The car didn't take him to the penthouse. It drove to a private members' club on the edge of Lagos Island, one so discreet it had no sign. It was the kind of place where the air felt expensive and conversations dissolved into the soundproofed walls.
Peter was led to a room that was more library than lounge. Leather-bound books, a low fire despite the Lagos heat, and Akanbi, standing by the fireplace, staring into the flames. He was dressed immaculately in a dark grey suit, but he looked different. The predatory ease was gone. He looked coiled, intense, and utterly focused. He didn't turn when Peter entered.
"You came," Akanbi said, his voice low. It wasn't a question, and there was no triumph in it.
"You showed me a picture of my broken father. It was effective," Peter said, not moving from the doorway.
Finally, Akanbi turned. His eyes swept over Peter the worn shoes, the simple shirt, the posture of a man braced for a blow. A flicker of something crossed his face not disgust, but a kind of frustrated fascination. "Sit."
"I'll stand. What's the proposal?"
Akanbi gestured to a pair of armchairs by the fire. "Please. This is… a different kind of conversation."
The quiet, the lack of immediate threat, was more unnerving than rage. Slowly, Peter moved into the room and sat on the edge of the indicated chair. Akanbi sat opposite him, leaning forward, his elbows on his knees.
"I miscalculated," Akanbi began, the words sounding as if they were being pulled from him. "I thought breaking you would satisfy me. It did not."
Peter said nothing. He just watched.
"The… incident at my home," Akanbi continued, not meeting his eyes, "was a loss of control. It was beneath me." He finally looked up, and his gaze was terrifying in its directness. "But it revealed the nature of the problem. I don't just want to break you, Peter. I want to… understand you. Why you won't bend. And I want you to understand me."
Peter almost laughed. "Understand you? You're a rich man who destroys things he can't buy. I understand you perfectly."
Akanbi's jaw tightened, but he didn't rise to the bait. "Then understand this: the pressure on your family stops today. The rumors are retracted. The Dantata contract will be re-awarded to them, with a favorable terms adjustment. Your father's burden is lifted."
The words hung in the air, too good to be true, and therefore undoubtedly a trap. "In exchange for what? My soul on a monthly payment plan?"
"In exchange for a year," Akanbi said.
"A year of what?"
"Of your life. But not as you think." He took a slow breath. "You live in an apartment I provide. You continue your job I won't interfere. But you have dinner with me. Three times a week. No threats. No business. Just… conversation."
Peter stared at him, bewildered. It was insane. After the violence, the lies, the ruin, he was being offered… a social contract? "Conversation about what?"
"Anything. Everything. Why you work a job that pays you nothing. What you think about when you look at the lagoon. What you wanted to be before you were your father's second son." Akanbi's voice was low, almost earnest. It was the most terrifying performance yet. "For one year. You give me access to your mind. I give your family back their future. At the end of the year, you walk away. Completely. I will sign any document you want. The harassment ends forever."
It was a masterstroke. It wasn't a demand for Peter's body; it was a demand for his intimacy. His thoughts. His inner life. Akanbi was acknowledging that he couldn't take those by force, so he was bargaining for them. He was offering to buy the very thing Peter had claimed he couldn't have his genuine self.
"And if I say no?" Peter asked, his throat dry.
Akanbi's expression didn't change. "Then the photograph becomes a moving picture. And the next one will be of your brother being led away in handcuffs for a fraud he didn't commit. I will not touch you, Peter. I will dismantle every pillar of your world until you are standing alone in a field of rubble. And I will still want to know what you're thinking."
The choice was no longer between defiance and surrender. It was between two kinds of sacrifice: sacrifice his family, or sacrifice his privacy, his peace, his very self to the obsessive curiosity of the man who had ruined him.
"Why?" Peter whispered, the question torn from him. "Why go through all this? Why not just find another… distraction?"
For a long moment, Akanbi was silent. When he spoke, it was to the fire. "Because you saw me. The real me. The pathetic freak. And you didn't look away in fear. You looked at me with pity. No one has ever done that. I need to know… I need to know if you can see anything else."
The confession was more shocking than the kiss. This was the core of the obsession laid bare: a desperate, twisted need for validation from the one person who had seen his emptiness and named it.
Peter felt the weight of the decision settle on him, heavier than any physical threat. This was a deeper trap than a locked bedroom. This was a gilded cage for his mind. But outside the cage, his family would be destroyed.
He thought of his father's bowed head in the photograph. Of Michael's betrayed eyes. Of the business his grandfather had built.
He looked at Akanbi, at the intense, haunted hunger in his eyes. The man was offering a bargain, but he was also handing Peter a weapon. A year of access went both ways.
"One year," Peter said, his voice flat, dead. "Three dinners a week. No physical contact. My family is left alone, their business restored. A legally binding contract drawn up by my lawyer."
Akanbi nodded, a strange light in his eyes part victory, part desperation. "Yes."
"Then I accept."
There was no handshake. The deal was sealed in the quiet crackle of the fire and the shared, terrible understanding between them: this was not the end of the war. It was the beginning of a much darker, more intimate siege.
Peter had traded his freedom to save his family.
But he had just agreed to let the devil study his soul.