I didn’t love him. In fact, I could barely look at him without shuddering—but I still said “I do.” Not out of love, not out of attraction, not even out of pity—but because my father’s legacy was hanging in the balance, and the only man willing to save it came with a price: me.

My name is Kamsi Obiora, CEO of Obiora Textiles, and I am the only daughter of the late textile magnate, Chief Nathaniel Obiora, whose sudden death left our multi-billion naira empire drowning in debts I was not even aware of.

The board was about to remove me, investors were pulling out one after another, and I had no plan, no miracle, until Mr. Kunle Ige walked into my office—short, thick-necked, with dark, marked skin, protruding teeth, and a presence that made me feel uncomfortable.

He wasn’t rich—he was incredibly rich. The owner of seven factories on three continents, he was a man who preferred to conduct business from the shadows.

I was expecting an investment deal, maybe a stock buyout—but instead, he leaned toward me, looked me straight in the eye, and said, “I’ll pay off your debt, buy out your shareholders, and triple your income in six months. But I want one thing: marry me.”

I thought he was joking. I laughed. He didn’t.

I told him I needed time to think—he gave me 24 hours.

That night I cried, I screamed into my pillows, I looked at myself in the mirror and asked, “Is this how love ends for me?”

But when I saw my employees’ payroll, the notice of seizure of our Aba branch, and my mother’s message saying, “Your father would want you to fight for the company,” I made the hardest decision of my life—I called him and said yes.

The wedding was private, rushed, and filled with silent judgment.

I wore a dress that didn’t feel like my own, smiled for cameras that didn’t deserve my smile, and kissed a man my lips barely touched.

Everyone said it was too ugly for me—blogs mocked the union, my bridesmaids whispered it was cursed—but I held my head high.

I reminded myself this was business, not love. I owed no one anything, no chemistry, no butterflies. Just loyalty. Just strategy.

But when the wedding was over and I walked into our master suite at the luxurious Sheraton Hotel, I felt the full weight of what I had done.

He walked in behind me, closed the door, and said nothing. He just stared at me with those deep, inscrutable eyes.

I avoided his gaze and pretended to check my phone.

“Aren’t you going to run away?” he asked suddenly, and I shuddered at the honesty of the question.

“No,” I whispered. “I’m not a coward.”

He nodded. Then he said, “Good. Because I have something to tell you.”

I braced myself. A secret wife? A terminal illness? A dark fetish? My mind whirled.

But what he said next changed everything.

“This marriage isn’t real,” he said calmly. “Not for me. I made the offer because I needed to protect myself, not because I loved you.”

I blinked, confused.

—Protect you from what?

He walked over to the closet, pulled out a locked briefcase, and opened it. Inside was a file, a photo of a man in a black suit, and a torn envelope stained with what looked like dried blood.

“They’re after me,” she said. “And marrying you put me in a more secure position politically. You’re a public figure. They can’t touch me easily now. You were my shield.”

I didn’t breathe for ten seconds.

“So you used me?” I asked, my voice shaking.

He looked at me and for the first time his expression softened.

—And you used me too, Kamsi. Don’t pretend you married me for romance.

I sat up slowly, my whole body numb.

“So what now?” I asked.

He smiled.

—Now we survive together. You play the loving wife, I play the ugly millionaire husband, and we both protect what matters most to us.

And just like that, the tension in the room changed.

I didn’t know whether to feel relief or terror.

But one thing was clear—our wedding night wouldn’t be a fairy tale, it would be a strategy meeting.

Or so I thought—until midnight, when I woke up to someone sobbing in the bathroom.

I crept closer, my heart pounding, and what I saw paralyzed me.

Kunle—my “ugly” husband—was on his knees, holding a framed photo of a woman and child, crying like someone who has lost everything.

I didn’t say a word. I just stood there, frozen, watching the man I thought had no feelings crumble.

And then I understood—this marriage wasn’t going to be a transaction.

It was going to be a storm.

I didn’t sleep after that. I went back to bed, my eyes wide open in the darkness, my heart wrenching with the echo of her sobs ringing in my head.

Who were they—the woman and child in the photo? Were they his family? Had he lost them? Had they abandoned him?

My thoughts were spinning in circles, but I didn’t say anything the next morning.

I watched him walk out of the bathroom in silence, his eyes red but his face as hard as stone.

He didn’t talk about the night before.

He just nodded as he adjusted his cufflinks and said, “We have a press conference in two hours.”

And so, we put our masks back on.

Flashbulbs exploded as we arrived at the Obiora building, hand in hand like a perfect couple, his arm lightly around my waist, my fingers intertwined with his as if they belonged there.
Journalists fired off questions:

—Mrs. Obiora-Ige, was this a love marriage or an arrangement?

—What’s next for Obiora Textiles?

—What do you think of your husband’s… unconventional appearance?

I smiled, even as the insult crept into the last question.

I bent my head toward Kunle and kissed his cheek.

“I married the most brilliant man I’ve ever known,” I said sweetly. “Appearances fade. But power and loyalty don’t.”

The crowd erupted.

Even he raised an eyebrow—perhaps impressed, perhaps surprised that I played the game better than he expected.

The following weeks were a whirlwind of meetings, interviews, organized outings, and strategic dinners.

And yet… slowly, we began to soften.

Not like lovers, but like two soldiers on the battlefield learning to trust each other.

He asked about my father.

I asked about the woman in the photo.

She didn’t answer right away, but one night, during a quiet meal in the kitchen of our penthouse, she finally said:

—Her name was Zara. She was my wife. And the boy… our son, Timi. They died in a fire that was meant for me.

My fork stopped halfway.

“What?”

—Eight years ago. I was negotiating a merger with a cartel disguised as investors. When I backed out, they got their revenge.

I was supposed to be in that house that night. But I was in Abuja.

They died instead of me.

Her voice didn’t crack, but her hand trembled slightly.

“From then on, I stopped trusting everyone. I built everything in silence. I hid from the public eye. Until I realized I was being followed again—and I needed a new disguise. A new layer of protection.”

—And that cape was me, —I whispered.

He nodded once.

“You were already public. High-profile. Marrying you gave me visibility that keeps me safe. For now.”

My heart sank.

“I’m sorry,” I said. And I meant it.

Because despite his flaws, and all the ways we’d used each other, no one deserved to carry that kind of pain.

After that, something changed.

I began to see him differently—not just as the man with the scarred face and awkward gait, but as someone broken, stitched together with pain and strategy.

And maybe… I was broken too.

One night, I made pepper soup.

The taste reminded him of his mother, he said. He smiled.

And it was the first time I saw it—a real smile. Crooked. Imperfect. But genuine.

The following week, he surprised me with a new showroom for Obiora Textiles.

“Consider it your wedding gift,” he said. “You deserve more than to survive.”

And when he brought investors from Dubai who offered double the previous amount, I embraced him.

Not as part of the game—but out of gratitude.

Something was blossoming between us.

It wasn’t love yet. But it wasn’t anything.

Until the letter arrived.

It had been slipped under our door in the middle of the night—no return address, no stamp. Just a sentence on expensive stationery:

“You can’t hide forever, Kunle. Not even she can save you.”

He turned pale. He broke it without saying a word.

But I saw it.

And I couldn’t pretend anymore.

“Tell me the truth,” I said. “Who are those people? What do they want?”

He looked at me, his eyes dark. “They want to finish what they started. And now that you’re in the picture, they might come for you too.”

I swallowed hard. “Then let them try. You’re not the only one who knows how to fight.”

He laughed softly. “You really are your father’s daughter.”

But neither of them knew how soon that fight would come— or how bloody it would be.

The attack didn’t come with bullets. It came with fire.

Two weeks after the letter, as the city slept under a gentle rain, a heart-rending scream woke us up.

The building security was desperately knocking on our door: “Fire in the Obiora Textiles showroom!”

My heart stopped. We ran, barefoot, without thinking, down the stairs amidst smoke and chaos. From the street, I could see the flames devouring the building that had been reborn thanks to Kunle. The firefighters’ efforts were futile: the fire was intentional, targeted, brutal.

By the time the news came around, it was already a shambles.

Kunle hugged me tightly that night, as the ashes fell like dirty snow all around. No one died, thank God, but one thing was clear:

“They’re not warning anymore,” Kunle said quietly. “Now they’re attacking.”

The next day, as we held the press conference amid promises of reconstruction and sad faces, I felt for the first time that I wasn’t acting.

I was fighting for what was mine.

Kunle began to change too. Less cold, less calculating. He talked to me about his son, about how Timi wanted to be an architect, about how Zara danced while cooking. In those moments, I saw him differently. As a human being.

One night, returning from a board meeting, I was in for a surprise:

A box on the bed. Inside, an antique design of my father’s, hand-embroidered, restored with Arabic details.

“I recovered it from a collector in Morocco,” Kunle said. “It was one of the first textiles he designed.”

I cried. For the first time since his death, I cried without shame.

“Thank you,” I whispered.

“I’m not doing it for you,” he said. “I’m doing it for the legacy we share.”

But we knew he was also doing it for me.

Then the second letter arrived.

—The next fire will be your home!

And we knew they were close.

We moved to a safer place. Kunle hired private security. I took self-defense classes. We stopped attending events or going out without escorts. The tension seeped into every gesture.

But also, in the midst of all that, we began to laugh.

One morning I found him humming a Fela Kuti song in the kitchen. I joined him. We cooked together. We shared secrets. We shared silence.

And one night, as we watched it rain from the balcony, he said:

—I underestimated you, Kamsi.

“Me too,” I replied.

We looked at each other. Long. With that mixture of history, fear, and possibility.

And then he kissed me. It wasn’t a press kiss. It was real. It was soft. It was ours.

Finally, something that wasn’t a strategy or a shield. Something that was simply human.

But peace is short-lived when the past is armed.

That same night, someone shot at our armored truck on the Lagos-Ibadan highway.

There were no injuries. But there was a clear promise:

—We won’t stop until we see him fall.

Kunle looked at me, bloodied by the broken glass in his cheek, and said:

—I can’t protect you alone anymore.

And I knew the war was just beginning.

The walls of the new apartment were soundproof, but even that wasn’t enough to drown out the sound of our decisions.

After the highway bombing, Kunle made calls I never expected to hear. He used code names, asking for favors from people whose existence was probably illegal.

I didn’t ask. I just listened.

But one afternoon, while I was reviewing some company papers, I saw a folder marked in red: “Operation Total Blindness.” Inside were names, addresses, photographs, recordings.

“What’s this?” I asked, facing him.

Kunle took a deep breath. “It’s them. The ones who killed Zara and Timi. The ones who are coming for me now.”

—And you’re going to kill them one by one?

“No,” he said in a gruff voice. “I’m just going to return the favor.”

That night we slept back to back. Between us, one truth became clearer: he was willing to go all the way. And me?

That same week, a journalist contacted me secretly. She said she had evidence that the attacks were linked to an international consortium that used the textile industry as a front for money laundering, and that my father… perhaps had discovered it before he died.

“Your father was murdered,” she said bluntly. “And if you and your husband keep digging, you too could end up underground.”

My hands trembled.

That night, I showed Kunle the journalist’s recording. And for the first time, I saw him truly scared.

“So it wasn’t just me,” he murmured. “It was your father, too.”

The storm wasn’t theirs. It was ours.

And now we had to decide: did we become them to defeat them… or did we die as we were?

“Kamsi,” he said, taking my hand, “if you decide to walk away now, I’ll understand.”

I looked at him. I thought of Dad. Of Zara. Of the showroom reduced to ashes.

“I didn’t marry you for love, Kunle,” I whispered. “But perhaps for the first time… I understand what it means to truly love.”

And then I knew what we would do:

We wouldn’t run.

We would face them.

Together.

Midnight. Balogun Square.

The streets were empty, bathed in a damp mist. Lights flickered over dirty puddles. She was alone. Or so she wanted them to believe.

I was wearing my father’s leather jacket. In the inside pocket, the pistol I’d taken from Kunle. I was no expert, but Azubuike had given me clear instructions: aim for the chest. Never tremble.

With every step, I felt his presence behind me. Not Kunle, not Azubuike… but my father. His shadow. His decisions. His legacy.

At 12:03 a.m., a black pickup truck stopped several meters away. Two men got out. Their faces were covered. One was carrying a briefcase. The other, a rope.

“Kamsi Obiora?” one asked, his voice electronically modulated.

I nodded. My heart was pounding, but my hand wasn’t shaking.

“Where’s Kunle?” the other asked.

—Sure. Where you can’t touch it, I said.

The first one gave a low laugh.

—So you came to die alone.

—Not so alone.

At that instant, the lights in nearby buildings flickered on. Azubuike’s men emerged from the shadows like armed ghosts. They surrounded the hooded men before they could react. A shot rang out, but it wasn’t mine.

One of them fell. The other raised his hands.

—Don’t shoot! I’m just following orders!

Azubuike emerged from the darkness.

—Who gave them to you? Who’s behind all this?

The man trembled. Then he spat out a single word:

-Chief.

Kunle, who had just arrived in an armored truck, paled upon hearing this.

“Oloye is dead,” he whispered.

“No,” I said, remembering another name from Azubuike’s files. “Not dead. Waiting.”

The network extended deeper than we thought. The enemy wasn’t one. It was an organization. And now we knew its name.

Over the following weeks, we launched a legal and media offensive. With evidence of the attacks, blackmail, secret documents leaked by Azubuike, and Kunle’s strategic allies in Abuja, we dismantled Oloye’s shell companies one by one.

But we knew they were still watching us. We knew the peace was temporary.

One morning, while we were drinking coffee on the balcony, Kunle asked me:

—What do we do now?

“We keep going,” I said. “For us. For those we lost. For those we survived.”

He nodded, taking my hand.

—What if they come again?

“Then let them come,” I replied with a fierce smile. “This time, we’ll be waiting for them.”

And so our story—born of caring, marked by pain, forged in fire—became stronger than fear.

It turned into love.

END.