Chapter 56: Puppet Strings
Anderson Estate, Master Suite
Sunday, 12:05 AM
The video played on loop.
Thirty seconds of hell compressed into flickering shadows and low, slurred audio. Damian's face filled the screen—eyes glassy, head lolling against the VIP suite pillow, lips brushing the curve of a neck that definitely wasn't Imani's. The woman's manicured hand curved possessively around his jaw. A soft, unmistakable moan escaped him. Then the name slipped out, thick with whiskey and confusion: "Ivy… wait—"
The clip ended on a freeze-frame of his half-closed eyes, the timestamp glowing red like a fresh wound: 2:13 AM.
Imani's phone lay on the marble dresser between them, speaker crackling with the final echo of that name. She hadn't moved. Her silk robe clung to her skin, suddenly too tight, too exposing. The master suite smelled of their earlier almost-kiss—, the faint salt of anticipation—but now it curdled with the metallic bite of betrayal.
Damian stood frozen two feet away, chest rising and falling too fast. His hands, still warm from where they'd gripped her waist moments ago, hung useless at his sides. The bow tie he'd never fully removed dangled like a noose.
"Imani," he started. The word came out hoarse, He swallowed, throat working against him. "That… that's not—"
She cut him off with a single raised hand. Not angry. Just numb. The small pressure from the garden had cracked wide open. It has become unbearable. "Don't. Just… don't explain yet." Her voice was steady, but her fingers trembled as she picked up the phone and paused the video. The screen went black, yet the image lingered behind her eyelids like a burn.
He stepped closer anyway, . "I blacked out. I told you that. My friends dragged me back here. I woke up in our bed. With you." He waited a moment , as if the words cost him. "But if that happened… I swear on everything I am, I didn't choose it. I was talking about you all night. Only you."
She searched his face. The love was still there—raw, desperate, terrified—but doubt had planted itself like a splinter under her skin. Uncomfortable. Growing. She wanted to believe him. She Needed to. Yet the fear was louder now: He burned for her once. What if the fire never died?
Outside the balcony doors, the Lagos night pressed in heavier. A security floodlight swept the gardens below, catching the fountain where she'd faced Ivy barely ten minutes ago. The water still trickled, indifferent.
"I believe you," she finally answered . She reached for his hand, threading their fingers the way they had at the altar. His grip tightened instantly, almost painful. "But believing you doesn't make the video disappear. And it doesn't stop whatever they are planning next."
Damian pulled her in, his forehead touching hers forehead again, but this time the almost-kiss was gone. Replaced by something fiercer—protection edged with fear. "We face it together. Like we said. No more secrets."
Yet even as he said it, his eyes flicked to the phone. A new notification had appeared. Not from the unknown number. From Mr. Oko's private line—the one Jude used for "family matters only."
Urgent. Garden perimeter breach detected. Female suspect. Retreating toward Victoria Island route.
Imani felt his pulse spike against her palm. Stakes rising. The night wasn't over. It was just beginning to tighten like a noose.
Cross-cut – Victoria Island, Ivy Lukeman's Penthouse
Sunday, 12:12 AM
Ivy poured herself a third glass of Cristal, the bubbles hissing against crystal like whispered conspiracies. The penthouse overlooked the lagoon, floor-to-ceiling windows reflecting her own triumphant smirk back at her. The silver gown from the reception lay discarded on the velvet chaise; she wore only a black lace slip now, skin still humming from the garden confrontation.
She tapped her phone, replaying the live feed she'd triggered herself. The video was everywhere now—or would be in minutes. Anonymous drops to three society blogs, one Nollywood gossip channel, Enjoy the fireworks, Mrs. Anderson.
A soft laugh escaped her. Little Imani thought she could challenge me. The shock on that girl's face in the garden had been delicious—her eyes widening, chin lifting like she actually believed the Anderson name made her untouchable. Ivy had felt a flicker of something almost like respect before it curdled into contempt. Titles don't stop what's coming.
Her mind drifted back, unbidden, to the night everything aligned. The night Victor Adeyemi had found her in the Anderson Mansion and turned her desperation into a weapon.
Flashback – Anderson Mansion, Jude's Private Study Annex
Three Weeks Ago – 1:47 AM
The mansion had been quiet after the quarterly board dinner. Most guests had left, but Ivy had lingered, nursing a martini in the shadowed hallway outside the study. She'd come hoping for a moment alone with Damian—maybe a stolen glance, a reminder of what they'd almost had before Imani slithered into the picture. Instead, she'd overheard him laughing with Gregory on the terrace: "She's different. Real." The words had sliced deeper than any rejection.
She'd slipped into the annex to compose herself, heels silent on the Persian rug, when the side door creaked open.
Victor Adeyemi stepped in from the service corridor—disheveled, eyes wild but sharp, a fresh escapee still smelling of rain and cheap motel soap. He wasn't supposed to be here. Not after the courtyard fight. Not after Jude's men had torn the city apart looking for him.
But there he was. Smiling like a wolf who'd scented blood.
"You look like a woman who just watched her future slip away," he said quietly, closing the door behind him. No hello. No threat. Just observation.
Ivy's spine straightened. "And you look like a dead man walking. You know that Security sweeps this wing every hour."she said "
Victor shrugged, pouring himself a finger of Jude's twenty-year cognac without asking. "I know the blind spots. Grew up in houses like this." He took a sip, eyes never leaving her. "Ivy Lukeman. The queen who'has been circling Damian Anderson since boarding school. I saw the way you watched him tonight. Like a starving dog at a banquet table."
Heat flushed her cheeks—anger, shame, the raw desperation she'd hidden from everyone. "What do you want?"you are a wanted man,
He set the glass down. "The same thing you do. To watch the Andersons burn. Jude took everything from my father. Contracts, respect, the fiber-optic empire that should've been ours. Now his golden boy is marrying some nobody from the trenches " Victor's voice dropped, laced with something darker. "But you… you want the boy. Not the empire."
Ivy laughed, brittle.do I have to answer you that,
She slipped her drink
She look at him
And replied
Let say we want the same thing
Watch them burn
"And you're offering what, exactly? A partnership?"
Victor stepped closer, invading her space the way only a man with nothing left to lose could. "Simple deal. You help me from the inside. Feed me schedules, access codes, the quiet weaknesses in their security. Create the doubt. The scandals. The cracks
Just like the last time,
But this time carefully. While I get the company—every last share, every contract Jude stole.
You get your Damian. Broken, humbled, crawling back to the woman who never left him. Win-win."
She should have walked away. Should have screamed for security. But the image of Damian's forehead pressed to Imani's at the pre-wedding dinner flashed behind her eyes. The way he'd looked at that girl—like she was his oxygen.
Stupidly, recklessly, she believed him. "How do I know you won't double-cross me?"again this time
Victor's smile was slow, almost pitying. "Because you need me more than I need you right now. And because the Andersons don't deserve either of us." He extended his hand. "Fresh Partners?"
Ivy took it. Her palm was clammy. His was ice-cold.
She never saw the second phone in his pocket, already pinging a single encrypted message to an untraceable number:
Puppet acquired. Phase one begins.
End Flashback
Back in the penthouse, Ivy swirled her Cristal, the memory sharpening her smile. She'd been so eager then. So certain Victor was the shortcut to everything she deserved. She still believed it—mostly. The video was live. The doubt was planted. Damian would come running when Imani inevitably crumbled.
Her phone buzzed. Victor.
She answered on the first ring. "It's done. She saw it. Looked ready to shatter."
Victor's voice was low, amused, but edged with that same cold calculation she'd heard in the annex. "Good. Keep the pressure small for now. A text here, a photo there. Let him feel the noose tightening one thread at a time. Make him Uncomfortable. Until he can't take anymore "
Ivy leaned against the window, lagoon lights glittering below like scattered diamonds. "And when do I get my end? Damian?"
Victor's chuckle was soft. "Soon. Once the company is mine, he'll have nothing left to offer her. He'll need comfort. And you'll be right there."
She hung up feeling victorious. But the doubt lingered in her chest like a splinter.
She didn't know about the invisible hand guiding Victor's strings. The silent partner who had approached him months earlier in a rain-soaked Abuja safe house. The one whose voice had been digitally masked, whose resources made Jude Anderson look like a corner shopkeeper. Destroy them all, the voice had said. Not just the company. The name. The bloodline. Every last Anderson. Victor was the visible blade. Ivy was the pretty distraction. Both of them puppets dancing for a game bigger than revenge.
Cross-cut – Unknown Safe House, Mainland Lagos
Sunday, 12:28 AM
Victor Adeyemi killed the call and tossed the burner phone onto the scarred wooden table. The safe house was a far cry from the Anderson Mansion—concrete walls sweating humidity, a single bulb swinging overhead, the faint reek of diesel from the generator outside. Three of his remaining loyalists dozed in the corner, rifles across their laps.
He poured himself a cheap whiskey, the same brand his father used to drink before everything collapsed. The liquid burned going down, but it didn't touch the deeper fire.
Imani.
The name tasted like ash and old blood.
He remembered the file his father had kept locked in the mahogany desk drawer. Secretary Bright's daughter—smart girl. Too smart. Imani's mother had been his father's right hand nineteen years ago. Personal secretary. Trusted. Until she found the discrepancy in the offshore accounts. A "mistake," the old man had called it. Embezzlement dressed up as accounting error—funds siphoned to keep the family afloat while the regulators closed in.
She could have warned him. Could have given him twenty-four hours to fix it, to run.
Instead, she took the bribe. A fat envelope slipped under her locker door—enough to pay for her sister's cancer treatment and then some. She packed her things that same night and vanished into the Lagos underbelly. No warning. No loyalty. Just silence while Victor's father was dragged into court, stripped of everything, left to rot in a cell until his heart gave out two years later.
Victor had been nineteen . Watching. Learning.
Now the daughter had married into the very empire that had feasted on his family's ruin. Imani Anderson. Mrs. Anderson. Walking around in white satin like she hadn't inherited the same treacherous blood.
He would hurt her slowly. Not with a bullet. With precision. The video was just the opening act. Next would come the hospital feed again—her mother's room, the balcony edge, the shadow in scrubs who answered only to him. Then the whispers to Jude. The planted evidence that Temi had known more than she let on. Layer by layer, until the perfect white wedding dissolved into public shame.
His phone—the real one, encrypted—pinged. A message from the invisible partner. No words. Just a single attachment: a scanned document from nineteen years ago. Imani's mother's signature on the bribe receipt. And below it, a new instruction:
Escalate. The girl breaks by dawn. Or the deal ends.
Victor stared at the screen until the bulb's swing cast long shadows across his face. He believed he was the master. The one pulling Ivy's strings, using her obsession like a scalpel. He didn't know the partner's endgame was total annihilation—every Anderson asset seized, every name erased from Lagos society, the empire reduced to rubble so someone else could rebuild on the bones.
Ivy was a pretty puppet. Victor was the slightly sharper one. Both dancing.
He drained the whiskey and stood. "Wake up," he told his men. "We move on the mother tonight first. Let Imani feel it in her bones."
Cross-cut – Anderson Estate, Master Suite
Sunday, 12:41 AM
The notification hit Imani's phone like a second gunshot.
Hospital feed restored. Your mother sends her love. She's watching the fireworks too.
Attached: a single live thumbnail. Aunty Rose's sister—pale, fragile, IV lines snaking across her arm—sat upright in the facility bed. Behind her, the balcony doors were open to the night. A shadow moved just outside the frame. Not a nurse.
Imani's knees buckled. Damian caught her before she hit the floor, arms locking around her like iron bands. The tension sang through both of them—her breath shallow and rapid, his heartbeat slamming against her back.
"No," she whispered. "Not again. Not tonight."
Damian's voice was a growl against her hair. "I'm calling Okon and the Security. Now." But when he reached for his own phone, his hand paused. The screen showed three missed calls from Jude. And one text from an unknown number:
Ask your mother-in-law about the secretary who took the bribe. Nineteen years ago. Blood remembers.
Damian's grip tightened. He didn't show her the message. Not yet. —he could feel it in the way Imani trembled against him, in the way his own certainty about the bachelor night now felt paper-thin.
"I've got you," he murmured, the same words from the fireworks, but heavier now. "We end this. Tonight."
She lifted her face, eyes fierce despite the tears. "Together. No matter what the video says. No matter what they throw at us." She kissed him —not the almost-kiss from earlier, but a full, desperate claiming. Mouths crashing, hands fisting in fabric, bodies pressed so tight the world narrowed to heartbeat and breath and the vow they'd made in front of five hundred witnesses.
When they broke apart, gasping, the phone buzzed again.
This time it was Jude.
Son. My study Room. Now. And Okon just found something in the archives ,Get here. Both of you.
The Lagos night outside seemed to hold its breath. The generator hummed louder. Somewhere in the distance, a dog barked once—sharp, warning.
Imani looked at Damian. He looked back.
They moved toward the door as one.
But in the hallway, Maya's voice drifted up the stairs—bright, sleepy, oblivious. "Sis? Damian? Why is everyone's phone blowing up? Something about a bachelor party video…"