Chuks was never a violent person. If anything, he was the quiet one. The one who’d rather walk away from a fight than throw a punch. But pain has a way of changing a man. Especially when the system you trusted turns its back on you.

It started with Ada.

She was only 19. Bright, full of fire, with dreams taller than the dilapidated roofs in their part of Enugu. Final year at UNN, studying to be a nurse. She wanted to “save lives” — those were her words.

But one evening, coming back from her tutorial class, she was attacked.

Raped. Strangled. Left like rubbish by the side of the road.

The man who did it? Everybody knew him. Small-time cultist, the kind of boy mothers whispered about. He walked the streets freely, puffing cheap weed, laughing like nothing happened.

Chuks reported him. Twice. Took witnesses. Cried. Begged.

But the police? They asked him who his father was. No connections. No money. They told him to “go and pray to God.”

Pray?

Chuks prayed.

And waited.

Two months passed. The murderer was still free. Still breathing. Still laughing.

One night, Chuks snapped.

He didn’t plan it like in the movies. No cold strategy. Just rage. Burning, choking rage. He waited outside the suspect's compound with a rusty knife. When the boy stumbled out, high as usual, Chuks stabbed him. Once. Twice. Eight times.

When the blood stopped flowing, Chuks felt nothing.

He didn’t run.

Didn’t hide.

When the police came, he raised his hands.

“I killed him.”

No excuses. No regrets.

At the trial, they called him a murderer. A criminal. Nobody mentioned Ada’s name.

But Chuks didn’t flinch when the judge said, “Death by hanging.”

He even smiled.

Because for the first time since Ada’s death, justice had been served.

Maybe not by the law, but by his own two hands.

In prison, when asked if he regretted it, Chuks simply said, “What would you have done if she was your sister?”

Silence.

He was ready to die.

And as the date drew closer, his only wish was simple.

“Let them write my story right.”

Not as a murderer.

But as a brother who did what the law refused to do.

A brother who loved too deeply to sit back and watch his sister’s death be forgotten.