Selene's POV
She hadn't answered his call.
That was a lie. There had been no call. No texts. No gold mask revelation at 2 AM that shattered her carefully constructed walls.
Instead, there was just Zara.
"WARRIOR QUEEN!"
Zara Mensah exploded out of arrivals like a force of nature, her voice loud enough to crack glass, her arms already reaching for Selene with the kind of enthusiasm that didn't care about airport etiquette or the fact that Selene was currently having a minor cardiac event in the middle of a crowd.
She barreled into her best friend, lifting slightly, and for a moment—just a moment—Selene let herself be held by someone who'd flown to London with two suitcases and a lecture about prenatal vitamins when she found out about the pregnancy. Someone who'd sat through every ultrasound, every midnight panic, every moment when Selene had wanted to collapse.
"Oh my God, look at Kofi!" Zara was already crouching down, pulling the sleepy boy into her arms. "You got so big, baby! Did you grow on the plane? I think you grew." She stood up with him on her hip, turning to Selene with her grin still wide. "Okay, we have so much to do. I brought the entire business plan in my bag. We're hitting the ground running."
As they moved toward the car, Zara's words flowed like water—unstoppable, warm, familiar.
"So I've been tracking Osei Holdings for three years, like you asked. Damien Osei is untouchable in business, which is why we're going to touch him. Three years of careful planning, and you come back looking like exactly what you've become: someone who can't be beaten."
Selene should have felt something at this. Validation. Satisfaction. The sense that her plan was finally in motion.
Instead, she felt the weight of the secret in her chest.
The car smelled like vanilla air freshener and the echo of every conversation she and Zara had ever had. Kofi was asleep within minutes, his head tilted against the window, his chest rising and falling in the steady rhythm of three-year-old exhaustion.
Zara drove and talked. Talked and drove. Her words flowed like music Selene had been waiting to hear for three years—the sound of home. Of someone who believed in her so completely that they'd spent six months learning to hate a man they'd never met, just because Selene needed them to.
"First, we soft-launch at the Marriott next week," Zara was saying. "Just the right people. Influencers, industry people, journalists who matter. Then we start bidding against Osei on fabric contracts. Every single one. We bleed him out slowly."
Selene stared out the window at Lagos—the city lights, the familiar curves of streets she'd driven a thousand times. The city she'd left broken and was returning to rebuilt.
She thought about the airport screen. Damien's face. Kofi's question.
And she placed it in a box.
Metaphorically, she saw it: a small, sealed container in the back of her mind. She put the recognition inside. She put the fear. She put the impossible math of three years and a child who looked exactly like a stranger she'd spent one night with and six months learning to hate from a distance.
She locked the box.
"You're quiet," Zara said, glancing over. "Good quiet or bad quiet?"
"Just thinking," Selene said, and it was true. She was thinking about the plan. About the company she was about to launch. About the business rival she was about to destroy. She was thinking about everything except the one thing that could unravel her entire carefully constructed existence.
"Well, stop thinking and start planning." Zara merged onto the expressway. "First big meeting is tomorrow. Adeola Fabrics. That's the contract that matters—the one that could launch us into real competition."
Selene's hands tightened in her lap.
"Adeola is the best," Zara continued, excited. "If we get them, we have leverage. If we get them, we have credibility. If we get them, we have everything we need to go after Osei Holdings for real."
Selene nodded slowly.
Tomorrow, then. She would walk into that meeting and fight for a contract. She would do what she'd trained herself to do for three years: compartmentalize, strategize, win.
She would not think about Damien Osei.
She would not think about his eyes.
She would not think about the fact that somewhere in this city, a man was walking around with her son's impossible brows, and he had no idea that the version of himself he saw in the mirror every morning was also staring back at her from the backseat of this car.
The box was locked.
It would stay locked.
It had to stay locked.
"We're going to destroy him," Zara said, and there was love in her voice—the kind of fierce, protective love that made Selene's chest ache because it was so completely unaware of what was actually at stake.
"Yes," Selene whispered. "We are."
The car moved through Lagos. Kofi slept. And Selene sat with her secret like a blade she was learning to carry.