As she left, her phone vibrated with an unknown-number message. The text contained a location and a request: If you want the documents nobody has shown you, meet me at Johnson's underground car park tomorrow at noon. She stopped beneath the portico and read it twice. She was no longer willing to chase anonymous instructions blindly. She forwarded the message to Janet, asked the lawyer to verify a safe meeting arrangement, and went home to tell Tobi exactly what had arrived. The days of private discoveries were ending, whether the Akinwales liked it or not.
Janet refused to let Nkiru meet an anonymous source in an underground car park alone. She arranged to accompany her, documented the time and location, and told Tobi where they would be. Nkiru considered this excessive until she remembered how many people had already tried to control the family's decisions through incomplete information. On the appointed day, the two women entered Johnson's car park beneath a shopping complex. The concrete smelled of dust, petrol, and dampness. A woman waited beside a parked sedan, her sunglasses hiding much of her face.
It was Remi Balogun. Nkiru stopped. "You," she said. Remi removed the glasses. She looked less glamorous without the elaborate makeup and entourage from Meridian, and the sleeplessness beneath her eyes showed plainly. "Before you accuse me, I didn't send you the hotel photograph," Remi said. "I found something else. My father kept files. Insurance, investment leverage, personal secrets, reports that had nothing to do with his work. I used to think he was simply careful. Now I think he was collecting ways to control people."
Janet stepped forward. "What exactly do you have, and how did you obtain it?" Remi explained that files from a company device associated with her father had been preserved during a forensic examination, and that her own legal adviser had lawfully obtained copies of materials relevant to her investment business. In a folder listing connected transactions, she found references to Tobi, the payment alteration, and an old laboratory report. She had brought copies through her counsel and agreed that original files should remain preserved with the proper investigators. "I'm not asking you to trust a memory stick from a car park," she said. "I want you to know what exists, so you can request it properly."
Nkiru looked at her. "Why tell me?" Remi glanced away. "Because your husband was blamed for money that reached my company. Because I humiliated an old man while wearing a watch my father paid for. Because I've spent my life thinking a surname was permission to ignore questions." She swallowed. "I don't know whether this fixes anything. It won't. But I don't want my next decision to be another lie." Nkiru studied her for a long time. "I won't thank you for doing what you should have done," she said. "But I won't pretend it doesn't matter that you've done it."