The air in the Oriental Hotel's grand ballroom was thick with the scent of lilies—the same cloying, funeral scent that had haunted Amina's mother's porch. It was a smell that belonged to the dead, yet here it was, decorating the most exclusive charity gala in Lagos.
"Keep your chin up," Zayn murmured, his voice barely audible over the swelling sound of the live orchestra. "Amina was a girl who looked at the floor when she was nervous. Raven looks at the world like she owns the deed to it."
Amina—now Raven—clutched her silver clutch bag so hard her knuckles turned white. She was wearing a floor-length silk dress the color of a fresh wound. The sharp, red bob of her hair framed a face that felt like a mask. The gray contact lenses Zayn had forced her to wear made the world look colder, sharper.
"I can't do this, Zayn," she whispered, her heart hammering against her ribs like a trapped bird. "My mother is in this room. Victor is in this room. What if he sees through me?"
Zayn stopped walking and turned to her. In his tailored tuxedo, he looked like the devil's favorite son—devastatingly handsome and twice as dangerous. He reached out, his gloved thumb tracing the line of her jaw. The touch was possessive, a silent reminder of who she belonged to now.
"He won't see Amina," Zayn said, his dark eyes locking onto hers. "He'll see a woman he wants to conquer. And that, Raven, is how we destroy him. He thinks he's the hunter. Let him think he's found new prey."
He tucked her arm into his and led her into the center of the room.
The elite of Lagos were all there. Men in five-million-naira suits and women draped in enough lace and diamonds to fund a small country. But the moment Zayn Abubakar walked in with a mysterious, red-haired woman on his arm, the room went silent.
Zayn was the "Black King" of the tech world—a man who stayed in the shadows, rarely attending social events. To see him here, with her, was the biggest scandal of the season.
"Is that...?" a woman whispered nearby, her champagne glass pausing mid-air. "No, it couldn't be. Amina's funeral was only yesterday."
"The resemblance is haunting," another voice hissed. "But the eyes... and that hair. She looks like a different creature entirely."
Amina felt the eyes on her skin like needles. She scanned the room, her gaze landing on a table near the stage. Her breath caught.
There he was.
Victor Eze looked magnificent. He was dressed in a white tuxedo, the "grieving widower" persona played to perfection. He was laughing softly at something a senator said, his gold signet ring glinting under the crystal chandeliers. To his left sat Amina's mother, her face pale and lined with a grief that made Amina want to scream.
"He's coming this way," Zayn whispered, his grip on her arm tightening. "Remember. You are Raven. You've never met this man in your life."
Victor had spotted them. He handed his drink to a waiter and began to walk across the ballroom. Every step he took felt like a hammer blow to Amina's chest. He didn't look like a man who had murdered his fiancée. He looked like a man in control of the universe.
As he reached them, Victor's eyes—the same eyes that had watched the life fade out of Amina's—swept over her. He stopped dead. For a fraction of a second, just one heartbeat, the mask of the billionaire tycoon slipped. His face went gray, and his hand twitched toward his pocket.
"Zayn," Victor said, his voice a low, dangerous growl. He didn't look at Zayn. He was staring at Amina's throat—at the diamond earrings he thought he had buried with her. "I didn't know you were back in the country. And I certainly didn't know you had such... familiar tastes."
Zayn smiled, a slow, shark-like expression. "Victor. My condolences on your loss. I heard the funeral was a grand affair. It's a shame I couldn't make it."
He pulled Amina closer, his hand resting on the small of her back. "This is Raven. She's a consultant for my new acquisition in London. Raven, this is Victor Eze. He runs Lagos. Or so he likes to think."
Amina felt the bile rise in her throat. She forced herself to look Victor directly in the eye. With her new gray lenses, she looked like a stranger, but she could see the wheels turning in his head. He was looking for the girl he had strangled. He was looking for the fear.
"Mr. Eze," she said, her voice pitched lower, smoky and confident—the voice Sarah had trained her to use. "I've heard so much about you. Mostly that you're a man who knows how to get rid of things that no longer serve him."
The insult was subtle, but Victor's eyes flared with a cold, murderous light. He stepped into her personal space, his scent—that expensive, metallic cologne—filling her senses.
"You have a very sharp tongue, Miss Raven," Victor whispered, leaning in so close his lips almost touched the diamond in her ear. "And you're wearing very beautiful earrings. I once bought a pair exactly like them for someone who... didn't appreciate them."
"Perhaps she just didn't like the man who gave them to her," Amina replied, her heart racing so fast she feared it would explode.
Victor laughed, but the sound didn't reach his eyes. "You're bold. I like bold things. I usually keep them in cages."
He turned his gaze back to Zayn. "Where did you find her, Zayn? At a graveyard?"
"I found her where you weren't looking, Victor," Zayn replied, his voice dropping to a lethal whisper. "And I think I'll keep her. She has a way of seeing through people that I find very... useful."
The tension between the two men was a physical force, a silent war being fought in the middle of a crowded ballroom. Victor reached out, his hand moving toward Amina's face. She didn't flinch. She stared him down, her eyes a wall of gray ice.
Just as his fingers were about to touch her skin, a loud crash echoed from the stage.
The lights in the ballroom flickered and died.
Total darkness swallowed the room. Screams erupted as the elite panicked. Amina felt a hand grab her arm—a rough, familiar hand.
"Amina," a voice hissed in her ear. It wasn't Zayn. It was Victor. "I don't know how you're standing, but I'm going to make sure you stay down this time."
Suddenly, a heavy weight slammed into Victor, throwing him off her. In the chaos and the dark, Amina felt Zayn's arm wrap around her waist, lifting her off her feet.
"Run!" he hissed.
They sprinted through the darkness, guided by Zayn's perfect memory of the room's layout. They burst through the service doors just as the emergency lights began to hum to life.
They reached the SUV in the basement parking lot, Zayn practically throwing her into the passenger seat before peeling out onto the street.
Amina was shaking, her breath coming in ragged gasps. She looked at her arm—there were red marks where Victor had grabbed her.
"He knew," she sobbed. "Zayn, he knew it was me!"
"He suspected," Zayn corrected, his eyes fixed on the road, his jaw set in a grim line. "But he can't prove it. Not yet. But we have a bigger problem."
He reached into his jacket and pulled out a small, crumpled piece of paper that had been shoved into his pocket during the blackout. He handed it to her.
Amina opened it. Inside, in shaky, elegant handwriting she recognized instantly, were four words:
"I know you're alive."
It wasn't signed by Victor.
It was signed by her mother.
Chapter 3 Ending:
Amina stared at the note, her world spinning. If her mother knew, she was in more danger than ever. Victor would use her mother as bait to flush Amina out of the shadows.
"Zayn," she whispered, looking at him with tears in her eyes. "We have to go back. He'll hurt her."
Zayn didn't look at her. He pulled a burner phone from the glove box and dialed a number.
"Initiate Protocol Black," he said into the phone. "The mother is compromised. Move her now."
He hung up and looked at Amina, his expression cold and unreadable.
"I'm not going back for her, Amina. I'm moving her to a safe house. But you... you just lost your only leverage. Victor doesn't think you're a ghost anymore. He thinks you're a traitor. And in his world, traitors don't get funerals. They just disappear."
Suddenly, a bright light filled the SUV's cabin from behind. A car was tailing them, its high beams blinding.
Zayn looked at the rearview mirror and cursed.
"He's not waiting for the gala to end," Zayn hissed, floor the gas. "Hold on. This is where it gets messy.