I’ll Never Let You Go

Keywords: Let you go, Agnes, Tunde, Hate, Layo, Kill, Manipulated, I’ll Never Let You Go, Romance, Revenge, Malice, Divorce, Cheating, Agnes, Free Short Story,

Agnes smiled, a smile that once steered his heart like a sailor on a smooth sail. But now it felt like a twirl in a storm, a mocking grin. Her lips curled slightly, revealing just a glimpse of teeth. She leaned forward, giving him an all-too-familiar view of her cleavage. The same breasts he had once cradled his head on, the same softness he once worshipped. Now, they were probably comforting her lawyer. With slow, deliberate motions, she tugged the contract from beneath his hand, sliding another one in its place. Her eyes sparkled as if this were a game and she was winning.

He forced himself to look away from her chest, letting his gaze drift over the pages. But what was the point? He was going to sign it anyway, no matter what it said. His mind wandered to the past, back to the night of their wedding. His Agnes. The sweet, innocent bride who blushed at the thought of sharing a bed with him. The loyal wife who waited by the door every evening, who never raised her voice, never questioned his late nights, and always had his favourite meal ready. She was his Agnes. The woman who worried for him when he didn’t deserve it, the woman who stood by him no matter how many times he came home drunk—his perfect Agnes.

But as perfect as she was, she was never Layo.

Layo. Wild, reckless, and selfish. She lived for herself, and maybe that’s why he couldn’t stay away. At first, She was the kind of woman who demanded everything from a man and gave nothing in return except the thrill of the chase. She didn’t care about being someone’s wife. She knew how to make him feel alive. A dangerous affair for a man like him; someone who craved control. But Layo wanted more than to be a secret; she wanted something loud, she wanted to take pictures and post them, and he couldn’t give her that. So, he ended it.

Then there was Chichi.

Chichi was everything Agnes wasn’t and everything Layo could never be. She was his perfect contradiction. Chichi knew about his marriage but didn’t care. She stayed out of his personal life, never asking for more than what he could give. She played her part perfectly. She was his sweet escape. But she was too independent, too focused on her own life. She didn’t consult him on her choices, not even when she decided to marry another man. When she told him, it was as if a fire had been lit inside him. He couldn’t let her go. She wasn’t just Chichi. She was *his* Chichi.

He knew what he had to do. He went home and confessed everything to Agnes. Every affair, every betrayal, hoping that she will let him go. As expected, his Agnes broke down. She cried, begged him to think of their children – a boy of thirteen and a little girl he adored. But it didn’t matter. He promised to take care of them, then turned his back to her that night, letting her tears soak into her pillow.

Chichi was overjoyed when he told her his marriage was finally over, but she wasn’t foolish. She didn’t break off her engagement right away, keeping her options open. Still, she became bolder, visiting his office more often, their trysts more daring. It was the life he had always wanted, one filled with risk, passion, and control.

Until the day Chichi disappeared.

She stopped answering his calls. She stopped showing up at the office. He tried to see her, but there was nothing. It was as if she had vanished from his life, leaving only the ghost of her presence behind. Desperation led him back home to Agnes, who had not yet left him. She was still there, still sad, still quiet, waiting for the divorce procedures to be concluded. She reached for his coat that evening, the way she always had, and reached for a kiss, but he pushed her away. And that’s when he noticed something different, something unsettling in the way she fell back.

She fell with a force he hadn’t pushed with. 

Then she wailed.

And the tears, they were instant.

But her eyes held no sadness.

Something had shifted in Agnes.

And for the first time, he wasn’t sure what would come next.

“So it’s true, Daddy.” His son’s voice trembled from the top of the stairs. Both his children stood there, wide-eyed, watching. “You’re the reason Mom’s been crying. You hate her now,” his son accused.

Tunde opened his mouth to explain, to defend himself, but instead, all that came out was, “Go to your rooms. Now.”

His daughter’s face crumpled with anger and heartbreak. “I hate you, Daddy! You beat Mommy every day! I hate you!” Her tiny fists were clenched, her eyes blazing with accusation.

Tunde froze. Beat Agnes? Never. He had never laid a hand on her. He opened his mouth again to refute, but the words failed him. They lodged in his throat like jagged stones.

“Go to your rooms now!” His voice came out louder than he intended.

“Please, sweethearts, go to your rooms. Let Mommy and Daddy sort this out,” Agnes said, her voice trembling as tears continued to stream down her cheeks. Her eyes fixed on Tunde.

“But, Mom…” his son began, his voice filled with confusion and betrayal.

“No, love,” she interrupted gently, her eyes still glued on Tunde. “Please, just go.”

The boy looked from his mother’s back to his father’s angry face, his eyes narrowing. He lingered for a moment longer, glaring at his father with disdain, before he took his sister’s hand and disappeared back down the hallway.

“What just happened?” Tunde asked, the weight of the moment finally settling.

Agnes wiped her eyes, staring him down with a fury he hadn’t seen in years. “I told them,” She said. “I told them how you’ve been hitting me ever since you started sleeping with your whore.”

Tunde blinked, stunned. “What? Hitting you? When did I ever lay a hand on you?”

Agnes gave a bitter laugh. “Oh, don’t you dare play innocent, Tunde. Not tonight. I can’t take it tonight.” Her voice wavered as more tears spilled over. “You think I didn’t know? I knew. I knew about all of them. About Layo. Do you know she came to *this* house? Our house. She told me herself, came right here and challenged me for you.”

Her sobs wracked her body, but Tunde wasn’t about to be derailed. “That’s not the point. When did I *hit* you?”

Agnes straightened, walking toward him with slow, deliberate steps. She reached out and grabbed his right hand, locking her eyes with his. Then, without warning, she slammed his hand against her cheek, her head snapping to the side with the force. “Now, Tunde. You hit me now.”

He recoiled in horror, his heart pounding in his chest. “I don’t have time for this madness. I’m going to talk to the kids,” he muttered, turning toward the stairs.

But Agnes screamed. “Wait! No, my husband! No!” She grabbed her own head with both hands, smashing it against the wall with a sickening thud. Blood started trickling down her face, but she ignored it, pulling away from him when he tried to help.

“Please, Tunde! Think about the kids!” she screamed, stumbling backward toward the center of the living room. Then, in a move so sudden it felt unreal, she hurled herself into the glass coffee table. The table shattered beneath her weight, shards of glass cutting into her skin as she lay there, bloodied and motionless.

“You’ve killed Mommy!” his son’s voice pierced through the chaos as he ran down the stairs. Tunde watched, helpless, as his son rushed to Agnes, trying to pull her away from the shards of glass, cutting his own hands in the process.

Tunde took a step forward, but his son whipped around, rage blazing in his young eyes. “Stay away! Don’t come near her! Don’t come near us! I’ll call the police!” The boy’s voice cracked with fear and fury. “Stay away, or I’ll call the police!”

His little sister stood beside them, sobbing.

And that was when it hit him. The break-up, the affairs, they had all driven Agnes over the edge. But in that moment, he realized something else: his sweet, innocent Agnes was an actress.

The next morning, she was up and moving as if nothing had happened. She kissed him goodbye, made his breakfast, and sent him off to work like any other day. But when he arrived at his office, there was someone waiting for him.

Her lawyer. *The Bastard.*

That’s what Tunde called him. The Bastard, with his smooth talk, his towering height, and his perfect, sculpted physique. The man who conspired with Agnes to ruin him.

The Bastard arrived with a stack of documents that seemed to taunt Tunde with every rustling page. These weren’t just any documents; they were proof that Agnes was a co-owner of everything he possessed. Every contract he had signed since their wedding, the medical bill invoices, the school fees bill, he had never looked at them; he trusted his Agnes. But it turned out he had signed several joint ownership affidavits with her.

As he sifted through the pile, Tunde’s frustration began to spill over. If only Layo hadn’t been so selfish, so brazen in confronting Agnes, none of this would have spiralled so far. He had even tried to lash out at her, but Layo had also vanished as if she had never existed. Desperately, he contacted his lawyers, who confirmed the authenticity of the affidavits. His only recourse was to prove Agnes had tricked him into signing them — a Herculean task, given that everyone knew his sweet Agnes was incapable of deceit.

But the realization that Agnes had orchestrated this betrayal fuelled his resolve. He was ready to divide his assets in half if it meant no longer sharing a roof with this new, malevolent version of Agnes.

That evening, as Agnes sat on her side of the bed, meticulously packing her hair extensions into a net, Tunde laid out his decision. Her reaction was swift and chilling. She removed the net and faced him with an expression that was far removed from the caring, concerned Agnes he once knew. This was a face of cold, calculated malice. “Where’s Layo?” she inquired.

Tunde had learned not to question her words. Sure, she had an agenda. “Where is she?” he asked.

“How would I know? I’m not the one who killed her,” Agnes responded, her voice dripping with a disturbing calm as she crawled to his side of the bed, her eyes never leaving his.

“Agnes, is Layo, is Layo dead?” he whispered, feeling a sickening sense of déjà vu. He thought he was beyond being shocked by Agnes’s behavior.

“I believe so. You told me you killed her,” Agnes said, her voice rising as she wrapped her arms around his neck.

“I never said any such thing!” Tunde protested.

“Oh, but you did. You came home drunk one night. If I recall correctly, it was July 1st of last year. You said she was trying to sabotage our marriage, and you had to kill her.”

“You’re insane!” Tunde pushed her away, his frustration boiling over. “I’ve had enough of your lies…”

“I’m sorry, I killed her… killed who? Layo, I killed Layo. My ex-girlfriend, I ended things with her, but she wouldn’t leave me alone. She threatened to expose me, blackmailed me. I killed her in our other house and burned her body.” Agnes stopped playing the recording on her phone.

It was his voice slurred with a disturbing blend of confession and denial. Tunde’s mind raced, but he couldn’t recall any such events. He remembered their time together in the other house, but not the murder, and definitely not the confession.

“I never killed anyone. I don’t remember killing anyone. Even if I had, I wouldn’t tell you,” Tunde spat.

“Well, that’s irrelevant now. Whether you killed her or not, whether she’s actually dead or not, doesn’t matter. What matters is convincing your business partners and family. Let’s see if your children believe you. If you divorce me, I’ll hand this evidence to the police. If you try to harm me like you harmed, Layo…”

“For God’s sake, I did not kill Layo!”

Agnes smiled, a chilling, knowing smile. “It doesn’t matter.”

“If you proceed with the divorce, you’ll be responsible for Chichi’s death too.”

Tunde’s blood ran cold. “You killed Layo… and you’ve kidnapped Chichi.”

“Good night, Tunde. I hope your dreams are pleasant.” She retrieved her hairnet with a mocking grace.

“Why are you doing this?” he demanded, feeling a deep, unsettling fear.

“I don’t understand what you’re talking about,” Agnes replied, her voice deceptively calm.

“Why are you trying to hurt me? What have I done to deserve this?”

Agnes sat up, her legs swinging over the edge of the bed as she spoke. “Let me tell you about my family. My great-grandmother was married to my great-grandfather as his first wife. He promised she would be his only wife, but he took two more. She had to endure the humiliation of sharing him. She couldn’t protest because, in their world, men can do whatever they want. Women, however, must endure or leave. My grandmother’s fate was no better. She was cast out because she couldn’t give my grandfather the son he wanted. I watched my father abuse my mother, cheat on her, belittle her, until she died of cancer. The saddest part wasn’t her death but watching her beg not to be cast out as a divorced woman.”

“How does that relate to me?” Tunde asked, his voice tinged with desperation.

“How does that relate to you?” Agnes rose from the bed, her voice a chilling whisper, yet laden with venom. “You are everything I despise about men. Entitled brutes who believe the world exists solely for their pleasure, treating women like mere tools. No, Tunde. I refuse to be your tool. I refuse to let you walk away with the upper hand. I will have the last laugh in this. I gave you my best. I tried to be a good wife, to love you with all my heart. But you turned me into this. The fact that you’re willing to part with everything just to rid yourself of me makes my hatred for you burn even hotter. You ingrate, you’ve made me despise you more and more. Right from the moment you stumbled into our home reeking of alcohol, to when I saw that lipstick stain on your shirt, to the day Layo confronted me. I hated you for every single transgression. I hated that you pursued Chichi. I hated knowing how this would end; With me cast aside like a discarded rag. I hated you, Tunde.”

She closed the distance between them, her voice dropping to a menacing whisper. “But what truly made my hatred simmer was discovering how effortlessly I could manipulate you when you were drunk. How simple it was to control your driver and everyone around you, to make you as miserable as my own mother’s suffering.”

“If you despise me so much, then why are you trying to keep me?”

“My dear husband, you still don’t understand,” she said with a smirk. “I’m doing all this because I hate you. You will never find peace as long as I’m alive. I will never let you go.”

***

His hands trembled as he scrawled his signature on the contract. Once he was finished, Agnes seductively swept it from under his hands, as if savouring the finality of his capitulation.

“Perfect,” she purred. “If you ever attempt to divorce me again, you’ll leave with absolutely nothing. I’ll ensure you lose everything to that handsome partner of yours. But if I decide to release you, we’ll split everything in half, except the children. They stay with me. I’ll even change their names to mine.” She meticulously arranged the contracts in her hands. “Tunde, I will never let you go.”

He looked at the woman before him, a twisted amalgamation of all his past loves — she looked like Agnes, dressed like Layo, moved like Chichi — but she was none of them.

True to her word, the New Agnes never let him go. She made his existence a daily torment. But amidst this turmoil, Tunde found an unexpected respite. Layo, surprisingly alive but with a year of her memory erased, reappeared. Chichi also returned, though she had accepted Agnes’s offer of a reprieve in exchange for her reputation. When she returned, everything was as she had left it, and she married her fiancé.

And as for Tunde, he remained with Agnes.

THE END 

A big shout-out to Adewara Alabi Abdulrazzaq for giving me this title challenge! I had serious fun writing it.

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