(Naledi — POV)
The wire confirmation arrived without ceremony. No drumroll. Just a line of text on a screen and a timestamp that said received. Naledi stared at it longer than necessary, waiting for relief to feel like relief. It didn't. It felt like gravity shifting—subtle, undeniable, and permanent.
Sipho laughed once, sharp and disbelieving, leaning against the depot wall. "We made it," he said.
Naledi closed the laptop. "We made it into something," she corrected. The distinction mattered.
They paid Rashid before noon. His tone grew immediately more accommodating, as if money could edit memory. Riders were paid by evening; helmets came off lighter, and the depot breathed again. Sipho walked the floor—visible, human, a founder restored.
Naledi stayed with the documents.
The signed packet looked tidy at first glance. She printed the final legal bundle, spread the pages across the shop table, and read them in order, then out of order, then backwards. She circled definitions, underlined verbs, hunted for the polite seams where leverage hid.
There it was.
Right of First Refusal
If the Company seeks acquisition, merger, or material asset sale within twenty-four months, Investor shall have the priority to match any bona fide offer.
She read it again. Twenty-four months was an eternity for a company this fragile. Priority to match meant time-pressured offers, pressure to sell when growth made them attractive, a leash that tightened precisely when they began to matter. It was not control today; it was leverage tomorrow.
She felt the familiar tightening in her ribs: not fear exactly, but the awareness of cost. This was the harsh term. Not the board seat or equity—time itself as a weapon.
She called Sipho over. He was laughing with Junior near the loading bay; the sound cut off when he saw her face.
"Read this," she said, tapping the clause.
He read it twice. For a second he shrugged. "That's standard."
Naledi didn't relent. "Standard for who?" she asked. "For the buyer or for the bought?"
He was quiet a long moment, looking at the clause as if he could see the ghost of his own signature on the page. "So we have twenty-four months to get too expensive to swallow," he said finally. It wasn't a question. It was the beginning of a plan spoken aloud—less a dismissal than a first strategy.
Naming things was how Naledi survived them. She named this: leverage that would invite opportunists. She named the work: accelerate profitability, diversify clients, shorten the vulnerability window. Make the option dear.
Her phone buzzed. The message preview read: Careful who you trust. Capital remembers. The number had a prefix she knew: a disposable pay-as-you-go SIM the size of market gossip, the kind hawked at stalls near the Old Market. Street-level tolls met boardroom leverage. This wasn't a corporate warning. It was the market's breath passing through a burner phone.
She saved the number without replying.
By midafternoon the story had shape. Money had come in; names were attached. Someone had seen Naledi enter the investor building; someone else decided what that meant. By evening, the narrative had been condensed: she was positioning herself; Sipho was being managed; the business was no longer "ours."
The social shifts were small and surgical. A woman Naledi had known since school hesitated when she greeted her. A rider avoided eye contact. Respect didn't vanish loudly; it leaked away.
Sipho noticed. He always did, eventually. "They'll get used to it," he said, trying to steady the brightened depot floor with optimism.
Naledi looked at him. "They'll believe the version that costs them the least effort," she said.
He was quiet, then: the clause in his hand, the ledger in his head. "So we have to make ourselves expensive to swallow," he murmured. Determination landed like a tool he could use.
That night, alone with the documents, Naledi let herself one unguarded moment. She pressed her fingers to the table and breathed until the numbers slowed. For an instant she envied Sipho his explosive laugh—how easy it must be to spend a burst of joy and let it be enough. Envy was a currency that bought nothing; she straightened, checked the memo she had already started drafting—a timeline, contingency plans, revenue diversifiers—and set to work.
Before she left she added one line to the ledger beneath the counter.
Liabilities: Shared. The ink was still wet.
Outside, engines started; routes resumed. The city accepted the money and asked for more. The deal had been signed. The real negotiation had just begun.