CHAPTER 14

TYRA

Tiana?" I ask quietly. "Tiana?"

I squeeze her hand, hoping, praying, pleading for a pulse.

Nothing.

A chill runs through me, starting at my fingertips and spreading like ice through my veins. My breath catches in my throat. No. No, no, no. I refuse to believe it. My hands tighten around hers, shaking, trembling, as if I can somehow bring life back to her. I lean over her bed, pressing my forehead against hers, whispering, "Tiana, wake up. Please, please wake up."

Still nothing.

That's when I become frantic. A scream rips from my throat as I start shaking her with every ounce of strength left in me, already knowing but unable to accept it.

"Tiana! Tiana! Tiana! Get up! Get up! Please, Tiana, please!"

The room swallows my cries, absorbing them like they mean nothing. The beeping machines offer no reassurance. The walls don't bend in sympathy. The fluorescent lights buzz like they don't care. And in my arms, Tiana's body is heavy, limp, unmoving.

I don't even cry.

Instead, I see red.

A fire ignites in me, searing hotter than grief, sharper than pain. It burns through my sadness and turns it into something else. Something dangerous. Adrenaline floods my system as I shove myself away from the bed, out of the room, my feet pounding against the cold tile floor.

I need to find them.

The nurse—if I can even call her that—is already watching me when I burst into the hallway. Her lips curl into a smile, but not a kind one. It's cruel, knowing, filled with amusement.

It sends shivers down my spine, but I don't stop running.

She doesn't move, not at first. She waits, watching, letting me get close, like she enjoys this. Like this is fun for her. She only bolts when I'm a few feet away, still smirking, still taunting. She likes this game. She thinks I won't catch her.

She's wrong.

The type of agony I feel isn't teenage heartbreak. It isn't some shallow, surface-level pain. It's deeper. It's something raw and dark and all-consuming. It's grief and pain and rage, all tangled together in an unrelenting need for revenge.

She shoves past people, knocking into them on purpose, stepping on toes, causing a scene. She wants them to slow me down. And they do. Strangers glare at me, yell at me, try to stop me. They don't know her, but they know me, and they think I'm the problem.

I don't care.

I push harder, run faster. My legs, weak from sitting beside Tiana's bed for a week, scream in protest, but I don't stop. The pain doesn't matter. The fire in my chest burns hotter than my muscles, and before I know it, I'm right behind her.

We break through the hospital doors, spilling onto the street, into the chaos of the outside world. Cars honk. People shout. The city is alive, moving, unaware of what's unfolding between us.

She stops.

I skid to a halt as she turns to face me, and that's when I see it—the gun in her hand. The barrel points straight at my heart.

A slow, dark part of me welcomes it. Maybe it's easier this way. Maybe it's better than dealing with the hell my life has become. Maybe—

She doesn't shoot.

Instead, she tilts her head, studying me with something almost like interest.

"You're quick. Quicker than I was expecting," she muses. "You could join us, you know. I'd personally put in a good word for you."

Her voice doesn't match her face. She sounds young. Too young for this. She's probably only a few years older than me. Maybe even my age.

"What?" I breathe.

"It's either that," she says, her grip tightening around the gun, "or a cruel, useless death. A death absolutely no one will remember."

My stomach turns, but my voice is steady when I say, "I'd rather die than join the likes of you."

She smirks, like she expected that answer.

"You're not my target," she says. "She was. You, little speedster, are someone else's."

The words hit me like a slap, confirming what I'd already suspected.

They killed Tiana.

They planned her death. Strategized it. Assigned it to someone. She wasn't an accident. She wasn't a casualty. She was a mission.

An errand.

And I'm next.

The adrenaline drains from me, leaving something colder in its place. Fear creeps in, curling around my ribs, tightening its grip. When I blink, she's gone. Vanished into Abuja city like she was never there at all.

I don't try to find her. I won't be able to.

Instead, I turn back, dragging my blistered bleeding feet to the hospital. I had ran out barefoot and I hadn't even noticed. My body feels ten times heavier than before. When I step into the room, Dr. Ngozi is already there, her hand over her mouth in shock. She turns, sees me standing in the doorway, and pity shrouds her face.

That's when the tears come. They come in heavy, painful sobs, choking me, stealing my breath. They tempt me to let go, to fall, to join Tiana. I don't want to return to this world alone—but Tiana, my only family, is gone. Gone because she tried to protect me. She traded her life for mine, knowing the consequences but choosing them anyway.

Dr. Ngozi holds onto me, staying by my side as my legs give out beneath me. I collapse to the floor, too weak to stand, too shattered to move. My body forgets how to function, and all that remains—down to my very marrow—is grief.

She hands me her phone to call Janet and Jane, but my hands shake too much, and my voice is lost to sobs. In the end, she takes the phone back and explains for me. I don't hear what she says. I only hear my own broken gasps, the unbearable weight of silence on the other end.

They arrive six hours later—not that I'm counting. I've been crying the entire time.

Jane sinks down beside me, her own tears falling freely, a quiet mirror of my misery. Janet doesn't. I can see it in her eyes, the way she grips her hands into fists, the way her jaw tightens—she wants to break down too. But she doesn't.

One of us has to take charge

I'm with Janet and Jane every step of the way after her death, but my mind is not with me.

As they speak to the hospital staff, explaining—lying—that we found her like this, my ears ring. The words pass over me like a distant echo, meaningless, empty.

Tiana is dead.

I stand still as doctors check her pulse again, as if hoping for a different answer. But when one finally shakes his head and mutters, "She's gone," a finality settles over the room. Janet and Jane exchange a look, one that lasts barely a second, but I catch it. A silent agreement.

Then they move. Quickly.

Their calls are made in hushed tones, not here, not in front of the nurses. I barely register them stepping away, but when they return, a doctor who had been watching us too closely, no doubt wondering the story behind three teenage girls bring in a near dead body, suddenly loses interest. A different nurse, the one who looked like she might ask questions, is pulled aside by a senior doctor, and when she returns, her face is carefully neutral.

Janet's father arrives, his presence heavy. He doesn't look at me. He doesn't ask how we got here or why. He only nods once at Janet. Then an envelope, thick with naira notes, exchanges hands with a man in a lab coat. Another with an officer who arrived moments ago but barely had time to look at us before being led away. He moves with practiced confidence, and as he walks over to the doctors, saying things I can't and don't want to hear, I notice it—the logo, the tattoo. The same one on the nurse's wrist is on his wrist. But even that isn't enough to snap me out of my grief

Then it's done.

No questioning. No investigation. No records. Tiana's body is not taken by the authorities, not left to sit in the hospital morgue until someone comes to claim her. Instead, it is quietly released to us—no, to them. To Janet and Jane's family, who now control the outcome of this night.

I don't speak. I don't ask if this is right or wrong. I just follow.

The burial is quiet. No grand ceremony, no priest, no one but the four of us and a handful of workers paid to dig a grave and look away. The night air is thick, humid, pressing against my skin as I kneel by the fresh dirt. I should say something.

But I can't.

I press my fingers into the soil, feeling the finality of it. Tiana is gone. No justice, no questions, just silence.

A clean getaway.

'A cruel, useless death. A death absolutely no one will remember.'

It should have been me.