Selene's POV
Launch prep consumed everything.
That was the only way Selene knew how to survive difficult truths—by drowning them in work. So she threw herself into it with the kind of intensity that left no room for thinking about airport screens or business rivals or the particular way Damien Osei had looked at her across a conference table like he was trying to remember something important.
The collection samples had arrived from the manufacturer. Zara was coordinating with photographers for the lookbook. Investors were circling, drawn by the whispers of a new sustainable fashion brand with serious backing and sharper strategy than anything currently moving through Lagos's market.
Selene was exactly where she needed to be.
By evening, she'd reviewed fabric swatches, approved marketing materials, and made seventeen decisions that would determine whether her company succeeded or failed. She was exhausted in the bone-deep way that came from using her entire brain to avoid feeling her entire heart.
She picked up Kofi from the after-school program at 5 PM.
He was quiet on the drive home—not unusual for him. Kofi was a child who processed the world through observation rather than conversation. He watched things. He noticed things. He carried the kind of stillness that made people assume he was shy when he was actually just thinking.
That evening, after dinner, he climbed into her lap with a piece of paper.
"Mummy, look," he said, holding it up proudly. "I drawed it in art class."
Selene looked at the drawing.
It was a figure—stick-like, childish, done in blue crayon and bold black lines. The proportions were rough, the anatomy impossible. But there was something about the posture that made her pause. Something about the way the figure stood—slightly forward-facing, shoulders braced, hands at its sides in a way that suggested readiness for something.
It was the stance of someone who was always prepared to be let down.
"That's wonderful, baby," she said carefully. "Who is it?"
"The man on the big TV," Kofi said matter-of-factly, pointing to the figure's head. "He had dark eyes like mine. I wanted to draw him so I remembered."
Selene's stomach dropped.
She stared at the drawing. At the figure. At the posture that was unmistakably Damien—or rather, unmistakably Kofi's way of seeing Damien. An instinctive recognition written in blue crayon and black lines.
"Why did you want to remember him?" she asked, keeping her voice level.
"Because he looked like me," Kofi said simply, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. "Zara said people who look alike are family. So maybe he's family?"
Selene's hands went very still.
She held the drawing in her lap, studying it. The blue crayon had faded in places. The black lines were thick and uneven. It was a child's drawing, imperfect and genuine in the way that only children could be.
It was also evidence.
Evidence that even her three-year-old could see what Selene had been trying to ignore. That even a child, with the unsophisticated observation of someone who hadn't yet learned to hide, could recognize bloodline in the set of a jaw, the shape of brows.
"It's a beautiful drawing," she said slowly. "Can I keep it?"
Kofi nodded, sliding off her lap to return to his toys.
Selene folded the drawing slowly. Carefully. Not the way you fold something you plan to discard, but the way you fold something precious. Something you needed to keep safe.
She didn't put it in the bin.
Instead, she placed it in her bag—tucked carefully between her phone and her wallet, where it would stay close without being visible. A secret between her and her son, between her and the truth she'd been compartmentalizing since the moment that airport screen lit up.
That night, after Kofi was asleep, Selene sat on her bedroom floor with that drawing in her hands and allowed herself something she rarely did:
She let herself cry.
Not the kind of crying that came from sadness, but the kind that came from the weight of carrying too much alone. The kind that came from raising a child who deserved to know his father, while that child's father walked around the city not knowing his son existed.
The kind that came from realizing that her plan to destroy Damien Osei had become something far more complicated than revenge.
Because how could she destroy a man whose eyes looked back at her from her son's face?