rayte

He was alone in the car, traffic crawling around him, phone pointed at his own face. Akinbolusere Kayode, the man Ondo called Tolufe, owner of Esther Estate, spoke like a man who had already decided the end of the story. Morning had been ordinary. He left home in a clear mind, went to work, bought diesel for the first machine and the second. The third was already dead. Then the first one coughed and stopped. The second followed. In that silence, he said, the decision arrived. He called his wife’s name again and again: Akinbolusere Esther Adenike. She had been everything a good wife is. She endured the years when he was only a barber with empty hands. She suffered the rough beginning with him. Nothing she did brought him here. He absolved her completely. The money, he insisted, came clean. No ritual, no fraud, no hidden hand. He had simply forgotten the foundation that built it and walked away from it. That, he said, was his own doing. Every property, he named, must go only to Esther and their three children in Canada. He said each child’s name clearly, for the record. Oluwafemi. Toluwani. Daniel. No one else. To prove no one was forcing the words, he showed the empty seats, the wheel in his own hands, the traffic still moving. He was driving himself. The choice was his. What exactly broke him remains unknown. Some whisper the weight of the current times cause by Tinubu government. Others mutter older, darker theories. Neither has been proven. The police have said nothing. The family has been left with a video and a will. May they find strength. The rest is still silence. ADÉLẸYẸ is my name