"Why did you leave me?" Jude was asking Shanty. Shanty stared at him for a while before she shook her head and walked to a seat in her room and sat on it. "Here is not conducive for us. Can we go to somewhere better, somewhere we can talk?" Jude was still saying. She looked up at his face and shook her head again, rejecting that offer.
"What is the matter?" she was asking.
"What is what is the matter?" asked Jude.
"What are you doing here?" she wanted to know.
"You are not happy to see me?" asked Jude.
"I left you; so tell me, how am I to be happy to see you if I left you purposely?" she wanted to know.
"Why did you leave?" asked Jude.
"Why shouldn't I leave?" she returned with a question.
"You are making a terrible mistake you know that?" asked Jude.
"Am I? I don't think so"She stood up and started dressing up. He sat down on the bed and kept watching her. Whenever she turned her face to look his way he would look down. "You claim to be shy. I hate to see you here. You should leave" she said and he stared at her for a while. She turned to look at his face again but this time he didn't look down. He needed an explanation. "I owe you no explanation to why I had to leave you; you know that I had to leave. You boss, sorry, your god is after my life because I told him the truth to his face"
"If you have called him my god and you say I serve the purpose of my god and if you say my god wants you dead don't you think my coming here is to carry out the wishes of my god?" he asked and she stopped for a moment and turned fully in fear, now understanding that it could be possible Jude didn't come to plead with her to make whatever existed between them to work but it could be that he had come to kill her. He stood up, seeing the fear in her eyes.
"Have you come to kill me?" she asked.
"If I told you no, would you believe me?" he asked and she could not find her voice to respond. "Sit down" he said. She could sense a change in the tune of his voice and she wondered if she was already under arrest or under his mercy. She sat, now trembling.
*******
"Get up and sit" Commanded the lady behind Edu and Edu stood up and slowly sat down on one of the seats. "What are you doing here?" Asked Rose. Edu stared at her for a while and didn't say a word. "I haven't come here to joke around. I ask again, what are you doing here?"
"I came here to look for someone, Veronica is her name" he said.
"And what business do you have with her?" asked Rose, while still pointing the gun at him.
"Businesses? I don't have any business with her, I have only one thing with her and it is memories. I wish she could just appear before me now so I could tell her how sorry I am to have left when she needed me the most" he said.
"I don't understand you" said Rose.
"You can't understand me. What I had with her nobody can understand. Even our parents could not understand us" said Edu. At this point Rose lowered the gun in her hand and kept staring at him.
"You speak as though you have known Veronica for a long time" she said and he nodded. "What then do you want from her now?"
"Her forgiveness, having known what she entered into and instead of helping her with my understanding I was too selfish to understand she was suffering and concetrated only on myself and what I felt was not right about her decisions" he said and Rose walked closer to the table and asked, "Are you Edu really?" he nodded and she sighed deeply. "I think I have heard of you sometime ago, even must have seen you. You need to know that coming to this place will put your life in danger"
"I don't care about my life any longer. I know she must have joined a secret organisation hence her sudden acquirement of wealth but who knows, she may need my help right now and if I'm not with her how will I know the areas she wants my help?" He asked and Rose didn't think he expected an answer to that question. She moved further away from him but turning she said, "I really do not want to include you in my findings. I suggest you have to leave, so I wouldn't have to go back to boss and tell him about you, about you and Veronica, about seeing you here" she then walked into the inner room but when she returned to the living room she still saw him seated on the seat and she was infuriated by this. "I made it clear that you have to leave. What are you still doing here or you want me to get mad at you?" Edu stood up and adjusted his backpack, then boldly he said, "I don't know about you and I don't know about your boss but what I do know is that you are not a security personel and that speaks volumes of what actually happened to Veronica. I know that you understand what it means to..."
"Leave this place right now" Warned Rose and he adjusted his backpack again and then walked out. Rose sighed, knowing what love is, what love can make a man do, what love had caused her herself, why she had decided to hate that word love, why she would never allow it to be her portion again. The only love she had, this love that is the sweetest was the love for her son and that love would never die. She sank on the exact seat that Edu sat upon and with a sigh of relief continued to wonder what exactly boss had wanted her to do in Veronica's house. Was he expecting her to meet her seated in her dining and eating or what? She wondered.
******
In the village and inside the room where Shanty was with Jude she didn't know what to do. Jude who was seated there suddenly felt his phone ringing and when he picked it he saw it was Ken. "Ken"
"Boss" for Ken still refered to Jude as boss even though he had no need to, knowing they now operated on the same rank level. "Ken, how is everything over there?"
"Everything is fine, except that boss is worried about Veronica" said Ken.
"Boss has always been worried about her" said Jude almost to himself.
"Boss" Ken was calling again.
"Yes, Ken" Jude waited to hear what he had to ask.
"Did you find her?" Ken asked.
"If I found Shanty?" asked Jude.
"Yes" Ken was asking. Jude stared at Shanty and then said, "No, I haven't found her"
"Okay, boss, we will talk later, take good care of yourself" the line went dead. At that moment Jude then knew that he had just lied to Ken. He did not know what exactly had happened but he was willing to do his best to ensure the organization did not loose the remaining trust they had for him. At that moment and with teary eyes Shanty asked, "Have they asked you to cut short my life?"
"What do you mean?" asked Jude.
"Has Ken asked you to kill me?" she asked further.
"Ken doesn't tell me what to do. You should be careful to think he does" Jude stood and walked to the window. "Shanty" he was speaking further, "You know that I love you don't you?" Shanty did not respond. "You know that I love you with all my heart and that I had so much confidence that with you beside me there was nothing I could not do. But I had a family before you and somehow I had my whole life devoted to that family. I'm not sure if I had enough to think about but then there are many ways to allow things work for me. I have so much confidence that with the family I belong to I can have whatever I want. It is power, yes, power, when a man is so much drunk in power such a man can only do his best to retain what he has. I am not sure if there is anything I can do about this but my heart bleeds to see that there are many things needed to keep sustaining me. This family I found myself into, this organization doesn't need to force me to be with them, to remain in them, to keep having their interest at heart and to keep making my plans with them in my mind but you see I have chosen to be with them, I have chosen to be part of them, to remain part of them, to have them in my mind and to always be part of what it means to have a people of power. What more can I ask for if not what I already have in mind. Now this is what I have always wanted to say to you; you are trying to make me fine but the question is, was I actually in mess or in trouble before now? It is what I have chosen for myself, a life I believe is good for me and no one forced me into it. The organization is my family and Boss is my lord and god just as you said. You will do well to take your eyes off everything that concerns me and the organization"
"Why did you look for me if you were only going to say these words to me? I thought you had regained your memory and saw that this people, this man you so much worship stole your future from you and you are futureless if you have refused to leave the organization. Please and please do not go about making things hard for yourself Jude. If you have come here to look for me because you were commanded to kill me but having found me you decided you are not going to do that it can only be possible to note that you are not only going to do your best to change but you are willing to carry me along when you must have become a better person"
"Shanty" He called to her attention, noting she had not been paying attention to his words. "You don't understand do you? I have said these words to you that you may understand and stop believing that I will ever leave my family. You have to take your eyes off me and kill whatever feeling you have for me. Yes, I was sent to look for you, to find you and then kill you but finding you all I want to do is to take my eyes off you. What more can I say seeing that you are innocent, a lady that wanted the best for me and for my future but the truth is that i am protecting you if I have decided to leave you and if I have asked you to stop thinking about me. I came here to kill you but now I have changed my mind and have decided to warn you instead"
"Warn me for loving you?" she asked amidst tears. Jude looked at her from head to toe and shook his head. He was about to walk out when his eyes caught something on the screen of her laptop which had been collected from the armed robbers and staring at it he bent over the laptop and saw something strange on it. He was shocked and there was this fury in his eyes.