The world moved fast after the leaks.
Too fast.
Names were dropped.Positions resigned.Two senators fled the country.A popular gospel musician was arrested for laundering.Dapo's name became the center of a storm that shook the very pillars of power.
And in the middle of it all… was Zainab.
The tailor who once worked out of a tiny shop in Mushin.The girl who used to thread needles in silence now threaded truth into headlines.
But she felt none of the celebration.
Because while the world was clapping—she was bleeding.
The threats never stopped.
One morning, she woke up to find a dead crow nailed to the gate of Obi's safehouse.Another day, someone hacked into her Instagram and posted fake nudes.The worst came when Fatiha's younger brother got beaten on his way from school.
"This thing is bigger than Dapo," Obi said one night, pacing."You've pulled the curtain. Now the monsters want their darkness back."
Zainab sat on the floor, staring at her bandaged wrist.
"I didn't ask to be a symbol," she whispered.
Obi looked at her.
"No. You didn't. But symbols don't choose themselves."
The offer came in on a Wednesday.
A quiet email from an international human rights agency.They wanted to relocate her.Change her identity.Help her start over.In Canada.
She didn't answer immediately.
Instead, she went to the burned ruins of her old shop in Mushin.The ground was still black.The mirror frame still bent.But among the ashes, she found something:
A rusted measuring tape.Still intact.
She picked it up, wrapped it around her hand, and sat quietly on the floor.Listening to the city again.The danfo buses.The market women.The children laughing.The ordinary lives that kept moving.
Her people.
And she knew.
She wouldn't leave.
Two weeks later.
Zainab stood before a packed hall in Lagos.An event hosted by the same government that once ignored her cries.
She was no longer a witness.
She was the keynote speaker.
Dressed in a tailored navy kaftan of her own design, hijab wrapped in royal blue, eyes clear and fearless.
The projector behind her read:
"Justice Wears Ankara."
She stepped up to the mic.
Took a deep breath.
And spoke:
"I was never supposed to be heard.I was just a tailor.A daughter.A lover.A survivor.But sometimes, silence becomes betrayal.And scissors are not just for cloth—They're for cutting lies apart."
The hall erupted.
Some wept. Some clapped. Some stood in awe.
Obi watched from the back row, smiling faintly.
Fatiha livestreamed the speech on Facebook.
And somewhere, behind prison bars, Dapo stared at a cracked wall, fists clenched.
That night, Zainab returned home alone.
She sat at her new sewing machine.
No guards.No noise.Just her.The thread.And the needle.
She picked up a plain white fabric.
Started stitching.
And whispered:
"This is for Mama.For every woman who stitched her voice into silence.I'm done with silence."