City of Dreams, City of Wolves

Chapter 6

The moment Adaeze stepped off the bus at Jabi Park, Abuja greeted her with open arms and roaring chaos. It was nothing like Umuokoro. The city buzzed like a restless drum—cars honking, traders yelling, women dressed in bright clothes strutting with confidence, and skyscrapers that scratched the sky like prideful giants.

Adaeze stood frozen for a moment, gripping her bag tightly, heart pounding. The city smelled of ambition—sharp, busy, and urgent. And while it shimmered with promise, she could already feel its undercurrent: this was not a place that waited for anyone.

The university campus, when she arrived, was another kind of wonder. Massive lecture halls, students with laptops and earphones, buildings named after people she'd only read about in newspapers. Adaeze had never seen so many confident young people in one place.

Her first few weeks were like learning to breathe underwater.

Everything moved too fast. Lectures were crowded. English was spoken with strange accents. The lecturers didn't wait—they taught like everyone had grown up reading encyclopedias. Her roommates laughed at her village accent, whispered about her worn slippers and her hand-sewn school bag. They flaunted their iPhones and perfume while she clung to the strength of her faith and her dreams.

But Adaeze endured.

She studied harder than anyone. She spent nights in the library and days working side gigs—typing assignments for lazy students, cleaning the hostel compound for extra cash, even braiding hair on weekends. Her mother had sent her with faith, not funds. And faith, she discovered, was a currency that moved mountains.

In her second semester, she met Tobe.

Tall, well-dressed, confident—Tobe was a final-year law student who spoke with eloquence and walked with the kind of ease that made people listen. He found her after a debate competition where she'd passionately argued for gender equality and earned a standing ovation.

"You speak like you've seen the world," he had said.

"I've seen just enough to know what it hides," she replied.

Tobe pursued her gently. He brought her books. Took her for walks under the jacaranda trees on campus. Told her she was the kind of woman a man married, not played with. For the first time in her life, Adaeze let someone beyond the walls she had built.

She told him about her family, her brothers, her mother's sacrifices. He listened with wide eyes and soft words. He called her "my queen." And slowly, Adaeze began to believe in love again.

But Abuja, the city of dreams, was also a city of wolves.

One night, she followed Tobe to a party off campus. It was meant to be a celebration after his final paper. Laughter. Music. Drinks. She didn't drink, but she took a cup of soda he handed her. After that, the night blurred.

She remembered only fragments. His hand on her back. The dark room. The sound of the door lock. The sense that something was wrong. Very wrong.

She woke up hours later on his bed, dizzy, ashamed, violated. Her head ached. Her heart screamed. But her voice was silent.

Tobe was gone.

He never called. Never explained. Rumors began. Girls whispered in bathrooms. One said Adaeze had chased after him and failed. Another said she was a "bush girl" who tried to rise too fast.

Adaeze fell into silence. She stopped going to class for a week. Stopped eating. Even stopped praying. She felt dirty. Broken. Like she had betrayed her mother's hope and her brothers' sacrifices.

But on the eighth night, she found a small envelope in her bag. A letter. From home.

"My daughter, I know this city will test you. But remember who you are. You are not what happens to you. You are who you choose to become after. I did not raise a weak woman. I raised a lioness. Now rise." — Mama Nkechi

Adaeze wept. She held that letter to her chest like a lifeline. Then, slowly, she stood.

She went to the clinic. She sought counseling. She began attending prayer fellowship again. She told no one what happened—not yet—but she carried herself with the quiet power of someone who had been wounded and survived.

She did not fail that semester. In fact, she aced all her exams.

The city had tried to devour her. But she had teeth, too.

Abuja would remain a place of contradictions for Adaeze. A place of opportunity and betrayal. Of awakening and heartbreak. But most of all, it became the place where she began to own her scars.

Because pain didn't destroy her—it defined her voice.

And her voice would one day shake rooms much bigger than the one where she had been silenced.