The Man Who Was Taken Twice

Some men are broken by what is done to them. Rufus Uche was broken — then rebuilt into something far more dangerous.

Rufus Uche has everything a man could want: a thriving career, a love story worth envying, and a marriage that still feels like a first date. Then, on an ordinary evening in Abuja, ordinary ends.

Kidnapped alongside his beloved wife Anita by a brutal gang led by the monstrous Zod, Rufus is dragged into a nightmare of ransom demands, savage beatings, and unspeakable violation. But surviving isn't the end of the horror — it's only the beginning. Because just when the wounds are barely beginning to close, the same men take them again.

The second abduction breaks something inside Rufus that cannot be easily named.

By the time he and Anita are free, the damage has burrowed too deep. There are diseases to treat. A devastating pregnancy to reckon with. A marriage straining under the weight of trauma neither of them has words for. And a man who can no longer hold himself together — a man who loses time, who snaps without warning, who finds himself chained inside a psychiatric ward, staring into the abyss of his own shattered mind.

But in the darkness of Helping Hands Mental Home in Asokoro, Rufus encounters something no one warned him about.

A legend. A ghost. A woman who died the way she lived — refusing to yield.

Madam Lucy has been trapped within these walls since 2000, but her fury never faded. And when Rufus tells her what was taken from him, she recognises something of herself in his rage.

What follows is a story that defies easy categories — part psychological thriller, part supernatural tale, part meditation on what it costs a man to lose everything and then dare to rise. It is set firmly in the gritty, vivid reality of modern Nigeria, where kidnapping is not merely a news headline but a wound carved into real families, real marriages, real lives.

The Man Who Was Taken Twice is a debut novel of fierce ambition and raw emotional power. It asks hard questions: What does justice look like when the law cannot reach your tormentors? What remains of love after it has been desecrated? And what happens when a broken man is given the power to become something the wicked cannot outrun?

When Rufus finally walks back into Zod's den — this time, on his own terms — he is no longer the man who was taken.

He is the reckoning.

WHAT READERS ARE SAYING

"Grips the reader from the very first page, taking us on a harrowing journey of trauma, resilience, and the pursuit of justice." — Dimeji Sodeke, Journalist, UNESCO-recognised Activist & Pan-African Youth Leader

PERFECT FOR READERS WHO LOVE:

• Psychological thrillers with emotional depth
• African fiction that doesn't sanitise reality
• Supernatural elements woven into gritty realism
• Stories of trauma, resilience, and unconventional justice
• Nigerian storytelling at its most raw and compelling

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

E.J Mathhews is a writer, content creator, and host based in Abuja, Nigeria. The author of The Man Who Was Taken Twice brings a voice that is vivid, unflinching, and deeply human. This is a debut novel — but it reads like the work of someone who has been carrying this story for years, waiting for exactly the right moment to release it.

Digital download. Available immediately upon purchase.