the pastor I trusted and my boyfriend were having an affair 

Before I tell you what this pastor did to a woman who trusted her with everything, I need you to first understand exactly how much this woman had to lose. Because the depth of a fall depends entirely on the height a person was standing at. And Isla, my friends, was standing very, very high. Stay with me till the end of this one because by the time I’m done, you will never look at another God told me sentence the same way again.

 And if you’ve ever mistaken religious performance for a genuine relationship with God, subscribe right now because this story was written for you. Let me start at the hardware store because that’s really where Isla’s whole life lived. If you drove down Adi Street in that part of Lagos, you couldn’t miss it.

 a long wide compound with a corrugated blue roof and a sign so big it practically shouted at you from two streets away. Isla’s building depot. Everything for every building. And that sign was not exaggerating. You wanted cement. She had six brands stacked in towers taller than most of her staff. You wanted roofing sheets. She had aluminum, zinc, stonecoated.

whatever your pocket could afford. Nails sorted by size in labelled bins like a pharmacy. Paint mixed on the spot to match whatever swatch you brought in. Plumbing pipes, electrical wiring, tiles from three different countries. Wheelbarrows, shovels, generators. If it touched a building at any point in its life, Islas somewhere on that concount.

She had built that entire empire from a single rented container shop 15 years earlier, back when she was 17, and selling nails and hinges to whoever would stop. Nobody gave her a loan. Nobody gave her a head start. She built it brick by brick, sale by sale. And by the time she turned 32, contractors from three different local government areas were driving past smaller, closer hardware shops just to buy from her because everybody knew Isla didn’t stock rubbish.

 And Isla didn’t cheat you on price. And here’s the part that always made people do a double take. You’d walk into that dusty compound, past bags of cement and stacks of roofing sheets, expecting to find a woman in an apron and rubber boots, and instead you’d find Ecer behind the counter in a cream silk blouse, gold hoops swinging, heels clicking against the concrete floor, counting invoices like she was closing a boardroom deal.

 She was strikingly beautiful, too. smooth, dark skin, a smile that made even the toughest, most stone-faced contractors soften up mid negotiation. More than one supplier had tried to flet his way into a discount and left paying full price with a smile on his face anyway because Iceland knew exactly how to be warm and immovable at the same time.

 Auntie Isla, please now just 5,000 off. A regular contractor named Baba Seu begged her one afternoon, leaning on the counter with his most persuasive face. Isla didn’t even look up from her ledger. Baba Seu, when your building collapses because you used substandard cement to save 5,000 naira. Will the 5,000 naira rebuild it? The whole store burst out laughing.

 Baba Seu included. and he paid full price, laughing the whole way to his car. That was Isla. Sharp enough to run rings around grown businessmen, but never in a way that left them bitter. People liked losing to her. She drove a car so clean you could see your own reflection in the paint job.

 Upgraded her phone the week each new model dropped and lived in a house with a compound big enough that her house boy used a wheelbarrow to move things between the garden and the back gate. She had by every measure the world uses made it. But if you want to understand what really made Isla who she was, you have to understand the other half of her life.

 the part that had nothing to do with money at all. Isla loved God, not the performative kind of loving God where you post a Bible verse on your status and call it day. She meant it deep in her bones. The kind of faith that had carried her through 15 years of building something out of nothing with no husband, no father’s inheritance, no godfather in high places.

 Every single Sunday without fail, rain or shine, delivery emergencies or not, Isla was seated in the third row at Living Waters Chapel, a midsized, fast growing church a short drive from her store led by a woman named Pastor Florence. Now, before I go any further, let me paint Pastor Florence for you properly because you need to see her exactly the way the congregation saw her.

 She was a striking woman herself, always in flowing, expensive looking gowns. Geler tied so perfectly, it looked architectural. A voice that could shift in half a second from a gentle whisper to a commanding roar that shook the rafters. When Pastor Florence prayed for you, you felt it in your chest. When she prophesied over the congregation, somebody’s breakthrough is this month.

There’s a woman here. God is about to double. People wept, shouted, fell to their knees. She had built living waters from a rented hall to a proper building with a car park in under 6 years. And everybody, Isla included, believed that kind of growth could only come from God’s own hand.

 Isa didn’t do anything by halves, and that included her giving. When the offering basket came around, she gave generously. Sometimes 80,000 naira in a single Sunday, sometimes more, folded neatly and dropped without any fanfare. And when it came to her monthly tithe, because everything was digital now, transfers with her full name attached and a little thank you Lord note in the description, she would quietly send in anywhere from 200,000 to over 300,000 naira without telling a single soul.

 Exactly the way scripture says giving should be done. The right hand not knowing what the left hand is doing. But here’s a small sobering truth about our modern digital age that Isla hadn’t quite considered. When your name is attached to a bank alert, it stops being quite so secret. Someone somewhere is watching that account.

 And Pastor Florence was watching very closely indeed. Month after month, the same name kept appearing at the very top of the church’s tithe and offering records. Isla Admi, not just appearing, dominating. Some months, Isla’s single tithe was larger than the combined tithes of 20 other members put together, Pastor Florence noticed.

 And once a woman like Pastor Florence notices something like that, she doesn’t simply admire it from a distance. She starts to plan. So one Sunday afternoon after the final amen had been said and the ushers were folding chairs and sweeping the floor, Pastor Flores caught Isla gently by the wrist just as she was heading for the door. Isla, sister, wait.

 Let me talk to you. Isla turned surprised, her handbag already halfway onto her shoulder. Yes, ma. Is everything okay? Pastor Florence’s face arranged itself into something worn, urgent, almost tearful. She lowered her voice the way you do when you about to share something too holy for ordinary volume. Something has been sitting on my spirit without you for weeks now.

 Last night in my prayer time, the Lord showed me your face. He said, “This one, pull her close. She’s not just a member. She is your sister.” He said, “There is a divine assignment on your life, and I am meant to walk with you through it personally, not just as your pastor, but as family.” Now, I want you to sit with that for a second because I want you to really understand what that sentence does to a certain kind of woman.

 If you’ve ever been the strong one, the capable one, the one everyone leans on but nobody checks on, tell me in the comments right now because Isa was exactly that woman. And watch how fast her guard came down. Isa’s eyes filled instantly. Pastor, are you serious? I’ve been praying. I’ve genuinely been praying for real spiritual covering for someone who just sees me. Not my store, not my money, me.

The Lord sees you, my daughter,” Pastor Florence said, pulling her into a hug that lingered just a few seconds longer than a normal church hug should. “And now, so do I.” “If you want to know how a woman sharp enough to outnegotiate cement suppliers for 15 straight years, can lose all her descentment in under 30 seconds.

” This is exactly how business had made Isla sharp, but loneliness, quiet and patient, had been sitting underneath that sharpness the whole time, waiting for someone to speak directly to it. And every person looking to take advantage of a good woman knows precisely which version of her to address. The friendship that followed moved fast, almost suspiciously fast.

 if Isla had been in the habit of being suspicious of her own pastor, which of course she wasn’t. Pastor Florence began calling her my sister from the pullpit right in front of the whole congregation. She invited her to her house for dinner twice a month, complimented her business mind at every opportunity, told her privately that God had shown her a vision of Isla’s future so bright she had to sit down when she saw it.

 She started calling just to check on her. Small voice notes in the morning. Good morning, my sister. How did you sleep? I just want you to know I prayed for you before I even brushed my teeth. Is LA, for her part, was floating on air. After years of being the woman everyone assumed was too busy, too successful, too intimidating for real friendship, she had finally found what felt like an anchor.

 a godly woman, a spiritual mother, someone who loved her not for her hardware store or her banks, but simply because, in her words, God said so. Her sister Zanab was not quite as enchanted. Isla Uh-uh. Since when does a pastor call ordinary members my sister like that? Zanab asked one evening on the phone. Half joking, half not.

 You’ve been going to that church for what, 3 years? And suddenly this year she’s your best friend. Zanab, don’t be like that. Isla laughed, waving a hand even though her sister couldn’t see it. Some people are just genuinely led by the spirit. H Zanab said the kind of H that carries an entire unspoken paragraph inside it.

Just be careful. That’s all I’m saying. Islab brushed it off completely. Why wouldn’t she? She had spent 15 years being told by suppliers, competitors, even well-meaning friends to be careful about every single business decision she’d ever made. And she’d build an empire anyway by trusting her own judgment.

 This, she told herself, was no different. Except it was because this time the person she was trusting had spent months carefully studying her bank alerts before ever calling her a sister. By the time three more months had passed, Isla was without fully realizing it, one of the most spiritually devoted, most financially generous, and though she would never have used this word for herself, most exposed women in that entire congregation.

She trusted Pastor Florence with her prayer requests, her business worries, her private hopes about finally settling down and starting a family before she got too old for it, as she put it herself, laughing nervously, the way women in their 30s are conditioned to laugh about their own biological clocks. And Pastor Florence listened to every single word, carefully, patiently, finding every piece of it away.

 Because here’s the thing about a woman who has already handed you her full trust, her financial patterns, and her deepest longings, all wrapped up together and delivered with a hug. She has without knowing it handed you the exact blueprint you would need if you ever wanted to reach directly into her life and rearrange it from the inside.

 Isla didn’t know that yet. She was too busy being grateful. If you’ve ever had his spiritual mother or a prayer partner who somehow always seemed to know a little too much about your money, drop a comment right now and tell me because this story is about to show you exactly where that kind of knowing can lead.

 And if this is already giving you chills, go ahead and hit subscribe because what Pastor Florence does with everything she’s just learned about Isla is coming in the very next chapter. And it starts the moment a man named Gabriel walks into that hardware store looking for tiles. It was a Tuesday, an ordinary, forgettable Tuesday, the kind Isla had lived through a thousand times in that store, when a man walked in asking for tiles, and her whole life quietly began tilting off its axis without her noticing a thing.

He was tall, the kind of tall that made him dock slightly under the door frame leading to the tile section with skin like polished mahogany and shoulders that filled out his shirt the way shoulders do when a man has done real physical work at some point in his life, or at least wants you to think he has. His name, he said, extending a hand with his smile that arrived slowly and settled in like it belonged there, was Gabriel.

 “I’m looking for something for a bathroom floor,” he said. “Nothing too flashy. Something honest.” “Something honest?” Isla repeated, raising an eyebrow, already amused. “Sir, this is a hardware store, not a church. Tiles don’t have immoral character. Gabriel laughed. A real laugh. Head tipped back slightly. Not the polite chuckle most customers gave her jokes.

Fair. Let me rephrase. Something that won’t lie to me about how long it’ll last. Now that Isla said, coming around the counter, I can help you with. She walked him through the towel section herself, which was unusual. Normally, she left customers to her staff and only stepped in for big contractor orders.

 But there was something about the way he asked questions that pulled her in. He wanted to know about porocity, about grout lines, about which brand actually matched its own marketing. He wasn’t performing knowledge to impress her. He seemed to genuinely want to understand what he was buying. and it had been a long time since a man had made Isla feel like the smartest person in a conversation without also making her feel talked down to.

 He left 40 minutes later with a modest bag of ceramic tiles and though neither of them said it out loud, the beginning of something. Chidi, Eisler said afterward to her longtime supervisor, a quiet, sharpeyed man who’d worked with her for 9 years and had a talent for saying nothing while clearly thinking a great deal.

 Did you see that man? I saw him, madam, Chidi said, not looking up from the delivery manifest he was checking. He asked good questions. Chidi said, “You are not going to say anything else.” Chidi finally looked up. “Madam, you asked if I saw him. I saw him. That’s all you asked me.” Isa laughed and swatted him lightly with her clipboard, but she noticed because she noticed everything in her store.

 That Chitty’s face had done something small and careful when he said it. She didn’t think much of it. Not yet. Gabriel came back 2 days later for just one more thing, a bag of grout he almost certainly didn’t need yet since the tiles hadn’t even been laid. Then again the following week for advice on a project which turned into an hour-ong conversation that had nothing to do with tiles at all and everything to do with her, how she’d built the store from a container shop at 17, what her mother had been like, whether she believed in

destiny. I believe in hard work, Eciser told him, leaning against the counter as the evening light slanted gold through the store’s front windows. Destiny is just what people call hard work after it’s already paid off. Gabriel smiled at that like she’d said something profound. I think that’s the smartest thing anyone said to me all year.

 If you’re a woman watching this and you’ve ever had a man make you feel like the smartest person in every room only to realize much later that he was simply an excellent listener with a specific goal in mind. Type I know that feeling in the comments right now because 32 years old successful beyond most people’s wildest dreams and quietly tired of being the woman everyone assumed was too busy or too much for love.

 found herself for the first time in years looking forward to Tuesdays. Tuesdays had somehow without her quite agreeing to it become Gabriel Days. Naturally, she told Pastor Florence. She told her everything actually. The way he asked questions, the way he remembered small details, the way her stomach did something embarrassing every time his name lit up her phone. She expected warmth.

 She expected excitement. What she got was something else entirely. Pastor Florence went very still, her eyes widening in a way that looked to Isla exactly like divine revelation. Isla, she said slowly, gripping both of Isla’s hands in hers. You said his name is Gabriel. Yes, ma. Why? My sister. Pastor Florence’s voice dropped to that same holy whisper she’d used the day she first claimed God had told her to be Isla’s friend.

 The night before you told me about him, I had a dream. In the dream, I saw an angel standing at your gate. I didn’t understand it then, but an angel Isla Gabriel is the name of an angel. She pressed a hand to her own chest as though the weight of the revelation was almost too much to bear. This is not coincidence. This is God confirming what I already saw. Double portion Isla.

 I told you months ago God was preparing double portion for you. A spiritual family and now a husband both at once. ; You really think so, pastor? Isla’s voice cracked slightly. I know so, my sister. I have never been more sure of anything. So Isla, thanking God, thanking her pastor, thanking whatever force have aligned a man’s name with an angel’s name, let herself fall completely.

And Gabriel, it must be said, was an extremely convincing man to fall for. He showed up with small, thoughtful things, not extravagant gifts, which in hindsight was clever, because extravagant gifts invite questions about where the money came from, while small, thoughtful things invite only warmth. a specific brand of ginger biscuits she’d mentioned liking exactly once 3 weeks earlier.

 A voice note every morning reminding her to eat breakfast before she buried herself in invoices. He told her repeatedly that her strength as a businesswoman didn’t intimidate him. It inspired him. And if you have ever been a powerful woman who’s been quietly told by every man before this one that she was too much, you understand exactly how disarming that sentence can be.

 There was however a pattern developing that either didn’t notice or more accurately chose very hard not to notice. Isla, her sister Zanab said one Sunday afternoon, watching Gabriel drive off in Isla’s second car after a lunch Isla had paid for at a restaurant Isla had chosen wearing a shirt Isla had bought him the week before.

 “Zanab, please don’t start,” Isla said, waving a hand. “I’m asking a simple question. Fuel, food, anything. He’s building himself up, Zanab. Not every man starts from where I started. I don’t mind helping. Small, small. Small, small care. Zanab’s eyebrows climbed toward her hairline. Who paid for the hotel when you two went to Calaba last month? Isla went quiet for exactly one second too long before laughing it off.

The specific laugh people use when they’d rather not finish his sentence. Honestly, you worry too much. Not every man has to arrive already rich, Zanab. Some men are still becoming. Let’s hope he’s becoming something good. Then, Zanab mattered. And let it go. Because what more can a sister say to a woman who has already decided with God and her pastor both fully on record that this is destiny.

3 months into the relationship, Isla did something that made even her most loyal staff exchange careful glances in the back room where she couldn’t see them. She gave Gabriel a job at the store. Not sweeping floors, not loading trucks. She put him close to the money. Since he’s good with numbers, she announced proudly at the weekly staff meeting, beaming at him across the room like a woman introducing her fiance to the family, which in every way that mattered to her, she basically was.

Chitty, brave as always, in his own quiet way, tried once gently to raise a hand. “Madame, no vex,” he said carefully after the meeting when it was just the two of them in the small back office. “But this our new orga, where is he from? Which family? Nobody has met his people. Nobody has even seen where he lives.

 Isa didn’t get angry, but her voice called several degrees. Chitty, God already confirmed this man to me through my pastor, through a dream. You want me to doubt that because you haven’t met his uncle? Chitty opened his mouth, considered the many things he could say, and closed it again. What is there to say to a woman who has already handed her discernment over piece by piece to somebody else’s dream? Just be watchful, madame, that’s all.

Then one ordinary Tuesday morning, Tuesdays again, always Tuesdays, it seemed, Isla woke up and could not get out of bed without the whole room tilting sideways and her stomach turning violently. It’s the fish, she groaned to her house girl. I told that woman at the market the fish smelled somehow. It was not the fish.

 She sat in the hospital consultation room 2 hours later, staring at a small plastic strip with two solid pink lines while the doctor congratulated her. And Isla, a woman who had built a business empire brick by brick with her own hands and never once needed anyone’s permission to do it, cried the kind of tears that come from somewhere much older than the moment itself.

 Tears for every year she told people she was fine being single. Tears for every family gathering where an auntie asked when she’d settled down while she smiled and changed the subject. Tears for finally, finally getting the one thing her money had never been able to buy her. She called Gabriel from the hospital packing lot, hands shaking, and told him.

 There was a pause on the line, brief, but Isela would replay it in her memory many months later and wonder how she missed the calculation happening inside it. This is God, Isela, he said finally, his voice warm, steady, exactly right. This is exactly what your pastor said. Double portion. Gabriel Iselless said, wiping her face.

I don’t want to have this baby outside marriage. You know how I was raised. My mother would turn in her grave. Let’s do this properly. Let’s get married quickly before I start showing. ; Don’t worry about a single thing. Gabriel said, I’ll plan everything, the introduction, the wedding, all of it. You focus on this pregnancy.

 You shouldn’t even be stressing yourself at that store anymore, standing all day, lifting things, dealing with difficult customers. Let me handle things there. Rest, my love. Just rest. Isla, glowing, exhausted, and utterly convinced that God had finally delivered on every promise her pastor had ever spoken over her, agreed.

 She started coming to the store 3 days a week instead of six, then two, then by her second month of pregnancy, barely at all, trusting Gabriel completely to hold everything together in her absence. Because after all, hadn’t he asked all the right questions about tile parocity on the very first day they met? Hadn’t he proven in every small way she could measure that he understood the business almost as well as she did? What she didn’t see because she wasn’t there to see it was Chidy being called into the office one Thursday afternoon and told

with a warm smile and zero warning that his services were no longer required going forward, but of course full appreciation for his years of service. She didn’t see three other long-erving staff members receive the same conversation over the following two weeks. Each one blindsided. Each one trying and failing to reach Isla directly only to be told by Gabriel that madame is resting.

 Please don’t disturb her. She’s given me full authority to handle stuffing. She didn’t see the new faces that started appearing at the store. Instead, quiet, unfamiliar young men who didn’t ask questions, didn’t know the difference between a good roofing sheet and a bad one, and certainly weren’t going to challenge anything Gabriel told them to do.

 Isla at home, feet up, one hand resting on her still small belly, was busy picking out baby names and thanking God for a pastor wise enough to have seen this coming before she ever did. For the first few weeks of her first rest, Isla was, if you can believe it, genuinely happy. She spent her morning scrolling through baby clothes she had no business buying yet, since nobody had told her the sex of the baby, and she’d bought both blue and pink anyway, just to be safe.

 She spent her afternoons on the phone with Pastor Florence, who called almost daily now, praying with her, speaking prophetic declarations over her belly, reminding her constantly how blessed she was to have found both a spiritual mother and a husband to be in the same miraculous season. “Double portion, my sister,” Pastor Florence would say at the end of nearly every call.

 Like a woman who’d found a phrase she liked so much she refused to retire it. God doesn’t do anything small for his favorites. Isla believed every word of it. The way you believe things when you badly need them to be true. Gabriel, for his part, called less than he used to. But when he did call, he was reassuring, full of updates that all sounded on the surface like a man handling business.

 How’s this store? Isla would ask propped up on pillows, one hand on her growing belly. Booming, my love? Don’t stress yourself about it. I’ve got everything under control. Chitty giving you any trouble settling in. A small pause. Chid’s fine. Everybody’s fine. Just rest. Looking back, Isla would later admit there were at least four separate moments in those two months where something in her, that same shop instinct that had built an empire from a container shop at 17, tried to sit up and pay attention.

 A vague uneasy feeling when Gabriel changed the subject too quickly. A night she dialed the store’s landline just to hear the familiar chaos of a Saturday afternoon rush and got no answer at all. A comment from a longtime customer, Baba Sigun himself, who ran into her at a wedding and said almost in passing, “Ah, madame, long time, we’ve missed you at the store.

 That new boy that’s managing things doesn’t discount like you.” Which Isla laughed off as Baba Seigun simply missing his favorite negotiating partner. The day everything cracked open started, of all things, with a craving. Isla, 7 months pregnant now, big enough that getting off the couch had become its own small production, woke up desperate for Suya from a particular malam near the store, the same one she’d been buying from for a decade, the one who always gave her extra Pepe because she’d once helped his son get his small loan for school fees. She called

Gabrielle to ask him to bring some home on his way back. The call didn’t connect. She tried again, straight to voicemail. She tried a third time and this time it didn’t even ring, just a flat mechanical voice informing her that the number she was calling was switched off.

 Now, a switched off phone is not on its own a crime. Phones die, networks fail. Isla told herself this twice out loud to the empty living room in the specific tone of a woman trying very hard to believe her own reassurance. By evening, with still no word and no suya, that old instinct the one should spend months gently putting back to sleep, finally sat all the way up and refused to lie back down.

 She called her sister, “Zinab, please, I need a feeble. I need you to drive past this store for me. Gabriel’s phone isn’t going through, and I just I want to make sure everything’s fine.” Isla, it’s almost 700 p.m. The store closes at 6:00. I know, I know. Just humor me, please. Zanab, who had never fully warmed to Gabriel, who had asked more than once who paid for what and gotten fewer answers than questions in return, agreed without much argument.

 because that is what sisters do. Even when they’ve been telling you gently for a year that something felt wrong. 40 minutes later, Isla’s phone rang. Zanab’s name lit up the screen and Isla answered so fast she nearly dropped it. Zanab, what did you see? Is he there? There was a strange pause on the line. The kind of pause that carries an entire terrible sentence inside it before a single word is spoken.

 Isla Zab said slowly, “Are you sure? Are you sure this is the right address?” Because there’s nothing here. The whole compound is dark. The gate is padlocked. I’m standing outside it right now and I’m looking at an empty building. What do you mean empty? It’s a hardware store, Zab. There’s cement. There’s roofing sheets. There’s Isla.

 Zanab’s voice cracked slightly, the way a voice does when it’s about to hand you news it doesn’t want to be holding. There’s nothing here. I’m serious. I’m shining my torch through the gate right now. The shelves are bare. Everything is gone. If you’ve never had the specific horror of realizing in real time over the phone that your entire life’s work has vanished while you are resting.

 I hope you never do. But if you have, drop a single word in the comments right now. Same. Because Isla is about to feel something that many of you already know the shape of. That’s not possible. Isla whispered, one hand pressed flat against her belly, as though she could keep the baby calm, even as her own world tilted sideways.

 “Zanab, are you even sure you’re at the right store? Are you sure I even have a store there anymore? Or are you joking with me?” It came out sharper than she meant it, panic, disguising itself as accusation. But Zanab didn’t take offense. She simply said quietly, “Esla, I’m not joking with you. Come and see for yourself or send someone because something is very wrong here.” Isla did not wait for morning.

 9 months pregnant in spirit, if not quite in body, moving like a woman twice her actual size, she had her house boy drive her straight to the store that same night. Zayard meeting her there. Both of them standing at the padlocked gate under a street light that flickered like it didn’t quite believe what it was illuminating.

 Through the gate, in the thin wash of the torch light, Isla could see it with her own eyes. Bare shelving units, the one she’d had customuilt 8 years earlier, stripped completely. No cement towers, no roofing sheets, no nails sorted by size like a pharmacy. The big blue sign out front, Isla’s building depot, had been taken down entirely, leaving only four ghostly rectangles on the wall where the letters used to hang like a mouth with its teeth pulled out.

 “He can’t have just moved everything,” Isla said, more to herself than to Zanb, her voice thin. “That’s not You can’t move 15 years of stock in secret, Zanb. Somebody would have seen. somebody would have told me. She called Chidi’s number right there at the gate, hands shaking so badly she nearly dropped the phone twice.

 He picked up on the second ring and the moment he heard her voice, he exhaled so heavily she heard it clearly through the speaker. Madame. Ah, madame. Thank God. I’ve been trying to reach you for weeks, but that man told everybody you didn’t want to be disturbed. Chitty, what happened to my store? ; Madame, he said carefully.

 He let me go almost two months ago. Me and three others. He said you had given him full authority. We tried calling the store number, tried reaching you directly, but every time that man or one of the new boys picked up and said you were resting and shouldn’t be disturbed. Madame, I even went to your house once.

 Security wouldn’t let me pass the gate, said Oga’s instructions. He paused. Madame, I’m sorry to be the one telling you this over the phone, but everybody’s been talking. He and the pastor, the one from your church. They’ve been seen together at a new place, other side of town, new church, new shop.

 I heard the shop even has the same layout as yours. Same shelf arrangement. The world, Isla would say later, did not spin or go dark the way it does in films. It simply went very very quiet. The way a room goes quiet right before something breaks. The pastor, she repeated slowly. Pastor Florence. Yes, madame. Gabriel and Pastor Florence had not simply run away together.

 They had planned meticulously, methodically over the better part of a year. While Isla rested at home trusting God for double portion, Gabriel had been quietly liquidating stock, transferring inventory in small, unremarkable batches that never looked like theft on any single day, replacing loyal staff with people who wouldn’t ask questions, and slowly, patiently moving the entire operational heart of Isla’s business across the city.

 Pastor Florence, meanwhile, had used her own church’s tithe and building funds. funds that included, ironically and painfully, a significant portion of Isla’s own generous giving over the past year to help finance a new church building on the other side of town. A new congregation, a fresh start built partially on money Isla herself had donated in good faith, believing she was funding God’s work.

 And in the middle of it all, quietly, without a single guest list sent to Isla, without a single phone call, Gabriel and Pastor Florence had gotten married. “Not to each other’s cover story. To each other. She used me, Isela said quietly to Zanab, sitting in her sister’s living room 3 days later, 7 months pregnant, homeless in every sense but the literal one since she still had her house and financially gutted in a way that would take her a full year of careful accounting to properly measure us close. It was about her finding out

exactly how much money I had and exactly how to get to it. Isela, Zanab said gently, taking her sister’s hand. I have to ask you something and I need you to not get angry. Ask when last did you actually check your business accounts yourself? Not through him. You was quiet for a long moment. 2 months, she finally admitted maybe three.

 But before I continue, I need to know something from all of you. If you were Isla, sitting in your sister’s living room, 7 months pregnant, having just realized your pastor helped orchestrate your own downfall, would you go after them legally? Would you expose them publicly to warn other women, or would you simply walk away and rebuild quietly? Type your answer in the comments because I read every single one of them, and I want to know what you would have done in her position.

 And if this story has already got your blood boiling on Isla’s behalf, this is exactly the moment to hit that subscribe button because part two, where Isla starts putting the pieces of her life back together and where the truth about Gabriel and Pastor Florence finally catches up with them in public, is coming next.

 And trust me, you do not want to miss it.