“Hide inside this deep freezer. Your mummy is coming to beat you with a cane. Don’t come out until I open the door,” Aunty Chidera, the housemaid, whispered to Junior

“We found this with her,” the officer said. “She confessed everything. How she broke your safe. How she locked you inside.”

Philip looked at Chidera with fire in his eyes.

“You ate my food,” Philip said, his voice shaking with anger. “We paid your school fees. We treated you like a daughter. And this is how you pay us? By trying to k!|| my wife and son?”

“I am sorry, Sir! Please don’t send me to prison!” Chidera cried. “I will serve you forever! Just forgive me!”

Gloria looked at Chidera. She looked at the tears.

Then she looked at Junior, who was holding her leg, afraid of “Aunty Chidera.”

Gloria stepped forward.

“I forgive you, Chidera,” Gloria said softly.
Chidera’s eyes lit up. “Thank you, Ma! Thank you!”

“I forgive you,” Gloria continued, “so that God will not hold anger in my heart. But forgiveness does not mean freedom from consequences.”

She turned to the DPO.

“Officer.”

“Yes, Madam.”

“She tried to commit murd£r. She stole millions. Let the law take its full course.”

“NO! MADAM PLEASE!” Chidera screamed as the officers unlocked the cell to take her to the Black Maria van.

“I AM SORRY! JUNIOR TELL YOUR MUMMY TO FORGIVE ME!”

But Junior just looked away.

They dragged her out. The heavy iron door of the prison van slammed shut.

GBAM.

As the van drove away to the maximum security prison, Gloria hugged her husband and her son.

They were alive. They were together. And the evil in their home had been swept away.