A Wrong Surrogate for the CEO-Chapter 109: A visit to the prison

Tolu stared at the wall, her eyes dead and soulless. She saw nothing and heard nothing.

The world had blurred into nothing for her, and even when a prison guard banged on her door as he walked past her solitary cell, even when food was slid past the small grate in her door, Tolu saw nothing.

Heard nothing.

She was still living in her head.

To Tolu, her world hadn’t ended. She wasn’t in a police cell, charged for killing her husband and almost killing his ex wife.

No. She was back in the house she used to live with Mike, and they were happy. Fulfilled. In the version she created in her head, Mike had never married Lara at all.

He had married her right from the start instead, and there had been no mutual enemy that they had to destroy.

All they had was each other and their children, little babies running around and giggling at each other.

A perfect world. A perfect life. The life that she had so desperately wanted, the life that she has tried to build with Mike, the life that had been her dream since she was a kid.

The life she would have done everything to have.

Everything was gone. Everything.

A guard slapped his baton against her cell door, and the sharp sound reverberated in her head, her bones, her soul.

She looked up and raised bottomless eyes to stare at the guard who was sneering at her.

Tolu said nothing as she waited for him to speak, to tell her why he interrupted the beautiful imagination she was currently living in her head.

"You have a guest," he said curtly as he opened the door. A small silver of surprise slithered into Tolu’s bones.

A visitor? No one had ever come to visit her since she got arrested. And that hadn’t been surprising, seeing as she had no one left.

Tolu dragged herself into a standing position, and as she followed the guard out of the cell and down the hallway, she could not help but slip back into the world in her head.

Her babies were twins. Identical girls. They looked so alike that even she, their mother, had trouble identifying them.

Mike would be able to identify the kids though, and he would tease her mercilessly for not recognising her own kids.

The guard led her into a room that was barely larger than her cell, and he barked, "You have fifteen minutes," before he walked out and closed the door behind him.

Tolu raised her head to stare at the glass separating her and the supposed visitor, and when her eyes settled on who it was, rage slammed into her.

The anger hit Tolu so hard, and it was so sudden that it made her knees buckle. If looks could kill, Lara would have been dead from the glare Tolu gave her as she made her way towards the chair before the glass.

Lara gave Tolu a shaky smile, but Tolu didn’t return the gesture.

Raising the telephone to her ear, Tolu snarled at the woman who was the cause of everything that happened to her.

"What the hell do you think you are doing here, Lara?" Tolu spat, and her anger flared when she saw something that looked like sadness and pity in Lara’s eyes.

"If your intention by coming here is to mock me, then you don’t have to waste my time. My life is already miserable enough, and I don’t need you to rub it in my face," she snapped.

Lara remained silent for a long while, and Tolu was about to snap at her again when she finally spoke.

"When Kayla and Curtis explained everything that happened to me, I...I didn’t believe them. It was hard to believe, to be honest. But they could not have lied about something like that, and I...I had to be sure. I needed to know. And now that I am looking at you, I... I don’t know what to think."

Tolu’s brows furrowed into a confused, bewildered frown.

What the hell was Lara yapping about? Why was she speaking like that?

"You killed Mike. Why? Why did you kill him? Why would you take a man’s life just because you wanted to? What...what went wrong with you, Tolu?"

Lara’s eyes were brimming with tears, and Tolu’s confusion deepened.

"Did you...hit your head or something?" Tolu quipped.

Lara took a deep shaky breath before she responded.

"I...I have lost my memory."

The words hit Tolu like a boulder. Her lungs momentarily stopped working, and she stared at Lara with her jaw hanging open.

"What kind of sick joke are you trying to play on me?" she snapped.

"I am serious, Tolu. I was in a coma for months, and when I woke up, I didn’t remember anything. I still don’t. But Curtis and Kayla told me everything that happened with me, you and Mike. It was kind of hard to believe, so I had to come here. I had to see for myself."

A cruel, cold helplessness started to spread through Tolu’s bones as Lara’s words settled into her blood.

Lara had lost her memory. She didn’t remember anything, and the unfairness of it all made Tolu want to tear the hair off her head.

"What the actual hell? You don’t...you don’t really remember anything? Not even a single memory?" Tolu yelled, and Lara’s silence made her more enraged.

She had done everything, everything, because of Lara. And now the universe decided to top her misery by making Lara forget?

Fucking hell, Tolu thought.

Fucking, effing hell.

Lara’s gaze hardened as she spoke again. "I know you’re already paying for your sins, but I just want to let you know that I hope you get what you deserve. Regardless of what he did, he did not deserve to die in your hands like that. I hope your life is as cold and miserable as Mike’s coffin currently is. And I hope that his ghost haunts you for the rest of your life."

Then Lara placed the telephone down, ending the conversation. Her last words echoed in Tolu’s head, over and over and over again.

Unable to stop herself, without thinking about anything at all but those damning words, Tolu started to laugh.

Wild, loud laughter slipped past her lips, and tears streamed down her face as she lost her mind.

Lara had been given a blank slate to start all over again. And Mike was dead. Mike, her husband, the love of her miserable life, was dead.

He died because she killed him. Stabbed him with a knife and left his bleeding body on the floor.

Tolu didn’t stop laughing. She could not. Her world had come to an end, and there was nothing left for her.

As the guards dragged her away, Tolu continued to laugh. There was no end to it, and as Tolu lost the last pieces of her sanity, as she went mad, a wide abyss pulsing with unending darkness reached out and swallowed her whole.