Lady K

It was exactly a minute past ten and Kora wasn't home yet. Lilian had spent an entire three hours searching for her in every place she could think of. Kora didn't have any friends besides Grace and Jeremiah and she didn't know any of their addresses. She found herself back on the porch outside her house, slowly taking out her phone and dialing Kora's number for the umpteenth time.

Still switched off.

She shut her eyes for a short second, saying a short prayer in her head for Kora's safety. She was worried and scared out of her mind and filled with regrets too. She shouldn't have talked to her that way and sent her away. She wished she had kept her anger in check just a little bit. Hurting Kora was the last thing she ever wanted to do but she had let her insecurities get in the way of everything she hoped she would never do or be to her own child. She tried Kora's phone again, still switched off. She let out a frustrated exhale.

Where on earth could she be and why wasn't she home yet?

"If you knew you'd worry this much, you should not have sent her away." She shifted uncontrollably, turning her gaze behind her and following her sister with it as Veronica walked away from the door and to the little stairs. Lilian turned right back to her phone and stared at her screen like she was hoping Kora's name would pop up on it but it never did.

"Oghene." Her sister exclaimed as she sat right beside her. She slowly turned to Lilian who was in no way trying to start up a conversation. She could sense the fear and worry in her eyes and could see how her hands kept trembling as they grabbed on tightly to her phone.

"You shouldn't get worked up like this. I'm sure Kora is safe and she's fine." She had to at least say something to make her calm even if it was just a little bit.

"She never left home like this before." Lilian said. "Not even when I annoyed her, she never left home like this. She never left her phone off either. I know I was too harsh on her but she should have known that I didn't mean any of the things I said. I was just scared and angry, I was just trying to protect her, to protect her from everything."

"And I'm sure Kora knows that too. She knows how much you care about her and that you're just trying to keep her safe but that doesn't change the fact that everything she said was the truth, the truth about how she really felt and how your method of protecting her affects her."

Lilian slowly turned to look at her. She understood but she hoped her sister was a bit more accurate.

"Kome," her sister said after a deep breath. "Kome, Kora is not a child anymore. You should know that she's old enough to protect herself, old enough to know the truth. Everything you've been hiding from her, everything about our past, everything about our family, about her."

Lilian shook her head. She wasn't sure she agreed with what her sister was saying.

"You can't hide it from her forever. I know you think she's still young and she would never understand the reason why you made the choices you made but she would. Your daughter is more understanding than you think. She loves and cherishes you more than anything in this world and if you keep doing all these things, if you keep keeping all these secrets about her identity from her, and asking her to do things without explaining why she has to, it's always going to break her heart and do things like this."

"You don't understand Victoria." Lilian got up immediately and looked away. She was getting really anxious sitting there. "No one is going to understand."

"Understand what?" She asked her.

"I can't tell her." She said. "I can't tell her anything, not now. I can't tell Kora about her past, about mine, about everything I've been keeping from her. She's never going to forgive me."

Victoria got up too.

"What about me?" She asked her. "Kome, you know you can trust me. What is this big secret you've been hiding from us all these years? Why did you leave home all those years ago? Lilian if there's something going on with you, you should tell me. I can help you."

Lilian slowly turned to her.

"You don't have to keep it all to yourself. What is wrong? What happened when you got pregnant with Kora? What happened eighteen years ago? Why did you leave? Who is Kora's father?"

Lilian looked at her sister for a while as her eyes persuaded her to trust her. She knew she could trust her but she didn't know if Victoria could take the truth if she actually said it. Lilian shut her eyes and a tear fell. She drew a ragged breath.

"I committed a sin Karo." She slowly opened her eyes as she felt her sisters warm hands hold on tightly to hers, rubbing her palms gently too. "I committed a sin before God and before man and it has begun to catch up with me. My sins are catching up with me Karo."

"What is it?" She asked her. "What's so big of a sin that you can't forgive yourself for? That you can't be forgiven for-"

"Kora is a Richard." And the moment Lilian said those words, everything else became static. The silence was deafening. Lilian held her breath and looked into her sister's eyes, she could tell she had become a little bit numb with the way she just stood still, looking into her eyes.

"R-Richard?" Victoria asked her. "Who-Which of the Richards?"

"David Richards." Lilian's voice broke. "Former CEO of Richwell enterprise."

Victoria gasped letting go of Lilian's hands immediately.

"Richwell's David Richard?" Victoria had her eyes widened and her jaw dropped from all that shock. "The one that died a few years ago? Isn't he the father of that girl that's engaged to one of Benjamin Ozor's son's? Jeremiah? The one that Kora likes? The one she said was her boyfriend?"

Lilian exhaled. She was out of words. She was too weak to even speak. She nodded her head slowly.

"Jesus Christ, Lilian!" Victoria called her name in a really surprised tone. She never saw it coming, she never imagined it at all. "Are you trying to say that Kora is sisters with that girl? She's David Richards illegitimate daughter and her and her sister are in love with the same boy? Benjamin Ozor's son?"

"I don't know what to do Victoria." Lilian's voice broke as she started to cry immediately. Her sister had barely said so much and she could already feel like she was being judged, like she had imagined the worse of her in her head.

"I didn't know." She shook her head, trying to explain herself even further. "I swear it Victoria I didn't know, I was only nineteen, I was only doing what Mum wanted, what she asked us to do. I had no idea who he was at that time. We were too busy working and barely watched the news and Richwell was not as popular and successful as it is now."

"How did this-" Victoria was having a hard time wrapping everything Lilian was saying around her head. "How did this happen Lilian?"

"He visited the club eighteen years ago," she started. "No, he didn't visit the club, Mum asked me to meet him at the hotel close to the club house. He was just another regular customer and mum had promised that he was going to pay big, big enough to send me to the university. She said he was a special client that had visited all the way from Lagos and he had requested for anyone at the club that could make his night worth it. Mum recommended me. That was supposed to be the last time. My last day on the job. You know getting to the university was all I ever wanted. Graduating from the university and being a doctor was my biggest dream. It was why I always respected mum and did all she asked us to do, because she said she was going to make it possible. I went to the hotel and did exactly what I was told, just like always. Just like she made us do at the club house. Just like she thought us. Everything happened so fast and after a few weeks, I saw him again on TV on an award show. That was when I got to find out he was married and his wife was pregnant too. Mum knew he was married. She knew all along and she didn't tell me. She hid it from me because she knew the only restriction I had was against married men but she deceived me and let me do it anyway. Weeks later, I found out that I was pregnant too and I didn't know what to do. I told mum about it but she wanted me to get rid of it because she said it was going to slow down the business. I couldn't, I was only a child and I was confused."

"And so you ran." She completed Lilian's sentence. "That was why you ran away all those years? That's why you hate Mum?"

Lilian nodded, trying to push back the tears in her eyes.

"I tried to reach out to David after that. I travelled all the way to Lagos just so I could see him and ask him for help and when I finally got the chance to, he denied it. He said the baby wasn't his and I was only saying things to get money from him. He called me a prostitute and said that the baby could have been anyone else's. I went begging from house to house, I couldn't go back home. I was angry and ashamed, scared and in regrets. That was when I met Solomon Dike, my first husband and everything else happened after that." She exhaled.

"After David died, his lawyer reached out to me. He told me that David had always kept an eye out for me and Kora and had acknowledged the fact that Kora was his child through a DNA test he had acquired from the states without my consent before he died. He said that David wanted me and Kora to keep living under pretense until her eighteenth birthday. That he was going to right all his wrongs on her eighteenth birthday, so I was patient. I kept it from Kora just as I had promised. I was married too and I knew that Kora finding out about who her father was was only going to make her want to know more, make her ask questions about who she was. I didn't want that life for her, I didn't want her to get involved with that family. We were doing okay just by ourselves besides, she was better off without a father that had died without meeting her one time or even telling his family about it. If his family were to find out that Kora was his daughter, they were going to do everything in their power to get rid of her, I was scared that if Kora found out, that she actually had a powerful last name and I had hidden it from her all those years, even when she got into the worst of troubles, she was going to hate me and choose them over me." She exhaled.

"Some months ago, Kora started to talk to this boy on phone. Neither of us knew who he was, a few months later, we both found out he was Jeremiah, Benjamin Ozor's son. He also kissed Kora at the gala. Worst part was I knew, I knew Kora liked him and I knew who he was engaged to. I knew he was engaged to Oma, David's daughter but I supported Kora. Not because I cared about their relationship, I did but that wasn't the reason. David was dead and I wanted to somehow punish him for throwing me away. For abandoning his own daughter to protect his family. I wanted to prove to God - knows -who that I could take something from him and hurt him somehow and since he was dead, I felt that if Kora, the daughter he had abandoned, took something from him, something he really wanted even if it wasn't directly could make us even. I hoped Kora could take Jeremiah from his daughter because I heard that he and the Ozor's had planned their engagement for a long while as a means of merging the both families. I was going to use my daughter to destroy his plan, that was how desperate I was. I was going to use my own daughter to hurt him but after a while, I realized that he made Kora happy. I could see how she just wanted to be with him and how she loved him and all I ever did was let my daughter do everything she wanted. It was all I've ever done. Support every decision she made without caring of the consequences. I was just happy that she was happy even though it had to be at the detriment of someone else's happiness but a few days ago, I met her, David's wife. She owns this women club I've been dying to be a member of for years now. She recognized me immediately she saw me. I found out that she knew I and her husband had a thing in the past. She knew everything about me and reminded me of how much of a failure I was as a mother. The things she said to me terrified me a lot. It made me realize that my methods weren't exactly right. She was right, I was watching my daughter walk in the footsteps I used to walk in, the life I used to live. I was making my daughter do the exact same things I did in the past. Taking what belongs to someone else and causing pain. At that moment I felt so weak and so guilty again. I felt like I've been making a big mistake all along. Kora shouldn't be with that boy if he belongs to her sister. I had a horrible past, Kora doesn't have to live her life in pain the way I did. If there's a chance that she could be accepted someday as a Richard, I wouldn't want her to be on a bad note with her sister, with her family and that's why I can't let her be with him. That's why I can't let her live the life I lived where she'd only take things from people. She'd live all her life being reminded of how much of a bad person they'd all think she is just like I have and I don't want that for her. I might not be here one day, I don't want her to be on bad sides with the only other people that can actually help and protect her."

"Lilian, oh Lilian." Victoria slowly reached for Lilian's hands. "Lilian, Kora is an illegitimate child of a very strong man. No matter what she does, they are always going to see her as a threat. There's nothing she would do that would be accepted by them especially when they find out that she might actually be a threat to them. In the end, none of this is going to matter." She squeezed them. Lilian sniffed as a tear rolled down Victoria's eyes. "Forgive me, forgive me for not knowing, forgive me for failing to protect you as your older sister, forgive me for failing you all those years."

Lilian let out a shaky breath. They were both getting emotional now.

"That's why I can't do what you're asking. I can't see Mum even if she's on her death bed, I can never forgive her for what she did to me, what she did to us. I'm sorry but you came all the way for nothing. I don't care if she's dying. I can't go back there and I can't let my children be a part of her memory. I just can't-"

"Come here." Victoria pulled her closer and hugged her. "I understand. It's going to be alright." She said and immediately, Lilian started to cry as hard as she could. "Everything is going to be fine."