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All Chapters of Planning and Ruining my Ex's Wedding : Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

27 Chapters

THE GROOM

MANDYThe biggest booking of my career walked in at 11:58, as the bride-to-be of my ex-fiancé.I was fixing a swan at the time.The Halcyon’s caterers had folded twelve of them. For four people. There are two napkin folds you never use at a tasting, and the swan is the one that says you’ve given up and have no idea what you’re doing.“Mandy,” Bisi hissed from the door. “They’re here.”I looked up.Tiwalade Ajayi-Williams came first. Small, bright, yellow sundress, half a croissant in one hand. She hugged me before I could offer mine.“You’re Mandy, right?! Call me Tiwa. Sorry, I’m a hugger. Is this okay? This is okay.” She spotted the table. “Peonies! How did you know?”“Your questionnaire. Page three. You underlined it twice.”The peonies were mine. Backups, from the boot of my car, swapped in ten minutes earlier for a centrepiece of dyed peach carnations. I always carry backup peonies.You only get betrayed by a florist once.She beamed and turned to the door. “Babe, come and see. T

Last Updated : 2026-10-30

THE PLUS-ONE

DAMIShe didn’t say yes.Most people do, when I ask them something in that tone. Board members. Bankers. My mother, once, in 2019.Amanda Okorie looked at me like I’d suggested she set the hotel on fire, said, “I have a three o’clock,” and walked away down that hideous carpet with her gold folder pressed to her chest like a shield.I let her go.People who give such response are usually thinking about it.……………….I know more about Daniel Cole than his barber does. I know where his history stops, and it stops far too recently for a man of thirty-two. I know about four small transfers out of my sister’s trust that nobody else has noticed.I’ll show her. When she’s ready to look.I’ll be honest. I had expected the ex-fiancée to be a problem. Bitter. Messy. The kind of woman who leaks screenshots.Instead I got invoices.Beautiful, irritating, itemised invoices. When I asked about the candles, she sent me a breakdown by height, burn time and fire code. When I questioned the styling fee, s

Last Updated : 2026-10-30

TERMS AND CONDITIONS

MANDYI smiled through the rest of the tart.I smiled through Tiwa squealing “Lare has a girlfriend!” to every guest within a thirty-foot radius. I smiled when Aunt Abike asked how long we’d been together and he said “Long enough,” like that was a number.I smiled when Chief Imelda Ajayi-Williams shook my hand at the gate and held on one second too long.“Goodnight, Chimamanda.”All four syllables, correctly pronounced, in a tone that said she would be learning the rest of me soon.By eleven, the last car was gone. I walked to mine in the dark with my clipboard, my earpiece and my last nerve.My car is a 2011 Corolla with a sticky passenger door and a back seat full of centrepieces. It is not built for dramatic exits.Mr. Ajayi-Williams was leaning against it.Of course he was. I still didn’t know what to make of him. Trying to stop his sister’s wedding, that I understood. He was, of course, overprotective of her. But trying to get me to aid him in it… And what the fuck was that in th

Last Updated : 2026-10-30

OLD MONEY, NEW NAMES

DAMIShe didn’t scream.I’d prepared for screaming. Let her get it out, say nothing, hand her a tissue from the glove box. Then I remembered whose glove box it was and assumed it held fuses and a parking ticket from 2016.Instead, Amanda Okorie went very still.“Then what is it?”“Somadina Ezenwa.”She repeated it slowly, correcting my pronunciation without seeming to notice she’d done it.“He told me he didn’t have an Igbo name. He said his parents were too modern for all that.”“His grandmother named him. It means ‘may I not be alone.’”“Well,” she said. “He’s certainly working on that.”I pulled up the photo Tobi, my investigator, had sent me last week. A newspaper scan from 2011, slightly crooked. A courthouse in Lagos. A man in a grey suit being led down the steps, and behind him, a boy of about seventeen with his hands in his pockets and a face I had sat across from at Sunday lunch.Amanda took the phone. Zoomed in. Zoomed in again.“That’s his chin,” she said quietly. “He hates

Last Updated : 2026-10-30

SOMEONE NICE

MANDYI read it four times.‘Dami? Cute. Is someone trying to make me jealous?’Nine words. Two words fewer than the last one he sent three months ago.Three months of silence, and now this. I forwarded it to Dami. Dami had replied,‘Told you he’d be intimidated.’Then,‘Let me text you later.’But the craziest part wasn’t how Dami had predicted this. It was…I looked around my office like the walls had grown ears.Two desks. One fan. A mood board of fabric swatches. A snake plant by the window that had survived two years of me forgetting it existed. The window was open onto Yaba traffic and a danfo conductor shouting “Oyingbo, Oyingbo!” like it was a prayer.Nobody.I walked to my door and found it slightly open. I could have sworn I had locked it. Or hadn’t I?I had said it into my phone. In here. Alone. So…No. Dami must have told Tiwa, and she in turn told him. That was the only logical explanation.I typed four replies. Deleted all four. One of them was just the word ‘YOU’, follo

Last Updated : 2026-10-30

LUNCH WITH THE CHIEF

DAMII found out from my sister, which is how I find out most things my mother would rather I didn’t.“Lare! Mummy’s having lunch with Mandy on Thursday!” Tiwa said on the phone, delighted, like she’d just heard they were going on holiday together. “Isn’t that sweet? She never has lunch with my friends.”“She doesn’t have lunch with anyone.”“Exactly! It means she likes her.”It does not mean that.When my mother invites you to lunch, it means she has already read your file. Lunch is just where she tells you what’s in it.I once watched her do it to a governor. He left without his dessert and, a month later, without his seat.I hung up and called Amanda.She picked up on the first ring. “Clause two doesn’t cover your mother.”“Where and when?”“Ikoyi Club. One o’clock. Thursday.” A pause. “She said alone, Dami.”Nobody calls me that. She’d been doing it for almost a week and I still hadn’t decided whether to object. I was starting to suspect I wouldn’t.Since Monday she had said it mo

Last Updated : 2026-11-03

SPARE KEYS

MANDYI knew that dress.That was my first thought. Not ‘oh no’. Just: I knew that dress. Red. Cut on the bias. I’d paid it off in three instalments and spilled zobo on the hem before the speeches.Funny, what your brain grabs when the floor tilts.Chief Imelda Ajayi-Williams folded her hands on the tablecloth and waited.Beside me, Dami had gone very still. The way a cat is still right before it decides what to do about a rat.I could lie. I am an excellent liar about small things. But this wasn’t small.“Yes,” I said. “That’s me. And that’s Daniel.”“You were engaged to him.”“For a year. We ran the company together. Okorie & Cole.” My voice was steady. My napkin was not. “Three months ago, two weeks before our wedding, he left. By text. He took nothing except himself and left me everything else, including the debt.”Her face didn’t move.“And you did not think to tell my daughter this?”“I found out who the groom was at the tasting, ma. The same day as the scallops.” I swallowed. “

Last Updated : 2026-11-03

MARCUS LANE

DAMIShe called at 10:46 p.m.I was still in my study, reading a port tender nobody would ever finish reading. I picked up on the first ring.“My chair,” she said.That was all. Two words, very calm, the way people speak when the alternative is screaming.“Where are you?”“In the office.”“I told you…”“I know what you told me. My laptop was dying.” A breath. “Dami, he’s been in here. Tonight. He turned my chair to the window. That’s what he used to do. He’d sit in my chair and look at the road and say he was thinking.”“Is anything missing?”“No. Nothing’s missing. That’s the point. He wants me to know he can.”“Go down to your car and lock the doors. I’m coming.”“You don’t have to…”I had already hung up. It’s rude. It’s also faster.……………….Third Mainland Bridge at night is the only part of Lagos that ever feels empty. I made it to Yaba in twenty-two minutes. My driver didn’t speak once. He has driven me for eleven years. He knows the difference between urgent and important, and h

Last Updated : 2026-11-03

TWO SUGARS

MANDYI don’t take sugar anymore.I stopped three months ago, around the same time I stopped sleeping past five. Heartbreak is an excellent diet if you don’t mind crying in the shower.He didn’t know that.Good.“Daniel,” I said.“Mandy.”“Amanda,” I corrected.He smiled. “Mandy.”He said it the old way, and he said it on purpose. Soft on the first syllable. Like the name belonged to him and he was only letting me borrow it.He put the coffee on my desk, right on top of my spreadsheet, the way he always used to. I turned my phone over like I was checking the time, opened the voice recorder, pressed the red button, and turned it face down again.Clause two. Full disclosure. Dami would want every word. Fine. He could have them.“You can’t be here,” I said.“It’s my office.”“It was your office. Now it’s the office you abandoned with your name still on the door.”He glanced at the door. At the gold foil. ‘Okorie & Cole Events.’“You didn’t take it down.”“Are you fucking serious?” I aske

Last Updated : 2026-11-03

FAMILY NOW

DAMII left the board meeting at “I still love you.”I didn’t say anything. I just stood, buttoned my jacket and walked out while my CFO was halfway through a slide about container volumes. “Egbon?” he said. Eleven people watched me go. Not one of them asked why.That is the main benefit of being difficult. People stop expecting explanations.I watched the rest in the back of the car, volume all the way up.‘Tell your boyfriend the camera in your plant is crooked.’He said it looking straight into the lens. Straight at me.After he left, Amanda didn’t move from her desk. Ten seconds. Twenty. Then she walked to the snake plant, reached between the leaves, and straightened the camera by maybe two degrees.She looked into the lens.“It wasn’t crooked, for the record,” she said to me. “But shit.”Then she sat down and put her face in her hands.I told my driver to go faster.……………….Yaba traffic does not care who you are. It took forty minutes.Bisi was outside the office door like a boun

Last Updated : 2026-11-03

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