Mimi Writes

BAD BOY OF BANANA ISLAND

Written by Nwauwa Chigozirim Miriam

CHAPTER 17: The Confession Room

FEMI

The little ring light on Teniola’s laptop was the only source of light in the room, casting a harsh, unforgiving glow on my face.

I looked at the number in the corner of the screen. 150,000 live viewers.

It felt like the whole of Lagos was squeezed into this tiny room in Yaba, holding its breath.

"Three years ago," I said, my voice hoarse but steady, "I killed a man."

I saw the comments fly by in a blur. He admitted it. Murderer. Is this real?

"His name was Joseph Akpan. He was a fisherman. He was walking home. It was raining. I was speeding. I hit him."

I looked directly into the camera lens, imagining my father watching from his study, imagining Zina watching from her bedroom.

"I didn't stop. I panicked. I called my father. And he did what powerful men do. He made it go away. He hired a man named Sunday Udoh to dispose of the truck and the body. He paid off the police. He created a story about a hit-and-run driver who ran me off the road."

I took a deep breath. The air in the room was stale, hot, but it felt cleaner than the air in Banana Island.

"For three years, I have lived with that ghost. I drank to drown him out. I crashed cars trying to feel something other than guilt. I became the 'Bad Boy' because it was easier to be hated for being reckless than to be hated for being a killer."

I glanced at Teniola. She was sitting on the floor behind the laptop, her knees drawn to her chest, watching me with tears in her eyes.

"Yesterday, Sunday Udoh kidnapped me. He kidnapped a friend of mine, Zina Okafor, and my employee, Teniola Adebayo. He demanded a ransom. He nearly killed us. The police arrested him today."

I leaned closer to the screen.

"Zina Okafor leaked the story of the accident tonight. She hacked into The Gist Merchant blog. She used Teniola’s platform to destroy me because she was angry. Teniola Adebayo had nothing to do with exposing me. In fact..."

I looked at Teni.

"...she is the only reason I am alive to tell you this. She saved me from the kidnappers. And tonight, she saved me from the lagoon."

I looked back at the camera.

"I am not asking for forgiveness. I don't deserve it. I am ready to face the consequences. I am ready to go to jail. But I needed you to know the truth. Not the version my father bought. Not the version Zina leaked. My version."

I reached out and pressed the 'End Live' button.

The screen went black.

The silence rushed back in, deafening and heavy.

I sat there, staring at the blank screen. My hands were trembling.

"You did it," Teniola whispered.

She crawled over to me. She didn't care that the floor was dusty. She knelt between my legs, placing her hands on my knees.

"You told the truth."

"I destroyed the legacy," I said, letting out a shaky breath. "My father is going to be indicted. The stock is going to zero. I just burned the Adeleke empire to the ground."

"You built something new," she said fiercely. "You built a conscience."

She reached up and cupped my face. Her hands were small, warm, and real.

"I am so proud of you, Femi."

I looked at her. In the dim light of the room, with the sounds of the Yaba night filtering through the window—generators, distant afrobeats, a shouting neighbor—she looked like an angel.

The adrenaline that had sustained me on the bridge was fading, replaced by a different kind of energy. A raw, humming need.

I had stripped myself bare for the world. Now, I wanted to be bare with her.

"Teni," I groaned.

I pulled her up from the floor and dragged her onto my lap. The plastic chair groaned under our weight, but I didn't care.

I buried my face in her neck, inhaling her scent. She smelled of the lagoon, of sweat, and of something sweet and uniquely her.

"Femi," she breathed, her hands tangling in my hair. "We shouldn't. The police... your dad..."

"Let them come," I muttered against her skin. "Let them all come. But not right now."

I found her lips.

TENI

The kiss tasted of salt tears and freedom.

Femi Adeleke, the Prince of Banana Island, was sitting on a cheap plastic chair in my dingy apartment, kissing me like I was the only oxygen in the room.

His lips were hungry, demanding. He wasn't the tentative boy on the bridge anymore. He was a man who had just blown up his life and needed to find his center.

And somehow, I was that center.

I opened my mouth to him, letting him in. His tongue swept against mine, hot and desperate. I felt his hands roaming over my back, gripping my waist, pulling me harder against him.

I could feel every hard plane of his body through his damp shirt. I could feel the heat radiating off him.

"The bed," he growled, breaking the kiss.

He stood up, lifting me with him. I wrapped my legs around his waist, clinging to him. He carried me the two steps to my single mattress.

He laid me down. The springs squeaked in protest.

He hovered over me, bracing himself on his arms. He looked huge in my small room. He looked out of place, like a panther in a shoebox.

"Are you sure?" he asked, his voice rough. His eyes searched mine, looking for hesitation.

"I'm sure," I whispered.

I reached for the hem of his t-shirt. "Take this off. I want to see you."

He pulled the shirt over his head and tossed it into the corner.

I stared at him. I had seen him shirtless before, in the mansion, usually with a sneer on his face. But here, in the half-light, he looked different. His muscles were tense, corded with stress. He had bruises on his ribs from the fight on the pier.

He was scarred. Just like me.

I reached up and traced the bruise on his side. He hissed in a breath.

"Does it hurt?"

"Everything hurts," he said. "Except this."

He leaned down and kissed me again, slower this time. His hand moved to the button of my jeans.

I lifted my hips, helping him. He slid the denim down my legs, tossing them aside.

I was wearing simple cotton panties. Nothing fancy. No lace.

He looked at me like I was wearing diamonds.

"Teniola," he murmured, his voice a worshipful prayer.

He moved down my body, kissing my throat, my collarbone, the swell of my breast over my bra. He unclasped the bra with a deft flick of his fingers.

When his mouth closed over my ni**le, I arched my back, a gasp tearing from my throat.

It was electric. It was too much and not enough.

His hand slid between my legs, over the cotton. He found the wet heat there, and he groaned.

"You want this," he said, rubbing his thumb against me through the fabric.

"Yes," I admitted, my voice unrecognizable. "Femi, please."

He stripped off the rest of our clothes in a frenzy.

When he settled between my legs, skin against skin, the friction was maddening. He was hard, heavy, pressing against my entrance.

He paused. He looked down at me, his face open, vulnerable.

"I don't have anything," he realized. "No protection."

I froze. The reality of the world crashed in.

But then I looked at him. I thought about the bridge. I thought about the way he had looked at me when he confessed.

"It's okay," I said, a madness taking over me. "It's safe. Just... I need you."

He didn't ask twice.

He pushed into me.

It was a slow, deep slide. I felt him fill me, stretching me, claiming spaces inside me that I had kept locked away.

I wrapped my legs around his waist, pulling him deeper.

He groaned, burying his face in the crook of my neck.

"Teni," he gasped. "God, Teni."

We moved together. The rhythm was slow at first, dictated by the creaking bed frame and the exhaustion in our bones. But soon, the need took over.

He thrust harder, faster. I met him, matching his pace. My hands gripped his shoulders, his back, his hair.

It wasn't gentle lo******ng. It was a reclaiming. He was reclaiming his body from the guilt. I was reclaiming my worth from the poverty.

We were two broken pieces grinding against each other, trying to make a whole.

"Look at me," he commanded, lifting his head.

I opened my eyes. Sweat beaded on his forehead. His jaw was clenched.

"I'm not going anywhere," he swore, thrusting deep. "No matter what happens tomorrow. I'm not leaving you."

"I know," I cried out as the pleasure began to coil tight in my belly.

He picked up the pace, his movements becoming jagged, desperate. I felt the tension building, a wave rising higher and higher.

"Femi!" I screamed his name as the wave broke.

I shattered. My body convulsed around him, spasms of pleasure rocking through me.

He held on, riding the wave with me, until with a guttural shout, he followed me into the abyss.

He collapsed on top of me, his weight heavy and comforting.

We lay there, tangled in limbs and sweat, our breathing ragged in the quiet room.

The fan whirred overhead, a rhythmic click-click-click.

"Wow," Femi whispered against my chest.

I laughed, a breathless, happy sound. "Yeah. Wow."

He rolled off me but pulled me into his side. The single bed was too small for two people, but we made it work.

"So," he said, tracing patterns on my arm. "Is this part of the PR package? Sleeping with the client?"

"Consider it a bonus," I murmured, closing my eyes. "Employee of the month."

He chuckled. He kissed my forehead.

"Go to sleep, Teni. We have a hell of a day tomorrow."

I drifted off, feeling safer in my tiny, bolt-locked apartment with a fugitive billionaire than I ever had in the fortress of Banana Island.

FEMI

I woke up to the sound of banging.

Loud, aggressive banging on the front door.

BAM. BAM. BAM.

Sunlight was streaming through the thin curtains. Dust motes danced in the air. Teni was still asleep beside me, her arm thrown over my chest.

I froze.

"Police!" A voice shouted from the hallway. "Open up!"

Teni woke up with a gasp. She sat up, clutching the sheet to her chest.

"Femi?" she whispered, her eyes wide with panic.

"It's okay," I said, though my heart was hammering against my ribs. "I expected this."

I got out of bed and pulled on my jeans. I didn't bother with a shirt.

"Stay here," I told her.

I walked to the door. I could hear the neighbors murmuring in the hallway. The spectacle had arrived in Yaba.

I unlocked the bolts. One. Two. Three.

I opened the door.

It wasn't the police.

Standing in the hallway, looking completely out of place in a crisp white agbada that seemed to repel the grime of the building, was the man in white. My father's fixer.

Behind him stood two MOPOL officers with assault rifles.

"Good morning, Femi," the fixer said smoothly. He looked past me into the room, spotting Teni on the bed. He didn't even blink.

"The Chief sends his regards."

"Am I under arrest?" I asked, leaning against the doorframe.

"Not yet," the fixer said. "The Commissioner is... managing the situation. For now."

He held out a phone.

"Your father would like to have a word. He is outside. In the car."

"Tell him to come up," I said.

The fixer raised an eyebrow. "Here?"

"If he wants to talk to me," I said, crossing my arms, "he comes to me. I'm done going to him."

The fixer paused. He looked at the armed guards, then at me. He saw something in my face—maybe the ghost of the boy who burned the evidence, or the man who confessed to the world.

He nodded.

"Very well."

He spoke into his earpiece.

Two minutes later, the sound of heavy footsteps echoed on the stairs.

Chief Badejo Adeleke walked into the hallway. He was wearing a dark suit. He looked impeccable, but his eyes were weary. He looked at the peeling paint, the flickering bulb, the neighbors peeking out of their doors.

He stopped in front of me. He looked at my bare chest, the bruises, the defiance.

"You caused quite a stir last night," the Chief said. His voice was low.

"I told the truth," I replied.

"You admitted to a felony. You implicated me in a conspiracy. The stock is suspended from trading."

"And Sunday Udoh is in jail," I said. "And I am free."

The Chief looked past me, at Teniola who was now standing in the middle of the room, wrapped in a sheet, looking terrified but proud.

"You broke the contract, Miss Adebayo," the Chief said.

"Sue me," Teniola replied.

The Chief looked back at me. For a long moment, we just stared at each other. Father and son. King and usurper.

Then, the Chief did something he had never done in my entire life.

He sighed. A long, deflation of air.

"The police are waiting at the station," he said. "They want a statement. Our lawyers are there. We can plead duress. We can say you were in shock. We can spin this."

"No," I said. "No more spinning. No more lies. I go there, I tell them exactly what happened. If I go to jail, I go to jail."

"You are an Adeleke," the Chief snapped. "Adelekes do not go to jail."

"Then maybe it's time we started," I said.

I stepped back and held out my hand to Teniola.

"Teni, get dressed. We have a meeting with the Commissioner."

She smiled. She dropped the sheet—I saw the Chief flinch—and grabbed her jeans.

"Give me two minutes," she said.

I looked at my father.

"I'm coming with you," I said. "But not as your son. As a man who is ready to pay his debts."

The Chief looked at me. And for the first time, I didn't see disappointment in his eyes.

I saw fear.

Because he knew that the son he had tried to mold into a statue had just come to life. And he had no idea what I was going to do next.

BAD BOY OF BANANA ISLAND

WRITTEN BY CHIGOZIRIM MIRIAM NWAUWA

CHAPTER 16: The Third Mainland Bridge

TENI

My phone felt radioactive.

It vibrated incessantly in my hand, a constant, buzzing reminder that my life was currently imploding. Twitter notifications, Instagram DMs, text messages from people I hadn't spoken to since secondary school—all of them asking the same thing.

Did you really do it? Did you expose him? Are you safe?

I stood in the driveway of the Adeleke mansion, watching the taillights of Femi’s Porsche disappear into the night. The silence he left behind was filled by the ringing of the house phones inside.

I was paralyzed.

Zina hadn't just leaked the story; she had signed it with my brand. She had used The Gist Merchant to destroy the Adeleke empire. Everyone thought I was the one who pulled the trigger.

"Miss Adebayo."

I turned. Sebastian stood in the doorway. He looked pale. He held a cordless phone in his hand as if it were a live gr***de.

"It is the Chief," he said, his voice trembling. "He wants to speak to you."

I took the phone. My hand was shaking so hard I almost dropped it.

"Hello?"

"You have five minutes," Chief Adeleke’s voice was calm. It was the terrifying, quiet calm of a man deciding how to dispose of a body. "Five minutes to explain why my son's darkest secret is trending on Twitter under your byline."

"It wasn't me," I said, my voice cracking. "It was Zina. She hacked the blog. She's the one who knew—"

"I don't care who pressed the button, Teniola. I care about the result. The stock has plummeted 15% in ten minutes. The police commissioner is calling me. And my son... my son is missing."

"I can find him," I blurted out. "I can fix this."

"You have lost the right to fix anything. You are fired. The contract is void. And as for your mother..."

"No!" I screamed. "Don't you dare touch her! This wasn't me! Chief, listen to me! Femi is in danger. He thinks his life is over. If he does something stupid... if he crashes again... that's on you. Not me."

There was a silence on the line. Heavy. Breathing.

"He took the Porsche," the Chief said. "It has a tracker. I'm sending the coordinates to your phone. If you don't bring him back alive, Teniola, don't bother coming back at all. And say goodbye to St. Nicholas."

The line went dead.

A second later, a ping on my phone. A map location.

He was on the Third Mainland Bridge. And he wasn't moving.

Panic, cold and sharp, pierced my chest. Why wasn't he moving? The bridge was a highway. You didn't stop on the Third Mainland Bridge unless you broke down... or you were planning to jump.

"Sebastian!" I yelled, tossing the phone back to him. "Give me the keys to the Corolla. Now!"

FEMI

The wind up here was fierce. It whipped against my face, smelling of salt water and exhaust fumes.

I sat on the hood of the Porsche, my legs dangling over the edge of the concrete barrier. Below me, the Lagos Lagoon was a black void, churning and restless. It looked hungry.

Cars zoomed past me, honking. Some slowed down, drivers shouting insults or asking if I was crazy.

Yes, I thought. I am crazy.

I looked at my phone. The screen was cracked from where I had thrown it onto the passenger seat. The notifications were a blur of hate.

Murderer. Rich kid killer. Justice for the fisherman.

They knew. Everyone knew.

The secret my father had paid millions to bury was now public property. The mask was ripped off. I wasn't the misunderstood party boy anymore. I was a killer who bought his freedom.

I took a swig from the bottle of vodka I had grabbed from the glove compartment. It burned, but it didn't numb the pain. Nothing could numb this.

Zina had won. She had burned it all down.

I looked at the water again. It would be so easy. Just a slip. A fall. The water would be cold, but then it would be quiet. No more cameras. No more guilt. No more disappointed stares from my father.

And Teniola...

I closed my eyes. Her face floated in the darkness behind my eyelids. Her fierce brown eyes. The way she stood up to Zina. The way she held me in the shower.

She would be fine. She was a survivor. She would write a book about this. How I Survived the Adeleke Madness. She would be rich. She would save her mother.

I was the only loose end.

I shifted my weight. The metal of the car groaned.

"Don't you dare!"

The scream tore through the wind.

I turned my head.

A gray Corolla screeched to a halt behind the Porsche, tires smoking. The door flew open, and Teniola scrambled out.

She looked wild. Her hair was flying around her face, her chest heaving. She vaulted over the guardrail, stumbling onto the narrow pedestrian walkway.

"Get away from the edge, Femi!" she shrieked. "Get down from there!"

"Go away, Teni," I said, turning back to the water. "You're fired. Didn't my father tell you?"

"I don't work for your father right now," she panted, running towards me. She stopped a few feet away, afraid to startle me. "I work for you. And my job is to keep you alive."

"Why?" I asked, looking at her. "So I can go to jail? So I can be paraded in front of the cameras in handcuffs? It's over, Teni. The truth is out."

"So what?" she yelled. The wind snatched her words, but she screamed louder. "So what if the truth is out? You own it! You face it! You don't jump into the lagoon like a coward!"

"I am a coward!" I roared back, standing up on the hood of the car. I swayed slightly in the wind. "I killed a man and I let my father hide the body! I crippled my sister and I let the world think it was a hit-and-run! I am a disease, Teniola! I infect everything I touch!"

"You didn't infect me," she said. Her voice dropped, suddenly soft amidst the chaos of the highway. "You saved me. Last night. You saved me."

"And look where it got you," I gestured to the blog post on my phone. "Your name is on the article that destroyed me. Zina framed you. Everyone hates you now too. See? I ruin everything."

"I don't care about the blog," she said, taking a step closer. She reached out a hand. "I don't care about the internet. I care about you."

I looked at her hand. It was small. Calloused. Real.

"You're lying," I whispered. "You're here for the money."

"I was," she admitted. Tears were streaming down her face now, mixing with the grime from earlier. "I came for the money. I stayed for the money. But Femi... I am standing on the Third Mainland Bridge in the middle of the night, risking my life in traffic, not for a check. But because if you jump... I will break."

She climbed onto the hood of the Porsche.

"What are you doing?" I asked, alarmed. "Get down. It's slippery."

"If you jump, I jump," she said. Her eyes were blazing. She looked like the storm itself.

"Don't be stupid," I snapped. "You have your mother."

"And you have Simi!" she shouted. "Who is going to protect her if you're gone? Who is going to stand up to your father for her? You think Kemi will care for her? You think Zina won't come for her next?"

The mention of Simi hit me like a physical blow.

Simi. Alone in that big house.

"I..." I faltered.

"Come down, Femi," Teniola pleaded. She reached out and grabbed my shirt. She pulled. "Come down to me."

I looked at the water one last time. It was an abyss. An ending.

Then I looked at Teniola. She was a beginning. A messy, complicated, dangerous beginning.

I let her pull me.

I stepped down from the hood, my boots hitting the pavement. As soon as I was on solid ground, she collapsed against me, wrapping her arms around my waist, burying her face in my chest.

She was shaking uncontrollably.

"You idiot," she sobbed into my shirt. "You stupid, selfish idiot."

I wrapped my arms around her. I held her tight, feeling the beat of her heart against mine. It was fast. Frantic. Alive.

"I'm sorry," I whispered into her hair. "I'm sorry."

We stood there on the side of the bridge, cars flying past us, two broken people holding each other up while the world burned down around us.

TENI

I drove us back. Femi was in no condition to operate a vehicle. He sat in the passenger seat of the Corolla, staring blankly out the window, his hand gripping mine across the center console like a lifeline.

We didn't go to Banana Island.

"We can't go home," I said as we exited the bridge. "The press will be swarming the gates. Your father will be waiting to... I don't know what he'll do."

"He'll exile me," Femi said dully. "London. Or Switzerland. Somewhere quiet where I can rot."

"We're not going to let him," I said. "We need a safe house. Somewhere Zina and the Chief won't look."

"Where?"

I turned the car towards the Mainland. Towards Yaba.

"My place," I said.

Femi looked at me, surprised. "Your apartment? In Yaba?"

"It's the last place on earth they'll look for the Prince of Banana Island," I said. "It's small. It smells like curry. But it has a lock. And nobody knows where it is except Razor."

We drove in silence through the dark streets. The contrast was jarring. From the opulence of the Island to the potholed, generator-lit streets of my neighborhood.

I parked the Corolla in front of my building. It looked out of place, but at least it wasn't a Porsche.

"Come on," I said. "Keep your head down."

We walked up the narrow stairs. I could feel Femi tensing. This was a world he didn't know. A world of shared bathrooms and thin walls.

I unlocked my door.

The apartment was exactly as I had left it days ago. Stuffy. Cluttered. But empty. Maami was at the hospital.

I locked the door behind us—all three bolts.

Femi stood in the middle of the room. He looked too big for the space. His head almost touched the ceiling fan. He looked around at the peeling paint, the single bed, the plastic table.

"This is where you live?" he asked softly.

"It's not much," I said defensively. "But it's home."

He turned to me. He didn't look disgusted. He looked... humbled.

"It's safe," he said.

He sat down on the edge of the bed. The mattress groaned.

"So," he said, rubbing his face with his hands. "I'm a fugitive. I'm broke—my father definitely froze my accounts by now. And the entire country hates me."

"Not everyone," I said. I pulled my plastic chair over and sat in front of him. "I don't hate you."

He looked at me, a wry smile touching his lips.

"You hated me this morning."

"That was this morning. A lot has happened since then. Like, you know, surviving an assassination attempt and a kidnapping."

I reached out and took his hands.

"Femi, listen to me. Zina thinks she won because she released the story. But she made a mistake."

"What mistake?"

"She posted it as 'Anonymous.' But she wrote it with her voice. It was cruel. Vicious. It didn't sound like The Gist Merchant. My readers know my voice. They know I drag people, but I don't destroy them without a cause."

I grabbed my laptop from the table. I opened it.

"I still have access to the backend," I said. "She changed the password, but Razor installed a backdoor keylogger for me months ago just in case."

I typed furiously.

"I can prove the IP address came from her location. I can prove she logged in using a stolen password."

"That doesn't change the facts, Teni," Femi said hopelessly. "The accident happened. The cover-up happened. Proving Zina leaked it doesn't make me innocent."

"No," I agreed. "But it changes the narrative. Right now, you are the villain who got caught. But if we release the full story... the kidnapping, the blackmail, Sunday Udoh, the gun to my head..."

I looked at him.

"Then you become the victim of an extortion plot. You become a human being who made a mistake and paid for it in blood and terror for three years. We pivot, Femi. We don't deny the crash. We confess. We apologize. But we also expose Zina and Sunday."

"You want me to confess?"

"I want you to own your truth," I said. "Before they write it for you."

I turned the laptop screen to him.

"We go Live," I said. "On Instagram. Right here. In this room. No filters. No PR team. Just you. Telling the world what really happened."

He stared at the screen. He looked terrified.

"They will tear me apart."

"Let them," I said fiercely. "And then we build you back up. But this time, we build something real."

He looked at me. He searched my face for any sign of doubt.

He didn't find any.

He took a deep breath. He nodded.

"Okay," he said. "Let's break the internet."

I hit the button.

LIVE.

The view count skyrocketed instantly. 1,000. 5,000. 20,000.

I turned the camera to Femi.

He looked into the lens. He didn't look like a Prince. He looked like a man stripped bare.

"My name is Femi Adeleke," he began, his voice steady. "And I have a confession to make."