Episode 4: Blood Brothers and Bullet Promises
(~1,200 words)
You can silence a man.
You can bury his body.
But you can’t bury blood. Not when it screams for revenge.
Razor’s corpse was barely cold when word got out. Not in the newspapers—no, this kind of news doesn’t make headlines. It spread on the streets of Surulere, Mushin, Lekki, Ajah… whispered in barber shops, in brothels, among street boys and Yahoo cultists.
“Bobo don kill Razor.”
Some said it was over woman. Others said it was over ego. But the version that stuck was that I killed him because I could. That I had become a god, untouchable, drunk on jazz and blood money.
And Razor’s younger brother, Taye, wasn’t going to take that lying down.
Taye was Razor without the scars—but with twice the madness. He was barely 22, but had already made a name as a cult enforcer for the Aiye Black Axe in Ibadan before relocating to Lagos. He was smart, brutal, and worst of all—he had nothing to lose.
I knew payback was coming. But I didn’t know when.
I increased security. Cleaner doubled his patrols. G-Wire moved our crypto vaults offline. I stopped sleeping at the same place twice. I changed cars. Changed phones. Changed women.
But fear has a way of following you. Even in air-conditioned rooms with CCTV and jazzed-up rings on every finger, I began to feel it—death was close.
One morning, I woke up to find a decapitated goat at my gate. Its blood was still warm, spelling out a message in Yoruba:
“Ẹ̀jẹ̀ yóò san. Blood must pay blood.”
It wasn’t just a threat. It was a curse.
I rushed to Baba Tunde’s shrine. The old man didn’t even look surprised.
“You kill lion, you must kill the cub,” he said, eyes glazed. “Or the cub go grow teeth and tear your neck.”
I asked him for protection.
He gave me a concoction to bathe in for seven days, another one to drink before I sleep, and a black stone to keep under my tongue if I ever felt death close.
“But Bobo,” he said as I turned to leave, “you must cleanse your heart. You don kill many. The spirits dey cry. You dey owe blood.”
Two weeks passed. Nothing happened.
Then, Amaka’s body was found in a shallow grave in Badagry—head missing, fingers cut off.
The next day, Cleaner didn’t show up for our morning meeting. I called him—no response. I sent Format to check his place in Ogudu.
They found his body in the boot of his own car. Two bullets to the chest. One to the forehead. Razor’s signature.
Taye had begun his revenge tour.
My boys were shaking. Uche was silent, guilt still dancing on his conscience. G-Wire moved his family out of Lagos. Format started talking about quitting. Even I began to question the things I used to call “control.”
Was this what it meant to rise too fast? To fly too close to the sun and watch your wings melt?
One by one, my circle cracked.
Then came the night I’ll never forget.
It was a Friday. I was in one of our safe apartments in Chevron—just me and two girls I barely knew. One was massaging my shoulders, the other rolling a blunt.
I had just opened a bottle of VSOP when the lights cut.
Not NEPA. This was planned. Deliberate.
My heart skipped.
Then—BOOM!
The front door blasted open.
Gunshots. Screams. Glass shattering.
I hit the ground, crawling toward the back exit, but a shadow stepped in front of me.
Taye.
Dressed in all black, two guns in hand, and a grin that looked like it belonged in hell.
“You dey run?” he asked, pointing the nozzle to my forehead. “After you kill my brother?”
I didn’t beg. I just looked at him. Calm. Chest burning, but eyes steady.
“He died because he was stupid,” I said. “And you’ll die because you think you’re smarter.”
He paused.
That’s when G-Wire, hidden in the ceiling trapdoor, opened fire.
TA-TA-TA-TA!
Two of Taye’s boys dropped. The girls ran out screaming. I grabbed a knife from the mini bar and slashed at Taye’s leg. He fired blindly, grazing my shoulder. I tackled him. We rolled on the floor, blood mixing with broken glass and betrayal.
I don’t know how long we fought. Maybe minutes. Maybe years.
But in the end, he was lying flat, bleeding from the stomach, gasping.
“You… you think this ends here?” he whispered, eyes fading.
I crouched beside him.
“This doesn’t end. It only repeats. But not with me.”
Then I stood, breathing hard, blood dripping from my mouth, and walked away.
That night, I didn’t go to the hospital. I drove straight to Baba Tunde.
He was waiting outside, lantern in hand.
“You survive,” he said. “But you no be man again. You be ghost now.”
I looked at him, confused.
“What do you mean?”
He smiled. “To stay alive, you must die. Spiritually. You must vanish. Change name. Burn the past. Or the earth go collect you.”
I nodded.
And that was the day Bobo the Yahoo Prince died.
I disappeared.
Sold my cars. Transferred my houses to ghost companies. Burned the ledger. Sent my mother and sisters to Canada. Deleted all social media. Stopped clubbing. Stopped scamming.
Started watching the sun rise again—not as a king, but as a man finally ready to pay his debts.
But peace doesn’t last forever.
And some ghosts refuse to stay buried.
