Chapter 7

• “Thank you.”
• Ugo whispered to the ring in her hand. If not for the ring, that man would have pretended that he did not remember her. To think she believed the ring to be fake, a ring that ten thousand dollars was offered for its return. Then a flash of what he said earlier came to her mind, he had mentioned an accident and asked why she hadn’t come forward and claimed she picked the ring up from the accident scene. What accident?
• She brought out her laptop and fired it up. As she typed in Dante Henchman, a lot of articles came up, most about him and one celebrity or the other. He seemed to like celebrities a lot and has dated quite a few of them. Ugo felt a pain her heart as she glanced through some of the article. She unconsciously touched her chest, trying to ease the discomfort she felt. Then she jerked her head up in anger as she realized what that discomfort in her chest was. She was jealous. How can she be jealous of those ladies, Dante Henchman was nothing to her. Her stupid self had fallen in love with him years back but that did not mean she liked him now. In fact she hated him.
• Not wanting to read more him and some women, she typed in Dante Henchman’s accident. And different articles about it popped up. She clicked on one and started reading. Wait, what? The accident happened the same day he walked out of their hotel suite to get the ice cream she wanted and never returned. No wonder he hadn’t come back. While she was waiting and worrying and getting angry and afraid, he was in a hospital battling for his life. The article said he was in isolation for twenty-nine weeks.
• Twenty-nine fricking weeks?
• For more than seven months, he was in therapy and she didn’t even know. It had been feared that he might never walk again. But of course he recovered and regained use of his legs. No wonder he hadn’t come back for her. He must be angry that she hadn’t come to stay with him. No wonder he was now pretending not to recognize her. But, how could she have known? She didn’t know any Dante Henchman, she knew Iyke Chambers.
• Ugo remembered that the hotel was buzzing with the accident of one famous person but she hadn’t cared. All that had mattered to her was news of her beloved Iyke. A stranger she fell in love with within days of meeting him. Her mind was dragging her back to the day she met him. She didn’t want to remember that day or how foolish she was then. She fought hard not to think about it, to push back the memories where they’ve stayed for the past seven years, at the back of her brain, hidden away. She was losing the fight though. She couldn’t banish the memories of him as usual. Maybe she was allowed to remember, just this once. With a sigh, she closed her eyes and let her mind carry her back to that moment.
• It was the third day she was spending at Silver City Business and Leisure Resort. The Governor of Silver City had invited private investors to a conference in Silver City with a bid to get some investors interested in the resort. Loren Ibrahim, was Ugo’s a renown journalist in silver city. On several occasions, Ugo has tried to get her to visit Waterside. She knew that if someone like Loren wrote a piece on Waterside, her town would get the attention it needed to attract investors. Waterside was a beautiful town but most people didn’t know of its existence. It wasn’t in most maps, and most of all, the town was dying a slow but painful death.
• However, no matter how had Ugo tried, Loren didn’t visit Waterside. She didn’t hold it against her though, she knew how busy she must have been. However, when Loren in one of their chat mentioned the Silver city upcoming conference, Ugo had implied that if people were to invest in her town, if her town could have a business and leisure resort like the one they’re building in Silver city, the later will pale in comparison to her town. Because of that, Loren had gotten her a pass and invited her to the conference. She promised that if Ugo could write a good piece about the Silver city business Leisure Resort and how having such in her hometown would impact her town.
• Loren assured her that if she wrote a good piece, she will finally visit Waterside and see it for herself. And Ugo knew that if Loren Ibrahim even made a single positive comment about her town, it would bring her people exposure they needed. It probably wouldn’t be enough but it would be a start. With that in mind, she had taken money out of the funds she was saving for her university and went to Silver City. Silver City was beautiful and Ugo knew her town would be better if people were to invest in it.
• When she got to Silver city, everything was as beautiful as she expected and she made plan to enjoy her stay in the city. She was there not just to work but also to have fun. She had no idea when she would have such opportunity. Besides, she had never attended a conference except the one she attended in Hare Town as part of a school project for her final year in high school. The conference in Silver City Business and Leisure Resort was different. It was a gathering of the elites from both Silver City and other places. People with enough money to buy a town for themselves.
• Ugo has never mixed with the wealthy but she was not intimidated. She was just an eighteen year old girl who lacked experienced in practically everything about life, however, living and surviving in Waterside was not for the fainthearted. Her people are loving people but for you to be approved, you must have proving yourself worthy. And once a Waterside citizen realized he or she was approved by the people, it gave the person a inner sense of worth that was priceless. Ugo had everyone’s approval, she knew who she was and a lot was depending on her. Thus she might an eighteen year old girl, she was ready for whatever Silver City brings. She was there for her people, thus, failure was not an option, allowing people and their wealth to intimidate her wasn’t an option either.
• The conference lasted three days and she had learnt a lot from it. A lot of ideas and imaginations she had before coming to silver city were flawed in many ways. She had no idea how things work in big cities or how to get investors attracted to her town why she was relying heavily on Loren. But after listening to talks and ideas from movers and shakers of different cities, people that when they talk, the world pay attention to them, Ugo began to understand many things.