The rain started before dawn.
It wasn't the gentle drizzle that graced the Lagos skyline in late April. This was something else, raw, heavy, relentless. Like the heavens themselves were mourning. Onome Amadi stood still, drenched in the downpour, his black agbada clinging to his broad shoulders. He didn't flinch. The cold didn't reach him. Not when the fire inside him burned so violently.
The priest's voice was muffled by the rumble of thunder. Words of comfort spilled into the grave like empty shells. "Ashes to ashes, dust to dust," he said, barely audible over the wind and wails of grieving family members. Onome wasn't listening. His eyes were locked on the coffin—the one carrying the only woman who had ever made him feel human.
Amaka.
She had always been the light in his shadowed world. Back when he was still in SARS, breaking down doors and dragging criminals into the night, she had been the one voice that brought him home. Cancer didn't care. Cervical cancer took her slow and cruel, turning a vibrant, fierce woman into a frail whisper of herself. She fought. He fought with her. But in the end, even warriors fall.
A small, trembling hand gripped his fingers. Onome looked down to see his daughter, Ife. Her big brown eyes were wide, glistening, not from tears, but confusion. She hadn't cried since the night Amaka took her last breath. Not even now. Just like her father.
"You okay?" he asked quietly, kneeling beside her.
She nodded. "She's with God now."
That cut deeper than any bullet he had ever taken. Onome wanted to believe that. Needed to believe it. But faith had abandoned him long ago, sometime between the third chemo session and the moment he held Amaka's hand as she gasped her final breath.
The crowd began to thin out after the final shovel of red earth hit the coffin lid. Friends, colleagues, and neighbors offered their condolences with rehearsed pity. None of them had known Amaka the way he had. None of them knew the weight of the promise he made to her in those last days.
"Promise me you'll protect her," she'd whispered.
"Always."
He meant it. Every syllable. And now that promise was all he had left.
Later that night, the house felt too quiet.
It was a modest bungalow in Surulere, tucked away from the noise of the city. They had bought it together, after years of planning, budgeting, dreaming. Now it was just walls and echoes.
Ife had fallen asleep in Amaka's old robe, curled up on the sofa with her mother's perfume bottle tucked under her arm. Onome watched her for a moment longer than he should have. She looked too much like her mother—the same lips, the same intensity in her gaze. She didn't just remind him of Amaka; she was a piece of her.
He poured himself a glass of whiskey. One of the expensive ones he used to save for promotions or major busts. The burn in his throat was nothing compared to the ache in his chest. He moved through the house like a ghost, stopping briefly at their wedding photo hanging in the hallway. A younger Amadi stood tall beside Amaka, a rare smile on his face. That was the man he used to be. Before the blood, before the pain.
He walked into the bedroom they once shared.
The smell of her lotion still lingered.
The bed, still unmade from the night before her last hospital visit, remained untouched.
He sat on the edge and buried his face in his hands. Everything had changed in three months. The strong, indestructible Onome Amadi—once feared by criminals across Lagos—now barely recognized the man staring back at him in the mirror. Retirement had come not by choice, but by necessity. He couldn't chase fugitives at night and be a full-time father by day. He couldn't let Ife grow up without guidance. Without protection.
He reached under the bed and pulled out a locked metal footlocker. The combination hadn't changed. He spun the dial, popped the latch, and opened it.
Inside was a carefully curated arsenal.
Glock 17. Two magazines. Tactical knife. A faded SARS vest. Handcuffs. A burner phone. Old files. Intel.
And a single polaroid photo: Amaka and Ife, at Bar Beach. Sun on their skin. Laughing. Alive.
He didn't touch the weapons. Not yet.
He simply stared at them, letting the weight of the past settle on his shoulders like the rain outside.
Then, the phone rang. The phone rang twice before he picked it up.
It wasn't his usual line—it was the dusty, near-forgotten burner phone buried at the bottom of the footlocker. Onome stared at it as it vibrated violently against the metal, as though warning him that whatever waited on the other end would shatter the fragile silence that surrounded his life.
He answered, voice steady. "Amadi."
There was static. Then a voice—female, panicked, urgent.
"Sir—this is Mrs. Olawale. Ife's class teacher. Something's happened."
His spine stiffened. "What happened?"
"It's the field trip, sir… They didn't make it to Olumo Rock."
Onome was already on his feet, adrenaline dumping into his bloodstream like kerosene on fire.
"They didn't make it?" he repeated, more a growl than a question.
"There's been—an ambush," she choked. "The police think it was bandits… or worse. The driver lost contact just past the Sagamu Interchange. We… we haven't heard anything in two hours."
Everything slowed down. The way it used to in operations—those last seconds before breaching a room, when instinct took over and the world held its breath.
"How many kids?" he asked.
"Twenty-one. Three teachers. The driver. They're all missing. Including Ife."
The silence that followed was thick enough to choke on.
He didn't shout. Didn't panic. He just said, "Send me everything. Now."
He ended the call and stood still for a moment, staring at the wall like he could see through it—past the distance, past the roads, to wherever they had taken his daughter.
And just like that, the man he had buried returned.
Within twenty minutes, Amadi had changed into black jeans and a dark turtleneck. His movements were surgical—every item chosen, every motion deliberate. The Glock went into a side holster, the knife into a sheath strapped to his calf. He pulled on the worn SARS vest—its faded letters still a warning to those who remembered his name.
He moved with the cold precision of someone who had lived a hundred lives before this one.
As he loaded his gear into the boot of his black Toyota Hilux, he thought of the promise again.
"Protect her."
He slammed the boot shut.
The drive out of Lagos was a blur of red tail lights, potholes, and thoughts too dark to voice. His mind raced with possibilities—ransom, trafficking, insurgents looking to make headlines, or worse… people from his past, pulling strings from the shadows.
He had made enemies. Real ones. The kind who didn't forgive. The kind who'd slit a child's throat just to watch you break.
The highway opened up after Redemption Camp. He pushed the Hilux hard, the tires screeching with fury. He wasn't just a father. He was a hunter, and someone had stolen his cub.
His phone buzzed again—Mrs. Olawale had sent the trip manifest and the last GPS ping from the driver's phone. Somewhere near Ogere. A stretch of road flanked by thick bush and few witnesses.
Classic setup.
Classic trap.
Amadi's lips curled into a snarl.
They didn't know who they'd taken.
He pulled up near the last known location an hour later, killing the headlights as he eased the Hilux to a stop behind a thick stand of trees. The road ahead was empty, too empty. The silence screamed louder than sirens.
Amadi got out, crouched low, his Glock in hand. He scanned the area—tracks in the mud, broken twigs, torn fabric on a thorn bush. Signs of struggle. Signs of panic.
Then, he saw the bus.
Tipped into a ditch. Windshield cracked. Bullet holes in the side.
He moved in, slow and silent, checking every inch. Blood. Small handprints. A teddy bear half-buried in the dirt.
His pulse hammered in his ears.
No bodies. No signs of the children. Just the chaos they left behind.
This wasn't a robbery.
It was a message.
He knelt beside the bus, fingers brushing over the torn teddy bear. Ife's. He remembered when Amaka bought it for her—said it was "her lion in disguise." The last remnant of her innocence now soaked in blood and rain.
Then came the sound.
A rustle in the bush. Too controlled to be the wind.
He spun, gun raised.
A boy—no older than nine—stumbled out, his face caked in mud and terror.
"Don't shoot!" the boy cried, hands raised.
Amadi holstered the Glock and rushed to him.
"Where are the others?" he asked, crouching low. "Where's Ife?"
The boy sobbed, pointing toward the darkness. "They… they took them into the forest. Armed men. Masks. Big trucks. I ran when the shooting started…"
"How many men?"
"Ten. Maybe more. Some were speaking Fulani. Others had walkie-talkies. One had a red scorpion tattoo on his neck."
Amadi's blood ran cold.
The Red Scorpions.
He knew them. Used to hunt them. They were butchers. Smugglers. Killers. He once put their second-in-command in a coma with the butt of a rifle. That kind of vengeance didn't die—it multiplied.
He took a deep breath. This wasn't coincidence.
It was war.
And war was what he knew best.