Planning and Ruining my Ex's Wedding
Three months ago, Daniel Cole left me two weeks before our wedding.
No goodbye. No explanation. Just a text at 2:14 a.m. and a loan with both our names on it.
Now he’s back.
Same smile. Same navy suit. New fiancée.
And guess who just signed the contract to plan their wedding?
Me. Chimamanda Okorie. Amanda to him, thank you very much.
The bride is Tiwa Ajayi-Williams, the sweetest heiress in Lagos, and if I walk away now, I owe her family fifty percent of a fee I’ve already spent keeping my father alive.
So I smile. I order the peonies. I pretend I don’t know the groom.
Then her brother corners me.
Oluwadamilare Ajayi-Williams. CEO. Cold as a boardroom at 8 a.m. He reads bank statements for fun, and he’s certain Daniel isn’t who he says he is.
He’s right. Daniel isn’t even his real name.
Dami’s offer is simple. Pose as his girlfriend, get close to the family, and help him expose the man who’s about to marry his sister. In return, my debts go away.
Five conditions. One signature. Absolutely no kissing.
It should be easy.
Plan the perfect wedding. Ruin it at the altar.
Except the closer I get to the truth, the more Daniel’s lies start leading back to me. Dami is looking at me like I’m the only thing he can’t put a price on.
And I’m starting to forget which part of this is fake.
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Chapter: THE WINE CELLARDamiFive weeks went the way weeks go in Lagos before a big wedding. Fast, loud, and mostly in traffic.Tobi built a file. Candice sent him scans from Johannesburg, one careful batch at a time. Court papers. Bank records. A photograph of her grandmother’s diamond under a jeweller’s lamp, the little feather on the left side.I went to Ward C three more Sundays. Pa Ikenna and I discussed football, the price of diesel, and whether I ate properly. I bought better groundnuts each time. He noticed.The registry notice came down from the board in Ikoyi. Nobody objected. Amanda had two certified copies and a stolen serial number in a drawer, and she still hadn’t decided what to do with them. Neither had I. It wasn’t ours to decide.Daniel sent breakfast every Monday.My mother started locking her study. She had never locked anything in her life. She had people for that.And Amanda and I did not mention the desk. We had become very, very good at not mentioning the desk.Three weeks before the
Last Updated: 2026-11-05
Chapter: FOR CMandy“Your nice somebody came,” Dad said on Sunday evening, before I’d even sat down.I froze with my bag halfway onto the chair that tilts to the left.“Who?”“Oluwadamilare.” He pronounced every syllable with great care, like a man who had been practising. “Tall. Serious. He brought groundnuts.”He pointed at the bedside table. A paper bag, half empty, shells in a neat pile beside it.“He came here?”“This morning. He sat in that chair.” Dad looked very pleased with himself. “He doesn’t talk too much. I like that. Men who talk too much are selling something.”I sat down slowly.“What did you talk about?”“You.” He peeled a groundnut. “And he says you’ve never cooked for him.”“Daddy…”“Amanda. A man brings groundnuts to your sick father without being asked. Cook for him.”I didn’t know what to say. So I took a groundnut, and ate it, and looked at the ceiling until my eyes stopped stinging.He hadn’t told me. He hadn’t put it in a text or mentioned it at his mother’s lunch, where Im
Last Updated: 2026-11-05
Chapter: GROUNDNUTSDamiBy Thursday morning, the post had been shared forty thousand times, and my mother had called me eleven times.I let the first ten go to voicemail. The eleventh, I answered, because my assistant came in and told me that my mother’s driver was downstairs and had been told not to leave without me.“Lare.” Her voice was very calm. That’s how I knew. “The ex, Lare. On a gossip page. Holding your hand at Ninth Floor.”“She’s not just the Ex, Mummy. She’s my girlfriend.”“She is your sister’s wedding planner.”“She can be both.”“Nobody can be both. That is the entire point of a planner.”I looked out of my office window at the lagoon. A ferry was crossing toward Ikorodu, very slowly, as if it had all the time in the world.“Is that why you called?” I asked.There was a pause. A long one, for her.“Has Daniel said anything to you?” she asked. “About me?”I turned away from the window.“Like what?”“Nothing. Anything.” Another pause. “He’s been very… friendly. At the house. He asks a lot
Last Updated: 2026-11-05
Chapter: RUN OF SHOWMandyFor twenty-four hours, I waited to be arrested.I don’t know who I thought would arrest me. Daniel didn’t have police. Daniel had cameras, and a man called Kunle, and my company’s bank account. But every time a car slowed down outside the office, my stomach dropped into my shoes.Tobi spent Saturday afternoon on the cameras.“They weren’t found,” he said at last. “Or if they were, nobody smashed them. Somebody switched on a signal blocker inside the house. Both feeds went at once, within four seconds of each other. That’s a man who sweeps his own house.”“So he knows,” said Bisi.“Or he’s careful.” Tobi rubbed his eyes. “Careful men sweep every night.”“Which one is it?”“I don’t know.”I was getting very tired of the people I relied on not knowing things.……………….On Monday morning, Daniel sent breakfast.It came at eight thirty to the Yaba office, carried up the stairs by a dispatch rider in a red helmet. Akara, still hot. Pap in a flask. Agege bread wrapped in newspaper. And a
Last Updated: 2026-11-05
Chapter: THE DRIVE HOMEDamiWe waited until the car had gone. Then we waited five minutes more, because Amanda said so, and because I couldn’t have stood up yet even if I was paid to.When we finally crawled out from under the desk, she didn’t look at me. She checked the drawers instead. All of them. Twice.“Still there,” she whispered. “Except the laptop.”“Except the laptop.”In the living room, Daniel was still asleep, one arm over his face. Amanda stood over him for a moment. Then she took the throw off the back of the sofa and laid it over him, all the way up to his chin.I stared at her.“I’m supposed to have stayed,” she said, low. “I’m supposed to be the girl who cooked with him and drank his wine and watched him fall asleep. That girl leaves a note.”She found a pen in the kitchen and wrote on the back of a receipt, in her neat round hand.‘You fell asleep. Didn’t want to wake you. Thank you for dinner. A.’She left it propped against his empty glass.It was the most frightening thing I’d ever seen
Last Updated: 2026-11-05
Chapter: UNDER THE DESKMandyThere is a moment, in every disaster, when your body decides before your brain does.Mine decided on the study.I grabbed Dami’s wrist and pulled him backwards through the door we had just closed. Two steps. Three. The desk was enormous, dark wood, with a solid panel down the front, the kind of desk a man buys to look important in video calls.I went under it. Dami came after me.He is not a small man. It was not a large space.We ended up folded together in the dark, my back against the panel, his shoulder against my shoulder, his knees somewhere I decided not to think about. My bare feet were tucked under his leg. His aftershave was in my nose. My heart was in my throat.In the living room, the man laughed.“Wine again?” he said. “Soma, you can’t hold your drink. You never could.”Soma.I looked at Dami. In the dark, I could only see the shine of his eyes. He shook his head once. Not now.……………….Footsteps. Unhurried. A man who knew the house.He walked past the sofa and down
Last Updated: 2026-11-05
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