The next morning, Mushin resumed its usual noise.
Generators coughed to life. Children chased tyres down muddy streets. Vendors screamed prices over the heads of tired bus conductors. Everything felt normal.
But nothing was normal for Zainab anymore.
She hadn't slept.
The rain from last night still lived in her bones, and Obi's words echoed in her ears like the hum of her sewing machine.
"Dapo is alive. And you're the only one who can bury him."
She stared at her scissors.
They had always been tools of beauty, used to shape dreams into dresses. But now, they felt like weapons. Her shop smelled of starch and fear.
Just as she sat down to force herself back into routine, her phone buzzed.
A message from an unknown number.
"Your father would be ashamed of you.Stay in your lane, little tailor."
Zainab's blood turned cold.
She didn't have a father. Not in the way people meant. Her real father had died when she was five. This message wasn't just a threat—it was a reminder that they were watching, and they knew things no one else did.
She stood quickly, marched into the back of her shop, locked the inner door, and pulled out the flash drive again.
She hadn't touched it since Obi gave it to her.
But today, she didn't want to be afraid.She wanted to understand.
She plugged it into her laptop and opened a folder titled:"Yusuf Project – Phase 2"
What she saw made her sit back and cover her mouth.
Customs documents. Names of import-export officers. Warehouse inventories.
A full operation.
Fake charities importing used clothes as donations, but hiding stolen tech, hard currency, and fake drugs inside. And the name at the bottom of several documents?
Dapo Akanmu.
There were bank account screenshots, international transfers, voice recordings of phone calls.
One audio file played automatically.
"We'll use the tailor. If she talks, she dies. If she stays silent, she lives. Either way, we move."
Zainab closed her laptop.
Tears slid down her face silently.
So it was true.
She had become a pawn in a game that started years ago.
Fatiha arrived before noon. She barged in like a storm.
"Zee! You need to come with me. Now."
Zainab looked up, alarmed. "What happened?"
Fatiha handed her a phone. A video was playing on Facebook Live.
Zainab's wall.Her shop.Crowd gathered.
A man wearing a black jacket and tinted shades was being dragged by locals.
The caption?
"Yahoo Boy caught trying to install hidden camera in tailor's shop"
Zainab's mouth went dry.
Fatiha hissed. "They caught him near the side window, trying to fix something under the AC vent. A boy selling zobo saw him and raised alarm."
Zainab stood up slowly.
The web was closing in.
Someone had decided she was a liability—and the countdown had begun.
She paced the shop like a trapped bird.
"I need to report this," she said.
"To who?" Fatiha shot back. "EFCC? Police? They'll ask you questions you're not ready to answer. Worse—word will get back to them. And then you're done."
"So what do I do?" Zainab cried.
Fatiha leaned close.
"We don't go to them...We make them come to you."
Zainab blinked. "How?"
"Start leaking information. Small, coded. Enough to catch attention from people who matter."
Zainab frowned. "Isn't that dangerous?"
Fatiha gave a dry laugh. "Zee, danger already lives in your shop. It wrote on your wall. It followed you home. At least this way, you choose the battlefield."
That night, Zainab did something she had never done before.
She created a new email.
No name. No ID.Just an anonymous message.With one photo attached.
Dapo and Obi in Cotonou.
She sent it to a known journalist—someone who once exposed a corrupt senator—and then shut down the account.
Five minutes later, she flushed the flash drive down the toilet.
If they came for her now, she had nothing left to hide.
She turned off the lights.
Closed her eyes.
And for the first time since Ilorin—
She slept like a woman ready for war.