Episode 1

I would have died for him—and in many ways, I did. My name is Favour, and I was the kind of girl who believed in love so deeply, I didn’t see the knife until it was buried in my back. I met Raymond during my final year at the university. He was in his NYSC year, always dressed neat, humble voice, kind smile. He wasn’t rich, but he was steady—he showed up, called when he said he would, helped me fetch water when the hostel pump broke down. It was the little things that made me fall. By the time I graduated, we were already living like husband and wife, even though there was no ring on my finger. I cooked for him, cleaned, washed his clothes, paid half the rent in our tiny apartment in Egbeda. I gave him everything, including my body—every night, even on days I had fever, even when my period came with pain that could snap my spine. He always said, “You’re my future.” I believed him.

When I got pregnant, he was shocked—but then smiled and said, “It’s early, but maybe this is how God wants it.” I cried. He hugged me. We made plans. Baby names. Future. A better apartment. He said he’d talk to his family soon. But that was the beginning of the shift. Suddenly, he became “busy.” Calls became short. Messages delayed. He started sleeping out, claiming his new job was demanding. I gave excuses for him—to myself, to my friends, even to my mother who was beginning to suspect something was wrong. Then one Thursday morning, I saw it. A post on Facebook from a girl named Chinenye: “Can’t believe the bride price was fully paid in one day! I said yes! #MrsRaymond2025.”

My breath left me. My ears started ringing. I stared at the screen like I was reading my own obituary. I refreshed the page. Over and over. Her name didn’t change. His name didn’t change. I clicked on her profile. There were more pictures—Raymond in white, smiling next to her. Her family. The elders. The cake. The ring. I dropped the phone and ran to the bathroom to throw up. My hands were shaking. My whole world split into pieces in a moment. He had not only lied—he had prepared an entire future with another woman while still sleeping with me every night. I bled for him. Starved for him. Lied to my mother for him. I gave him everything. And he gave my life to someone else.

He called me that night. He didn’t know I had seen it yet. “Hey babe, I might sleep over at the office, we have a late briefing,” he said calmly. My voice cracked. “Are you married now, Raymond?” Silence. Then stammering. Then the call cut. He blocked me five minutes later. On WhatsApp. Facebook. Instagram. Even changed his number. Just like that, I became a discarded secret. A used napkin. But what he didn’t know was that I had something left—a fire that pain had ignited. I wasn’t going to cry quietly. Not after what he did. Not after how he lied. Not after how he made me believe I was the one. He thought it was over.

But I was just getting started.

Episode 2

Grief makes you quiet. Betrayal gives you a voice. And I was done being silent.

After Raymond blocked me, something inside me cracked—but it didn’t break. Not completely. It transformed. I had spent years pouring every piece of myself into a man who saw me as a placeholder. I gave him loyalty, and he gave another woman a ring. I gave him my womb, and he gave me shame.

But what he didn’t know—was that I was carrying more than heartbreak.

Three days after I saw the post, I woke up with a fever and blood between my legs. I was five months pregnant. I rushed to the clinic alone, praying I hadn’t lost the baby. The doctor ran tests. The heartbeat was still there—soft, strong, defiant. Just like me. That was the moment I stopped thinking like a victim. I started thinking like a mother.

I moved out of the apartment that weekend. Packed my things while crying quietly into folded bedsheets. I told the caretaker Raymond wouldn’t be returning. He raised an eyebrow, but didn’t ask questions. I moved into my aunt’s flat in Iyana Church. She took one look at my face, at my swollen belly, and didn’t say “I told you so.” She just held me.

Days passed. Then weeks. I stayed off social media, but the streets? They talk. A friend of a friend told me Raymond’s wedding was huge. Traditional and white. Chinenye wore four outfits, and Raymond danced like someone who had never known real pain. They called her “the lucky girl.” People said he had “leveled up.” That I was just “a campus phase.” They didn’t know I had been washing his boxers when he couldn’t afford airtime.

I watched quietly.

Then one evening, my friend Uche showed up. She dropped a flash drive on the table and smiled with her eyes. “I thought you might want this,” she said. “From someone at the wedding.”

It was a full recording.

Their engagement. The vows. The dancing. The cake. And then—the speech.

Raymond had stood up, half-drunk and arrogant. “I thank God for giving me a real woman,” he slurred. “Someone who didn’t come to eat my money. Someone who didn’t use me to chase small-girl dreams. You’re not like the others.”

The crowd had clapped. He had smiled. But the thing about recording devices is—they remember. They capture. They preserve.

So I posted it.

Not the whole thing.

Just the part where he called me a user. A leech. A fake. I posted it with a caption:
“He slept with me every night, called me his wife, and left me pregnant—only to say this at his wedding. This is the father of my unborn child.”

And I didn’t stop there.

I sent copies of the pregnancy test, ultrasound images, and photos of us from just three months before—to Chinenye. I didn’t insult her. I simply wrote: “He was mine while he was planning you. You deserve the full picture before you carry his name.”

The post went viral in six hours.

By the next morning, Raymond was trending.

#RaymondTheRunner
#TwoWivesNoHonor
#CampusToAltarScam

My phone rang endlessly. Unknown numbers. Media houses. Instagram blogs. Even Chinenye’s sister texted me, asking, “Is this real?” I didn’t reply. I was already in the hospital—contractions had started. The stress triggered early labor.

It was a long night. I screamed, I bled, I almost gave up.

But then I held her.

My daughter.

Tiny, brown, beautiful—and full of war.

I named her Hope.

As I stared at her face, Raymond called again—this time with a new number.

I didn’t answer.

He thought he broke me.

But he gave birth to my purpose.

Episode 3

here’s something powerful about silence—especially when it comes from a woman who used to cry every night into a pillow soaked with betrayal. I didn’t need to scream anymore. I had said everything I needed to say without raising my voice. The world had heard me. And Raymond? He could never unsee it.

The blogs ate it up. “Pregnant Ex Exposes Groom on Wedding Day!” “Tech Bro Raymond Caught Between Two Women—And One Baby!” The hashtags were still trending when the hospital discharged me. I walked out with Hope in my arms and my aunt by my side. I had nothing left to prove.

But Raymond?

He couldn’t stand the silence.

He called. Again. Again. Again. Unknown numbers. Burner phones. Blocked accounts. He tried everything. Then one day, a knock came on my aunt’s door.

It was him.

Standing there with a bouquet of sorry flowers and a face that looked like guilt and panic had been having a tug-of-war on it.

“Favour… please,” he said.

I didn’t move. My aunt stayed in the doorway, arms folded like a gatekeeper of peace. Raymond cleared his throat and looked down at the ground like it had all the answers. “I didn’t plan it this way. Chinenye… it happened fast. My family was involved. Pressure. I was scared. You know I still—”

“Stop,” I said.

He looked up.

“You don’t get to say ‘you know’ anymore. Because you never knew me.”

I stepped outside and held Hope closer, her tiny fingers wrapped around the edge of my blouse. Her presence alone was enough thunder.

“She looks like me,” he mumbled, tears gathering.

“Yes,” I said. “She also looks like someone she’ll grow up knowing only through photos.”

His mouth opened, then shut. He had no argument. Not this time.

“I didn’t come to destroy you, Raymond. You did that to yourself. I just told the truth.”

He fell to his knees. On the gravel. In the heat. The same man who once mocked my small dreams. The same man who blocked me after using my body and my heart.

“I want to be in her life. I want to do the right thing.”

I knelt too—but not beside him. I looked him in the eye.

“She will know you exist. But presence is earned. Not begged for after damage. You don’t walk out of the fire and pretend you’re clean.”

He wept. I didn’t.

I stood and turned to go inside. My aunt nodded at me, proud. Raymond remained on the ground, a perfect symbol of what regret looks like when it finally arrives.

Weeks passed.

Chinenye left him. The wedding barely survived two months before it crumbled under the weight of public shame and private lies. My story had shaken the illusion. She said she couldn’t trust him anymore—not after what I revealed, not after the videos, not after the truth became louder than his charm.

As for me?

I didn’t rush into anything. I focused on Hope. I built a small home, opened a secondhand bookshop in Ketu, and every night, I read bedtime stories to the child who saved me from disappearing completely. And when people ask me if I regret it all, I just smile.

Because I didn’t lose a man.

I lost my chains.

THE END.