Selene's POV
She didn't go home immediately.
Instead, Selene sat in her car in the Adeola Fabrics parking garage for twenty minutes, her hands still shaking on the steering wheel, her heart still thundering against her ribs like something trapped and desperate.
She'd won.
She'd walked into that room expecting anything—anger, confrontation, some form of professional warfare she could control. Instead, she'd found something far more dangerous: a man who watched her win and looked at her like it was the most erotic thing he'd ever witnessed.
You're very good.
Not "you won." Not "congratulations." Not even "well played."
You're very good.
Like he knew something about the quality of her mind that went beyond three years of professional observation. Like he'd watched her work before. Like somewhere in his memory, there was evidence of her excellence that didn't come from business reports or market analysis.
Like he remembered.
Her phone buzzed.
Zara: Did you destroy him?
Selene: Won the contract.
Zara: I KNEW IT. You're a fucking LEGEND. Details later. Coming to the house—Kofi's been asking for you all morning. Kid missed his mum.
Selene forced herself to breathe. Forced herself to start the car. Forced herself to drive toward the house she'd rented—a small but elegant townhouse in Ikoyi that overlooked a private garden. The kind of place a woman built a new life in.
By the time she arrived, Zara had already let herself in—because Zara had keys to every important place in Selene's life—and Kofi came running, his small body barreling into her legs with the force of three years' worth of love and trust.
"Mummy!"
She scooped him up, buried her face in his hair, and felt something in her chest unknot for the first time since she'd seen that airport screen.
"Hello, baby," she whispered. "Did you have a good day?"
"The best day," Kofi said seriously. "Zara let me have ice cream for lunch."
"Did she now?" Selene looked at Zara over his head, and her best friend grinned unapologetically.
"He's three and you just won a major business contract. Ice cream is the bare minimum celebration required." Zara collapsed onto the couch. "So come on. Tell me everything. I want to know the moment he walked in. I want to know his face when you beat him. I want to know all of it."
Selene set Kofi down and watched him toddle toward the kitchen, where Zara had apparently left the ice cream out—of course she had.
"There's not much to tell," Selene said, but her hands were still shaking and Zara's eyes went sharp because Zara knew her better than anyone on earth. "We made our pitches. I was better."
"And?"
"And nothing. I won. He congratulated me. We left."
"Liar," Zara said flatly. "Your hands are shaking."
Selene looked down. They were. She was. And there was no rational explanation for it because she'd spent three years preparing for this moment—preparing to compete with Damien Osei, preparing to beat him, preparing to feel the satisfaction of dismantling his business one contract at a time.
She should feel victorious.
Instead, she felt unsettled. Off-balance. Like something fundamental had shifted and she wasn't going to be able to put it back.
"It was intense," she finally said. "He's... different than his reports suggest."
"Different how?"
Different in that he'd watched her win and looked like it mattered to him. Different in that he'd offered an insane counter-proposal just to see if she could beat it. Different in that when he looked at her, there was something in his eyes that felt like recognition and hunger and something darker underneath—something that looked like he was trying to remember a night he could never quite place.
"Just different," Selene said quietly. "Sharper than I expected."
Zara studied her for a moment, then seemed to let it go. "Well, sharp or not, you destroyed him today. You're officially launched in Lagos with a major contract. This is the beginning, Selene. This is everything you worked for."
This was everything she'd worked for. The company. The success. The independence. The life she'd built for herself and Kofi from nothing but grief and determination.
So why did winning feel like losing something she hadn't even known she needed to keep?
That evening, after Zara left and Kofi was asleep, Selene found a notebook in her bedroom drawer. The London notebook. The one where she'd written everything during the pregnancy—all her fears, all her plans, all her carefully constructed arguments for why she could do this alone.
She opened to a random page.
The handwriting was frantic, from late night: He had quiet hands. He held mine and didn't ask for anything. I don't know his name. I'll never know his name. But I'll never forget the way he made me feel like I could survive this.
She closed the notebook slowly.
Placed it back in the drawer.
And didn't let herself think about how Damien Osei's hands looked warm. Or how his voice had that same quiet quality. Or how when he looked at her across that conference table, it felt like something she'd been waiting three years to remember.
Outside her window, Lagos glittered like a secret.
And somewhere in that city, a man was sitting in an office, staring at a contract he'd lost to a woman he couldn't quite place but absolutely could not stop thinking about.