would it change anything? She'd spent hours arguing the matter thoroughly with the bastard of a defense lawyer that Gaius' Dad assigned to defend him. The scumbag was busy standing upon the grounds that Gaius was twelve years old when the incident happened. It was insane that she was even able to win the case eventually.

The Court trial was a ton of stress, so she wasn't about to start harboring stupid feelings from watching him go to jail. The burden was lifted off her shoulders at last. So, she looked away and packed her belongings, stuffing them into her handbag. She had to meet with Karen but quickly remembered she had to make a call - a call to Russia.

*****

Gaius is now in prison. His clothes are taken off him and replaced with the prison uniform, his shoes substituted with rubber slippers and confined to a dingy cell. His full, lengthy hair is trimmed to a fade. He has the look of a prisoner.

He had longed for this punishment all his life. Now that he was here, what next? Where was his redemption going to come from? From sitting in between the four cold, foreign walls with negative thoughts as his master?

Mental disarray.

Was that the real punishment that awaited him, but he never knew? What then did he expect from staying in prison if it wasn't that? How did he think that merely being a prisoner would redeem him of his sin?

He wanted to be guiltless. He yearned for something positive. Maybe the hard labor aspect of the imprisonment would help get his mind off from the flashbacks, gory images, and demons, but how about the cold nights he would spend alone or probably with fellow snoring cellmates? What if he came out different but terribly after serving his imprisonment term?

Maybe the ill-treatment from prisoners that have stayed for a long while would be the punishment he needed for being a terrible person, but this wasn't an American prison, and it would surely not operate like how he'd seen in a few movies. He didn't know how the Nigerian Prison worked.

After several minutes of thinking of how to live his way into redemption in prison, he is brought back to reality when he hears several noises. Then he notices that many cellmates are walking out of their cells and heading towards the field.

Many are dragging their feet, murmuring, complaining, and yelling. Gaius could even hear the sound of a cutlass kissing the floor in the distance.

It was time to work. Gaius rose so he could join the others. The warden in charge approached him on the field. "Go and join that middle-aged woman over there. Pluck the weeds with her." Gaius obeyed the instruction and walked towards the end of the field, where the woman was digging through the grass with her bare hands.

Gaius wondered what crime the woman must have committed as he stood next to her now. She was focused on her activity, so he could only see her side profile, and that alone was enough to make him know that she looked like a lovely person and somewhat...familiar?

"Good day, ma'am. I'll be joining you to work so you don't have to work hard anymore," he said.

The woman looked up at him. Not like she had much to say, but when she looked at him, her gaze remained longer than it should have, and the heap of loamy soil buried under fists was instantly released back to the ground. It was an unconscious move.

Gaius got a good view of the woman, who looked astonished. The woman looked a lot more familiar, but he was finding it hard to recollect when he'd seen her face. Who was she? As he stared deeper at her outlook, past the creasy lines of stress, he noticed the color of her eyes. They were blue...and...a tad bit more familiar...and felt like home...strangely like family.

The window to her soul was wide open on a mission to welcome him home, but he had to know which home this was. So he tried very hard to imagine a younger version of her face. What did this woman look like before prison changed her?

Then it clicked after a few minutes. Her long hair. The fire accident. Sorrowful tears that ran from those blue eyes on that fateful day. How could he have forgotten his...

"Gaius!" she let out a loud cry.

"Mother!"

And they ran into each other's arms. Sobbing intensely, Gaius' mother wrapped her soiled hands firmly around her dear son's shoulders as she caressed his head. Gaius couldn't help but shed some tears. He'd forgotten about his mother, a priceless jewel.

The last time he saw her was when he was ten years old. She disappeared for two years, but he didn't understand why. His father lied to him that she'd traveled and would be back one day. Until Gaius saw for himself reasons why his mother had probably disappeared.

Gaius ran away from home at the age of twelve because there was something odd about his father that scared him. He boarded a boat headed to Africa one evening after squeezing himself between a pile of potato sacks. His final destination was Nigeria, and soon, he started thinking of how to survive, and that was how he met the rapists and associated himself with them.

He didn't realize that they were evil people till he was made to do evil, and then ran back to his father in Australia at the same age he eloped. He expected his father to at least punish him for running away after he got to confess that he'd sexually harassed a young girl of his age range, but his father embraced him.

Ever since then, he knew his father was the devil's incarnate. The guilt that Gaius had lived in for many years made him forget a lot of things. The huge things. His mother, most importantly.

Why did she disappear all of a sudden? Why did he stop being curious about it? What happened on the day she ran away? He never knew, and seeing her at this moment made him realize how much he burned to know the answers to everything.

"What are you doing here?!" they asked each other at the same time after breaking slightly from the most prolonged embrace in each other's arms.

"Please, can you answer first?" Gaius pleaded with more tears flowing down his eyes.

"I'm so sorry for leaving you, my son. I'm sorry for leaving you with your father. I left you to suffer for so many years and showed no sign that I cared about your wellbeing even as I've stayed in prison for so long. I should have made some effort, but I didn't, " she sniffed in.

"I've been in prison for fourteen years now because your father has held me captive here. You know he has many connections and underestimating his powers would be the biggest mistake you can ever make. Your father stole from my hard-earned money. He wanted to take ownership and possession of my business. He tried to make me a useless piece of nothing.

But I couldn't let that happen, and my unyielding behavior led to a war between us. He burned down my store one evening. I went the following day with hopes of running my business for the day to make profits only to meet a dilapidated nonentity that mainly consisted of ashes. Immediately, I knew he was the one because of the significant argument we had.

So, I retaliated. His business is a lot bigger than mine since he runs a conglomerate empire. I didn't care. He didn't see it coming. He didn't think that I wouldn't care about how big his business was. So I set fire upon the company at night, two nights after he'd burned down mine, and I fled to Nigeria immediately afterward.

I lived quietly for a year till he had his unknown forces figure out where I was. Then I got arrested one random day, was charged in court for arson, and given an imprisonment term that isn't supposed to be as long as this because I didn't kill anybody when I set fire on his company. I made sure no one was present. He, on the other hand, killed my salesman who spends the night at my store because he was homeless, yet he got away with it.

Many times, opportunities for amnesty came my way, but I got denied. He kept me here by all means. What was crazy was that I committed the crime in Australia, but he was still able to get me punished by the law in Nigeria. I've been here ever since that day, " she sighed. Her face is dry now. She's no longer crying.

"I can't believe this," Gaius exclaimed after everything his mother told him. So that was what happened.

"What I can't believe is the fact that you are also here. Did you retaliate against your father, too?" she asked with great concern.

"No, " Gaius picked his fingernails in shame. "I ran away from home two years after you disappeared because Dad was odd? I think I saw him come back from work one day with a bloodstain on his shirt. He looked tired and strangely full. Like he'd just eaten a human being. The view scared me so much that I didn't want to be anywhere around him. I fled to Nigeria and joined a group of rapists."

"What?! You were just twelve!" she gaped.

"Yes. I was ashamed of what I did ever since that time, and I ran back home. Years later, I started dating. I didn't want to, but I loved her so much. Our relationship fell apart because the truth came out. Her aunt was the victim I assaulted when I was twelve, and my girlfriend's mother is a lawyer. I turned myself in. That's why I got a six-year sentence.

I know I'm a bad son, and I've disappointed you. I've destroyed all of the values you stand for, and I've made a mockery of your image, but I would love for you to get out of here. You don't deserve to be in prison." Gaius pleaded as he held his mother's hands and rubbed them.

She was speechless for some minutes, equally processing what her son had done. It was a big shock to her. She wondered what must have made him join a clique of people who did grotesque acts. Peer pressure? At the age of twelve? Hunger? A will to survive? Or just cluelessness? She was so curious that it made her wonder how someone like him could get her out of prison.

"How?" she asked softly.

***
Come home. Pls. After sending the text, Yemisi sipped from the mug of coffee on the table as she glanced through the window's view. She was waiting for Barrister Peret, and this was the location he'd given her. A small restaurant at the outskirts of the town where Gaius's father's men wouldn't be able to spot him quickly.

Now that the court trial was over, it was time for Barrister Peret to fulfill his promise as negotiated. He had to protect her from the dangers that lurked around her, particularly for the fact that she'd won the case against someone as powerful as Gaius' father, Chief Giakas, and this meeting was to scheme the protection plan.

Ten minutes later, he walked in briskly, looking sideways fifty times per two minutes till he settled down on the empty seat before Yemisi.

"I'm sorry. For everything, " Barrister Peret breathed out after staring at her for a moment.

"How are we going to go a step ahead of Chief Giakas?"

"It's only proper that I apologize in person first," he insisted.

"But it won't change anything. Let's take action already."

"Still...I'm sorry."

Yemisi took a deep breath and glared at him for a moment. She tried so hard to avoid the conversation from veering in this direction because she hadn't fully decided about forgiving him yet. She was still hurting.

Suddenly, her phone started vibrating on the table. It distracted her thoughts. She checked the screen. It was an unknown number. After several years of practicing the law, calls from unknown numbers were no cause for skepticism. On the flipside, ninety percent of those calls did a great deal in helping her investigations then. So she picked like she knew who was calling.

"Hello?"

"It's me...Gaius."

"What? Why are you calling me in prison?"

"I need your help, ma'am. Please."

Yemisi bit her lip firmly as she face palmed with her free hand. She contemplated on what reply to give. She wanted to provide the first response that came to her mind. It was a question on why he was asking her for help again after she'd allowed him to watch her daughter play the violin. Yemisi didn't grant favors often. Besides, when he asked for that favor, he said that was the only thing he needed from her.

Barrister Peret stared at her, curious about why Gaius was calling. He urged her to keep the conversation going. Yemisi rolled her eyes.

"What is it?" she breathed.

"It's about my Dad."

Immediately, her countenance changed to an interested one. The barrister got the hang of what was going on without knowing what was being said.

"What about him?" she pressed on to be sure.

"I met my mother in prison. My father did the most despicable thing to her..." Yemisi had nearly lost interest in the conversation as she wondered why he was telling her about his mother until she put the phone on a loudspeaker and chose to listen intently.

Her emotions fluctuated often. She was seething with anger one second and preferred to cry the next. She glared at the guilt-stricken Barrister very often, as Gaius narrated on. He couldn't believe that Gaius' father was that evil, and he'd chosen to work with him. He felt a lot worse than before.

"So you want me to grant your mother amnesty, right?" Yemisi concluded.

"Yes, ma."

"That means we have to bring your father down and defeat him so that it can happen..." which will be very beneficial to me because I don't need to deal with a second Irene for choosing to fight for my family. "That's what you want, right?"

"If that is what it takes."

Yemisi gave her new partner a look of determination after ending the call. The mission had better be a success because Gaius' father had many reasons to destroy her.

****
Who do you think Yemisi was texting when she typed 'come home pls'?
Can you take a guess?