The grand living room of the Dared mansion, once a symbol of his family's unassailable power, had become Adams's personal torture chamber. The rising sun did not bring hope; it illuminated the dust motes dancing in the air, each one a mocking reminder of a world moving on without him, without her.
He was paralyzed on the sofa, the weight of his guilt a physical anchor. Every beat of his heart was a hammer strike on the anvil of his failure. Gone. Gone. Gone.
The sound of light, quick footsteps broke his stupor. Aisha entered, her face a mask of theatrical concern that didn't reach her eyes.
"Adams, kai! What is all this shouting? Mama is very upset," she began, her voice a carefully calibrated blend of scolding and pity. "This noise, this drama over a woman who clearly doesn't understand the meaning of family loyalty—"
She didn't get to finish.
Adams slowly turned his head to look at her. The movement was reptilian, devoid of any warmth. The look in his eyes—raw, shattered, and utterly devoid of the placating fear she was used to—made her words die in her throat.
"Get out," he said. The words were not loud. They were low, guttural, and carried the chilling finality of a slamming tomb door.
Aisha blinked, taken aback. "Adams, I'm only trying to—"
"GET OUT!" The roar tore from him with a violence that shook his entire frame. He wasn't talking to his sister anymore. He was screaming at the entire edifice of expectation, compliance, and cold judgment she represented. "Get out of my sight! All of you! Just get out!"
Aisha recoiled, genuine fear flashing in her eyes for the first time. She scurried from the room without another word.
The outburst left him trembling, the last of his energy spent. He slumped forward, his head in his hands, his breath coming in ragged, useless gasps. The walls of the perfect room seemed to close in on him, the ancestral portraits judging him from their gilded frames.
His phone buzzed on the glass coffee table. Lara. He fumbled for it, a desperate, pathetic hope flaring in his chest.
"Lara? Have you heard—?"
"Where is she, Adams?" Lara's voice was a blade of ice, sharper and more deadly than any shout. "What did you do?"
The hope curdled into ash. "I don't know," he whispered, the confession tearing something vital inside him. "Lara, I don't know where she is. She just... left."
"People don't just leave in the middle of the night for no reason," she spat. "What happened? The truth, Adams. Or so help me God, I will get on the next bus to Abuja and tear that entire poisonous house down around your ears myself."
The threat should have angered him. Instead, it was the first thing that felt deserved. He was silent for a long moment, the truth a hot, corrosive mass in his throat.
"We fought," he began, his voice breaking. "I... I was angry. She said things... true things... about me being a coward... about me choosing them over her..."
He couldn't say it. He couldn't form the words.
Lara's silence on the other end was more terrifying than her anger. "And?" she prompted, her tone deadly calm.
"And I... Lara, I..." A sob finally broke through, ugly and wrenching. "I hit her. I slapped her. And she looked at me... and she was just... gone. Even before she left, she was gone."
The confession hung in the air, followed by a silence so profound he could hear the blood roaring in his own ears.
When Lara spoke again, her voice was quiet, laced with a disgust so pure it felt like a physical force. "You put your hands on her." It wasn't a question. It was a verdict.
"I'm so sorry," he wept, the words meaningless even to him. "I'll do anything. I'll get down on my knees. I'll beg. I'll change. Just... please... if you know where she is, just tell me she's safe. That's all I need to know. I deserve to rot, I know I do, but just tell me she's not hurt because of me."
"There is nothing you can do, Adams," Lara said, her voice flat and final. "There are no amends for this. You didn't just break a trust; you shattered it. That woman loved you more than anything in this world. She chose you against everyone's advice. She believed in you when you had nothing. And you showed her exactly what that faith was worth."
Each word was a nail in the coffin of his future.
"I know," he choked out. "I know."
"Stay away from her, Adams," Lara said, her tone leaving no room for argument. "If she wants to find you, she will. But you have lost the right to look for her. You have lost all your rights."
The line went dead.
Adams let the phone fall from his hand. It clattered on the marble floor, the screen cracking. A fitting end.
He slid off the sofa onto his knees, then forward onto his hands, his forehead pressing against the cold, polished stone. The posture of ultimate supplication. But there was no one to beg to. He was alone.
Great, heaving sobs wracked his body, tears he hadn't been able to shed before now flowing freely, soaking into the expensive rug his mother had chosen. He wasn't crying for Mina anymore. He was crying for the man he had killed. The good man, the proud man, the man worthy of her love. That man was dead, and he was the murderer.
"I'm sorry," he gasped to the empty room, to the ghosts, to the universe. "I'm so sorry. Mina, I'm so sorry..."
But the words were empty. They were just sounds. They couldn't travel through the night to find her. They couldn't undo the mark on her cheek. They couldn't rebuild a single second of the trust he had annihilated.
He had wanted to make amends. But Lara was right. Some things were beyond amends. This was a ruin. There was nothing to build on.
He lay there on the floor, a broken man in a perfect house, finally understanding the true meaning of despair. It wasn't the fear of losing her. It was the certain, absolute knowledge that he already had, and that he was the architect of his own emptiness.