CHAPTER 65

The gunshot didn't come from Zainab.

It came from behind.

Before she could react, Obi stormed into the jet cabin, his sidearm aimed at the ceiling. The Jackal flinched, his wine glass falling, red splashing like blood across his white kaftan.

"You good?" Obi asked.

Zainab didn't answer. Her eyes never left the Jackal.

"I should kill you," she said coldly. "But I want you to watch everything you built burn first."

Obi walked over to the table and inserted the flash drive into the jet's private system. Within seconds, files began uploading—contracts, account numbers, security footage, internal memos. Every dirty corner of the Bureau's operations.

Jackal's face hardened. "You won't make it out alive."

"Neither will your legacy," Obi muttered, tapping the screen.

Temi's voice buzzed through Zainab's earpiece. "Upload is complete. We've triggered a mirror broadcast across the darknet. Social platforms next. Five minutes until full release."

Zainab turned back to the Jackal.

"Get comfortable," she said. "You're going to be very famous."

**

They didn't wait for the sirens.

By 12:05 AM, Zainab and Obi had vanished into the trees near the tarmac. The Bureau's backup stormed the airstrip 7 minutes too late.

Inside the jet, the Jackal sat chained to his seat—hands bound with the very micro-thread Zainab stitched into her blouse. His phone was ringing endlessly. Government officials. Business partners. Foreign contacts. No one was answering anymore.

His empire was collapsing in real time.

**

Elsewhere in Nigeria, things were shifting.

At a crowded bar in Onitsha, two apprentices of Zainab—recently released—watched the news flash across the screen:

"EXPOSÉ: THE TAILOR WHO UNRAVELED A NATION'S DIRTY LAUNDRY"

In Ilorin, Fatihah stared at her phone with wide eyes as her feed flooded with clips of the Jackal's interrogation.

In Abuja, a judge reopened the Raven's trial. Protesters began to gather near the Bureau's headquarters, holding signs that said "WE REMEMBER" and "TAILOR OF TRUTH."

**

Zainab and Obi reached a safehouse outside Ibadan by dawn. It was a small bungalow owned by an old friend of Obi's—a librarian-turned-activist named Auntie Remi.

She welcomed them with boiled yam and black coffee.

"Your mother would be proud," she told Zainab. "She started it. You finished it."

Zainab barely spoke.

Instead, she sat beneath the shade of the guava tree, journal open, stitching her final entry into its fabric-bound cover.

Not words.

But lines.

Patterns.

Encrypted messages only she could read.

When she finally looked up, Obi was watching her.

"What now?" he asked.

She smiled faintly. "Now I teach. Now I rest."

"But you'll go public?"

She shook her head. "No. Let the story spread. Let the name grow. But not the face."

She stood and brushed dust from her skirt.

"The tailor is no longer a person," she said. "She's a symbol."

**

Back in Lagos, news anchors debated the scandal. Lawmakers screamed. The Bureau collapsed under internal review. Funds frozen. Leaders arrested. A nation stunned.

But Zainab was already gone.

By the time the world understood what had happened, she had become myth.

A whisper in Mushin.

A legend in Ilorin.

A ghost in the seams of the country's conscience.

She wasn't just a woman with thread.

She was the needle in the fabric of justice.