Daddy's little Secret

part SEVEN

Wale.

I know I shouldn't have said those words to Fola but I did. I'm heading towards my car parked just down the road from her house when some figure surprises me.

"What the hell?"

The guy appears from behind my car and springs up a gun to my face.

He starts speaking, "What do you think you're doing hm? You're not supposed to be sticking around, Wale. You sef sabi. So what the fuck are you doing playing Mr. Nice?"

The way that I feel the gun pressed up on my cheek is very real. I'm so scared but I play it cool because I know this guy and I know he could kill me if he really wants to.

"Richard for God's sake, it's broad daylight. People can see you, Fola could see us. Abeg drop the gun and leave me." I manage to get a hand on his chest and push lightly.

He laughs, "Does she even know that you know what happened to her sister?"

"Guy shut up," I whisper angrily and push him off me. "Get off me."

I know he only lets me go because he wants to, not because I pushed him off or because I told him to. If there's anyone I hate the most in this life, it would be Richard. He's such a psychopath and that's not the danger, the danger is that he knows it and he doesn't care.

He laughs some more as I struggle to get my car keys out of my pocket, desperate to get into my car and far from him.

"I was joking haba." He bends over, really hysterical. "You suppose look your face. My guy don fear."

Amidst his laughing, he points at me, enjoying my former display of fear. I insert the key and get into my car. I make sure to tell him that he's sick when I close the door.

I let down the window on my side, watching as he's still doubled over. "You're a sick bastard, Richard. And only terrible things happen to sick people."

For some reason, my words get him standing straight up and that makes my fear spike back up. The expression on his face is stony and emotionless. I try to mask how that affects my breath intake.

Richard approaches my car, leans on it and puts his face directly in front of mine through the driver's side window. "At least, I know I'm sick. Does your late girlfriend's sister know that you are?

If not because Oga just sent me here to deliver a message and see what you were up to, I for just put one bullet for your head today. And nobody. I repeat, nobody fit do me anything. You get?"

There's no one on this planet that wouldn't understand what he meant, especially with the evident darkness in his eyes. But for the sake of it, I pretend to be unbothered and to ignore his threatening words.

I turn my face towards the windshield, put my key into the ignition and ask him what he was sent to say to me.

And I don't need to look at him to know that his killer look has transformed into a demented grin as he starts to talk again. "Oga talk say make you call am today. 6pm sharp. The number and phone that you'd use are in your glove compartment."

He pats the roof of my Honda Accord twice and walks away unto the road. I watch him as he stops a tricycle, gets in and carries on as if he were a normal human being. I don't even want to know how he got the phone into my car.

"What am I doing?" I say to myself, my hand palming the whole of my face once before I start my car and leave Fola's street.

* * * * *

It's 5:57pm. I'm in my bathroom.

And even though I know it's just me in my apartment, I still lock the door to satisfy the part of me that feels Richard may be watching somehow. The scribbled phone number is in my left palm, I begin to tap them into the phone that was left for me.

At first, I recite them in my head but for some reason, it gets me even more anxious so I start to say them out loud instead.

"0-7-0-5-3-6-

Till all the numbers on the paper are duplicated on the phone screen. I lift my head to see in the mirror how I appear as I dial the number.

I put the call on speaker. I notice how much sweat I have on my forehead even though it's not hot.

"Hello?"

The voice that answers is just as I'd expected, "Waley boy."

I hated it when he called me that and I hated that it made me feel so afraid. Anytime this man called or I did, it was never for anything good.

"What do you want? And why did you send Richard to the funeral?"

This man laughs, very shortly. "You're always so straight to the point. Relax little grasshopper, besides Richard is a man of his own. I don't control him."

I'm irritated just a little bit because he does control Richard, but I know that I'm in no place to be.

"I'm not a grasshopper. It's not me hiding behind a machined voice. Him being there ma-ma-made her worried." I flop at pretending that I have an iota of power in this conversation, "just say what you want and leave me."

"Ah Wale, you think that I'd leave you." He chuckles softly, "Anyways, that's beside the point and you're right, I should be straightforward."

That was bad enough, him having to say that I was right. I start to dread the next thing I would hear him say.

"I see you're taking a liking to the girl."

What? "Which girl?"

"Don't be stupid Waley and if you don't want her to die, stay away from her."

This man wanted me to stop seeing Fola and there was no way in hell that was going to happen, so I tell him that but less violently. "I'd rather die than leave Fola alone."

"Wale," I can hear the smile in his voice. "It wouldn't cost me anything to have you dead. You know that."

Any passion for Fola in me, dies out a little after his words. "But I wonder if she would still like to have you around after she knows that you're a murderer."

"No! No, please." I cry. "I'm not a murderer, it was an accident." I stumble to the tiled floors of my bathroom and grip the phone so tightly that it hurts.

"That's not what it says in the files but believe what you want about yourself. And stay away from her."

"Please please no, I'll do anything else." I'm desperate for another clause, for any condition except not seeing Fola. Not a word comes back as a reply so I look at the phone and see that he was done talking to me.

I didn't have a say, so I bent my head right there on the floor and let a tear leak out of my eye.

I didn't want to die, I knew that he could have Richard kill me in my sleep tonight if he desired, but I didn't want to lose Fola and lose the only person that reminded me of Dara.

So, I let the phone fall out of my grip and form a plan in my head. I just had to try.