My Ex-Husband Invited Me To His $500k Wedding To Humiliate Me As A Poor Immigrant — Then I Walked In With His Secret Triplets
The afternoon sun streamed through the kitchen window, illuminating dust motes dancing in the air. Kael, Zane, and Leo were sprawled across the linoleum floor, their little bodies a tangle of limbs, surrounded by crayon-scribbled paper. I was humming softly, wiping down the countertops, trying to clear my mind after the diaspora council debacle.
“Mama, look!” Kael piped up, holding a drawing proudly. It was a crude stick figure, but the head wore a tiny, lopsided crown. “This is the king with the shiny watch.”
My attention, still reeling from the events of the previous day, was only half-there. “That’s very nice, honey,” I said, barely glancing at it.
“He was at the gallery,” Kael continued, seemingly unfazed by my distraction. “The gallery with the big statues. And he dropped his black book.”
I paused, sponge hovering over the counter. “The gallery? What gallery, Kael?”
Zane, ever the quiet observer, chimed in. “The one with the big waterfall inside, Mama. The one you took us to for the field trip last month.” He meant the Omenala Art Gallery, where I had taken them for an educational outing, hoping to spark their creativity.
Kael nodded vigorously. “Yes! And the king picked up his black book, but then he dropped it again! And a scorpion was on it.”
A black book? A scorpion? My brow furrowed. It sounded like something out of one of their fantastical stories.
Just then, Chidi walked in, balancing a stack of takeout containers. “What’s all this talk about kings and scorpions?” he asked, chuckling.
“Kael says he saw a king with a shiny watch drop a black book with a scorpion on it at the Omenala Gallery,” I explained, waving a dismissive hand. “Probably just his imagination.”
But Chidi’s face, which had been relaxed a moment before, suddenly tightened. His eyes, usually sharp and analytical, widened in a flicker of recognition. He put the containers down with an uncharacteristic thump.
“A black leather ledger?” Chidi asked, his voice low, almost a whisper. “With an embossed brass scorpion crest?”
Kael’s eyes lit up. “Yes! A shiny scorpion! Like this!” He jabbed his crayon at his drawing, then flipped over another piece of paper and began to meticulously draw a rough outline of a scorpion.
Chidi dropped to one knee, putting himself at Kael’s eye level. “Kael, did the man with the shiny watch look like… Tunde?”
Kael looked from his drawing to Chidi, then back. He tilted his head. “Yes! He had the same big smile.”
A wave of unease washed over me. Tunde at an art gallery, dropping a black ledger with a scorpion? It sounded too specific for a five-year-old’s fantasy.
Chidi stood up slowly, his gaze distant. “Nia,” he said, his voice barely audible. “That’s Chief Omo’s crest.”
My blood ran cold. Chief Omo. The name itself was a whisper of fear in the Nigerian-American community. He wasn’t just an elder; he was the head of Houston’s most feared underground syndicate, a man whose word was law in the shadows.
“Tunde… with Chief Omo’s ledger?” I breathed, the pieces of the puzzle clicking into a terrifying image. Tunde, with his endless ambition and his desperate need for money.
Chidi’s face was grim. “If Tunde is carrying a ledger with Chief Omo’s mark, it means he’s deeply involved with the syndicate. And Chief Omo doesn’t lend money for real estate developments. He collects debts. Big ones.”
The innocent words of my five-year-old had just opened a window into Tunde’s carefully constructed world, revealing a dark underbelly far more dangerous than just social climbing and fraudulent loans. This wasn’t about prestige anymore. This was about survival.
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