I closed my eyes.
“What?”
“Check the inside pocket of the brown leather suitcase he keeps in the guest room closet.”
I frowned immediately.
“How do you know about that suitcase?”
“Because it used to belong to Ngozi.”
The room around me suddenly felt too small.
Adaeze continued in a trembling voice.
“Inside that pocket, there’s a hospital receipt with Ngozi’s name. And if he hasn’t destroyed it yet, there should also be photographs.”
“Photographs of what?”
Silence.
Then:
“Women.”
The next morning, after barely sleeping, I drove back to the house while Emeka was at work.
Every second inside that place felt wrong.
Too quiet.
Too still.
I went straight to the guest room closet.
And there it was.
The brown leather suitcase.
My hands trembled so violently I almost dropped it while opening the zipper.
Inside the hidden pocket, I found exactly what Adaeze described.
A folded hospital receipt.
Ngozi Okafor.
Renal complications.
My chest tightened.
Then I found the photographs.
At least seven women.
Different years.
Different faces.
But every single photo had one thing in common.
They were all standing inside that same house.
And every single one of them wore the exact same gold wedding bracelet Emeka gave me on our wedding day.
I felt physically sick.
Then my phone rang.
Emeka.
I stared at the screen while my heartbeat pounded in my ears.
I didn’t answer.
One second later, a text message appeared.
“Baby, where are you?”
Then another.
“Why is the guest room open?”
My blood turned to ice.
He knew.
Before I could move, I heard the front door downstairs open.
Slowly.
Calmly.
Then Emeka’s voice echoed through the house.
“Chioma?”
I stopped breathing.
Footsteps moved across the marble floor below me.
Not rushed.
Not angry.
Almost patient.
Like a man completely certain his wife had nowhere left to run.
Then another sound shattered the silence.
Police sirens.
Emeka froze downstairs.
And for the first time since this nightmare began, I heard fear in his voice.
Because Adaeze hadn’t only warned me.
She had spent two years collecting evidence.
And thirty minutes earlier, while I sat trembling inside that guest room, she had already sent everything to the police.
The herbal mixtures.
The medical records.
The photographs.
The bank transfers.
Even recordings of Emeka speaking to a private doctor.
That afternoon, police uncovered multiple falsified medical documents tied to Ngozi’s death and reopened two other unsolved investigations connected to Emeka.
By evening, he was sitting in an interrogation room instead of our dining table.
And for the first time in four years…
I drank a glass of water without fear.
Three months later, the pain in my left side completely disappeared.
Sometimes I still wake up at night remembering the sound of Emeka calmly calling my name from downstairs.
But then I remember something else too.
