Chapter 01

Chapter 01

Blood on the Road

Western Togoland never slept anymore.
It only waited—tense, restless, listening for the next gunshot.

Samuel Agbenyega was fifteen when he learned the sound of death. It was not the crack of a rifle or the roar of a crowd. It was the silence that followed.

The road to Aflao Market had been sealed since dawn. Old tyres burned at every junction, coughing black smoke into the sky. Stones, broken furniture, and rusted drums formed barricades that split the city into hostile islands. Men with red bands tied around their arms—symbols of the Anti-Togolese Faction (ATF)—stood guard, gripping weapons that looked too heavy for their hands.

Samuel watched everything from behind a cracked concrete wall, his school uniform already dusty, his books pressed tightly to his chest. He should have been in class. His mother had begged him not to leave the house that morning.

“Sammy, today is not a good day,” she had said, her voice trembling as she folded cloth in the dim room. “They say the roads are not safe.”

But Samuel had slipped out anyway. He wanted to find Francis.

Francis Agbenyega—his brother, his hero.

Francis was five years older, tall and sharp-eyed, with a voice that could command a room. He had joined the ATF months earlier, saying little, explaining less. To Samuel, Francis spoke only of dignity, of land, of voices long ignored. To their mother, he spoke lies.

Samuel did not understand politics. He only understood that Francis no longer smiled the same way, and that guns had started appearing in conversations he had on the phone.

A sudden chant rose from the far end of the road.

“Freedom! Freedom!”

The crowd surged. Samuel’s heart pounded as he pushed closer, fear and curiosity pulling him in equal measure. That was when he saw his brother.

Francis stood at the front line, a rifle slung over his shoulder, a red band tight around his arm. His face was calm—too calm. When his eyes met Samuel’s, they widened.

“Sammy!” Francis shouted. “Go home! Now!”

Samuel opened his mouth to speak, but the world exploded before he could form a word.

Police trucks roared in from the opposite street, sirens screaming like wounded animals. Officers spilled out, rifles raised, shields locked. Someone threw a bottle. It shattered. A gunshot followed.

Then another.

And another.

All hell broke loose.

People screamed and scattered. Samuel fell hard, his books flying into the dust. Bullets chewed into walls, cars, flesh. Smoke burned his eyes as he crawled toward a concrete slab, ears ringing, heart threatening to tear itself free.

He saw Francis fire once—only once.

The police answered with everything.

Samuel watched it happen in pieces, his mind unable to hold the whole truth at once. A senior police officer—later he would learn he was the Chief Superintendent—fell first, blood blooming across his uniform. The air changed after that. The restraint vanished.

The gunfire turned savage.

Francis stumbled.

Samuel stood up without thinking.

“Francis!”

The bullet hit his brother in the chest. The sound was dull, final. Francis dropped to his knees, then forward into the dirt.

The world stopped.

Samuel ran.

He reached Francis just as the gunfire slowed. Blood soaked through his brother’s shirt, warm and unreal. Francis’s eyes searched Samuel’s face, struggling to focus.

“Listen to me,” Francis whispered, coughing red. “Whatever they tell you… don’t let this place turn you into me.”

Samuel shook his head violently. “No. No, you’ll be fine. You’ll be fine—”

Francis’s hand tightened weakly around his wrist.

“Live, Sammy,” he said. “Live.”

Then the grip loosened.

And Samuel Agbenyega learned what silence really sounded like.

That night, their home was filled with women in black cloth and men speaking in hushed tones. Samuel sat on the floor beside his mother, her wails cutting deeper than any bullet. She rocked back and forth, clutching Francis’s blood-stained shirt like a child’s blanket.

The police never came to apologize. They came to ask questions.

They called Francis a criminal. A rebel. A threat.

Samuel memorized every word.

That was the day something broke inside him.

The day he began to hate the police.

The day the name Agbenyega—life is precious—started to feel like a cruel joke.

And the day the road of blood chose him, whether he was ready or not.