CHAPTER 73
It began to rain as dawn crept over the hills of Kwara.
Not a wild storm, just a gentle, sorrowful drizzle, as if the sky had heard everything that happened at the Old Court and wept in quiet understanding.
Zainab sat on the floor of a mosque's veranda—barefoot, soaked, shivering. The azaan for Fajr echoed faintly across the rooftops. But her mind wasn't in prayer. It was in pieces.
Mala's words had dug a tunnel into her memory.
Her mother.
Her father.
That name… that suggestion… that her entire fire came from an old betrayal she never even knew.
Obi knelt beside her, wrapped a shawl over her shoulders.
"Eat something," he said gently.
She shook her head.
"I don't think I ever knew who I was," she murmured. "This fight… the Bureau, Dapo, Raven, the Jackal… maybe it wasn't mine. Maybe it was hers."
Obi placed something in her hand.
A small box.
She looked at him. "What's this?"
He didn't answer.
She opened it.
Inside was a delicate piece of cloth—old, yellowed by time, embroidered with a symbol.
A tailor's needle wrapped in flames.
Her eyes widened.
"I found it last week," Obi said. "In one of the files Mallam Yusuf declassified. It was a rebel sign—worn by women who resisted the system quietly. Your mother was one of them."
Zainab closed the box.
Tears mingled with the rain on her cheeks.
"She wasn't trying to escape," she whispered. "She was building something."
Later that day, they buried the flash drives.
Twelve of them.
Each encrypted, each containing classified evidence not yet made public. A map. A history. The truth, waiting to be dug up by those ready for the next chapter.
They weren't giving up.
But they were closing this part.
Zainab typed a final message into an anonymous email account.
TO: EveryoneSUBJECT: The Tailor's Truth
You saw what we did. You read what we exposed.But you don't know the half of it.We've buried the threads. Follow them when you're ready.Stitch the truth into your country.And never trust a label again.
– Z
Weeks passed.
The government tried to rebrand.
New faces, same lies.
But a shift had begun.
Tailors across Nigeria began stitching resistance into their work—QR codes in linings, hidden symbols, encrypted seams.
The streets began to hum with quiet defiance.
People whispered her name—not in fear, but in hope.
In Gombe, a woman stitched her first protest design.
In Enugu, a school was renamed "Zainab Memorial Workshop for Girls."
In Yola, a retired journalist published a book: "Needles and Nations: How One Tailor Cut Through Power."
Obi stood outside a train station, duffel bag in hand.
"You sure you don't want to come with me?" he asked.
Zainab shook her head, smiling.
"I have a new apprentice starting tomorrow."
He smiled back. "You're still sewing?"
"Always."
He leaned in, kissed her forehead.
"I'll be back. The fight isn't over."
She nodded. "Neither is the story."
As the train pulled away, Zainab turned and walked through the bustling street.
A girl with a fabric bag ran past her, eyes bright, laughter loud.
Zainab paused.
In the girl's movement, in her energy, in the thread of her freedom—Zainab saw her mother. Herself. The future.
She smiled.
Because she knew now: she wasn't just a tailor of clothes.
She was a tailor of legacies.
And hers had just begun.