Basma likes Fendi

13 | The Cheater's Apprentice

•Bilal

Do you know why all the good girls go to hell?

Because—they were never good from the start.

Like the rotten insides of a fruit, you'll never know till it's skin is being peeled off of it's decayed body—and in some cases when it starts showing signs on the skin, it's because it has gotten to a stage where it's effects are irreversible.

Likewise with human beings—you'll never know till you get entrapped in the scaffold of the ventricles of their secretive, abominable life.

That was my Bilan—Ruqayyah—the love of my life and the beautiful woman that is still nurturing my children. May Allah bless her soul.

I believed for so many years that she was the one for me—but until today—I didn't know she had spirits of lasciviency instilled in her and I knew, it wasn't recently they possessed her.

For a woman of such virtue I thought she'd had more morals but it was on the contrary. If it wasn't for my eyes I'd say her phone was an agent of destruction with the aim of maiming our semi-blissful marriage.

And who is Adnan? He had the guts to leave a married woman messages even I as her husband couldn't utter except in rare moments of our past adventurous encounters during the first days of our currently loveless marriage.

I would've been ashamed to say I was reduced to nothing but a harbinger of surreptitious thoughts that surrounded a wife that has proved to be untrustworthy to me but I was far from feeling elements of shame—all I felt was rage in different shades. Hopefully I didn't strangle her before nightfall.

Today was my third day in Baidoa. And like the loving husband I was, I visited Bilan at a quarter past noon whenever her parents were out working and it being the period the kids took after school lessons.

Like my first day here, I visited—she dragged me to a spare room in her parents house, seduced me and we ended up repeatedly making love; which was disrespectful—to her parents of course.

Not long ago, we'd taken a shower and I'd been waiting for her to return with food she'd ordered the maids to prepare for us.

A single beep interrupted my failed attempts to contact Baba Imran but I ignored it and continued to finger the call button with my thumb.

Another beep blared loudly again and I turned away, fighting the urge to snatch it off the coffee table sitting opposite the bed.

Two more beeps and I was irritated. I dropped my phone and grabbed hers from where it layed.

I pressed my thumb to the home button and to my surprise It opened. Years ago, we gave each other our passwords and marked our phones with our finger prints as a sign of unyielding trust—not until her inexplicable travel to Somalia with the intention of never returning to Nigeria.

Three messages flickered across her screen from WhatsApp, Facebook and Instagram. None caught my attention except one from someone she saved as LoveAd❤️.

Quickly, I tried to save his number to my phone and proceeded to call some people to help me with my investigation but changed my mind once I noticed the number was already saved on my phone with another name.

I thumbed the WhatsApp application and immediately a page with her recent chats appeared.

A few chats belonged to her with her mother, a cousin I met during our wedding, some friends and the most recent—one with the man I soon found out was Adnan Danmusa; A business associate T&K housing limited worked on a contract with him.