The city never sleeps, but tonight, Lagos felt like it was holding its breath.
A humid breeze snaked through the corridors of Riverview Heights, a luxury apartment complex nestled just off Lekki Phase 1. The neon lights from nearby clubs spilled onto the sidewalks in broken patterns, and distant music thumped like a heartbeat under the surface of the night.
It was just after midnight when Juwon Bakare fell.
Six floors up, the air had smelled of cigarette ash and desperation. His scream lasted less than two seconds before it was swallowed by the chaos of the city below. A dull thud. Then silence.
By the time the guards rushed outside, Juwon's body was already attracting a crowd — blood pooling at the edge of the pavement, smartphone cameras flickering like fireflies. He was twenty-one, final-year Political Science student at the University of Lagos, son of a high-ranking senator.
The official report would later say suicide.
But the woman watching from across the street — her camera hanging forgotten around her neck — knew better.
Adesuwa Kareem didn't believe in coincidences.
She had followed a hunch, not a lead. A cryptic message from a student tipster. "He's in over his head," the message had said. No names. No context. But something about it had scratched at her bones.
And now here she was — watching the familiar machinery of cover-ups begin. The private ambulance. The off-duty cop giving quiet orders. The senator's aide arriving in a tinted black Prado jeep before the real police.
Adesuwa backed into the shadows, heart drumming.
Ten years. That's how long it had been since her sister Ife was found dead on the edge of Third Mainland Bridge. Same red tape. Same silence. Same stink of secrets wrapped in privilege.
She tightened her grip on the recorder in her jacket pocket. The press would be pushed out by morning. A carefully worded family statement would follow. There'd be no autopsy. No real investigation.
Unless someone made noise.
Back in her car, parked two blocks down, Adesuwa opened her leather notebook, flipped past pages of half-written stories, and scribbled a single line beneath today's date:
Another one falls. How many echoes will it take before Lagos listens?
She didn't know it yet, but Juwon's death wasn't just another case.
It was the key to everything.