LOVE FROM A DISTANCE

The Billionaire's Eyes

Chapter 3: The Billionaire’s Eyes

Musa did not sleep so much as bargain with the dark.

He lay on the thin mattress staring at the ceiling stain shaped like a small country, listening to the fan tick-tick as if counting down to judgment. Each time his eyes closed, a voice pulled him back—cool, exact, edged like a paper cut that refused to bleed: “Tomorrow. Eleven a.m. Arrange a meeting.” The words walked up and down his ribs until they memorized the path.

He turned over. The camera strap brushed his arm. He slid the camera closer, the way children pull blankets to their chins. Ridiculous, he knew—but the weight calmed him. Metal, glass, promise. A tool that let him talk without asking permission.

Outside, Serrekunda kept its own night grammar: a taxi coughing awake; a radio far off discussing football as if it were climate; a neighbor’s laughter unraveling into hush. Somewhere a rooster misunderstood time. Musa closed his eyes and saw the Hilton’s chandelier anyway—light falling like expensive rain—then opened them fast, as if drowning were a thing you did in lamps.

He gave up around five.

Water from the bucket shocked his skin into honesty. He scrubbed his face hard enough to move the future, then wiped it with the edge of the “good” towel, the one Lamin refused to let touch shoes. The mirror—a rectangle the landlord had declared “included”—returned a version of him that looked like he owned the bones he stood in: careful jaw, eyes that heard before they spoke, a small scar along his hairline from a boyhood bike that didn’t believe in brakes.

The shirt hung ready: white, stubborn, pressed last night with the flat bottom of a kettle until the collar surrendered. He slid into it the way a man steps into an argument he can’t avoid.

Lamin stirred, then sat up cross-legged on the opposite mattress, hair high with sleep. “You already look like a press conference,” he said, grinning, and reached for the small charcoal stove. The attaya foamed like a tiny storm in a tin sea. “Drink this. If her money makes you faint, at least your breath will smell like courage.”

Musa laughed, and the laugh told his body it was still allowed. He took the small glass; the heat pinched his fingers, the sweetness arrived late, like a friend who refused to leave you in a bad story.

“What are you going to say?” Lamin asked.

“The truth,” Musa said. “And whatever I can say without my tongue firing me.”

“Good,” Lamin nodded. “No borrowed English. No rented confidence. Be new-shoe honest: it still squeaks, but at least it’s yours.”

Musa set the glass down and checked the camera again. He wiped the lens with the clean edge of his shirt—not ideal, but gentle—then scrolled through last night’s practice shots: Lamin pretending not to pose; the neighbor’s cat looking like it owned management shares in the building; a kettle exhaling. He deleted what disrespected truth and left what breathed.

“You think she’ll like you?” Lamin asked.

“She doesn’t have to like me,” Musa said. “She just has to not delete me.”

“You want a blessing?” Lamin asked, half-mocking, half-serious already raising a hand.

“Give me two,” Musa said. “One for the meeting. One for not head-butting a man in a navy jacket.”

“Ah,” Lamin chuckled. “The DM lion. Karafa.” He wiggled his fingers in the air theatrically. “May your temper be a sleeping dog, and may your tongue be a sharp knife that cuts vegetables, not people.”

“Amen,” Musa said, smiling despite the drum in his chest.

He checked the time: ten past ten. The Hilton was a twenty-minute walk if traffic respected history. He slid the cracked wallet into his back pocket, tucked the cheap comb into the front, then thought better of it and left the comb. He ran a thumb along the inside of his collar, muttered to the shirt, “Don’t betray me,” and stepped into the corridor.

The stairwell smelled like onions, dust, and somebody else’s hope. A child’s chalk drawings—crooked suns, a goat that dreamed of being a lion—marched along the wall. Outside, morning had decided to be bright without asking anyone’s permission. Musa breathed once. Twice. Then walked.

The city did its usual orchestra: sellers calling prices like prayers; a woman arguing with a taxi as if it were a cousin; a boy balancing bread on his head while negotiating with gravity. Musa passed Ebrima’s hardware stall—zippers, sliders, gossip; passed Auntie Jarra measuring cloth with eyes alone; passed the football corner where yesterday’s boys were already inventing physics. He wanted to photograph all of it. He didn’t lift the camera. Not today. Not yet. Today’s light belonged to another room.

The Hilton pretended the air had always been like this—cool, perfumed, civilized into behaving. The marble floor took his reflection and ironed it. Security glanced at his pass, at his shirt, at his face, and decided he could exist. He rode the elevator with two men who spoke in numbers and laughed in interest rates.

Sophie waited at the lounge entrance, clipboard against her chest like a shield. Up close, she smelled like lemon, paper, and precision. “On time,” she said, which in her language meant good soldier. “Three things. Answer what she asks, not what your fear volunteers. Don’t fidget. Don’t lie.” She studied him a heartbeat longer. “And breathe.”

“I keep forgetting that part,” Musa said.

“People do,” she replied, and touched the door handle.

Inside, money had a smell—leather, polish, the faint aftertaste of decisions made over other people’s lives. A chandelier drooled crystal above a long table. Chairs that had never met dust stood at military rest. The air carried that particular quiet that expensive rooms keep for people who’ve bought the right to hear it.

Margaret Bennett sat at the head, posture a ruler held up to a class. Her suit absorbed light and returned instructions. The wristwatch on her left hand didn’t tell time; it ordered it. Her eyes were the sharp, assessing kind that looked at you and saw budgets, timelines, risk.

Clara sat to her right in dove-grey, spine straight, hands folded. She looked like she had been born in rooms like this and also like she was tired of them. When Musa entered, her gaze brushed him—quick, steady—like a hand on a shoulder, invisible to everyone else. He didn’t know how a glance could be a kindness. He was grateful to learn.

“Musa Jallow,” Margaret said, and the name sounded like a file opened. “Come closer.”

He obeyed. Each step felt reported.

“I’ve seen your pictures,” Margaret said. “They are… honest. Honesty is dangerous. It reveals flaws people pay millions to hide.” She let millions sit there, a well-fed word, then continued. “Tell me—do you think truth can feed a family?”

Musa thought of their cracked jar, coins like raindrops that forgot to be a river. He thought of Lamin insisting on straight lines for earphones as if order could persuade luck. He thought of market women laughing on empty stomachs because dignity eats shame for breakfast. “Maybe not always,” he said carefully. “But lies starve more.”

Clara’s mouth softened. Margaret didn’t blink.

“You’re bold,” she said. “Boldness without resources is recklessness. My daughter is heir to everything I’ve built. Do you expect me to believe she should waste her attention on a man who sells earphones in the street?”

The sentence was polished steel. Musa felt it in the ribs and decided not to bruise. “I don’t expect you to believe anything,” he said, voice even. “I only know what I see. And I see someone who deserves truth, not flattery.”

Margaret regarded him like a scanner searching for contraband. He kept still.

“Clara tells me you have no formal training,” she said.

“That’s true.”

“No wealthy family.”

“Also true.”

“No plan beyond survival.”

He paused. Fear suggested silence. Pride suggested a speech. Honesty, rude but loyal, stood up. “I have a plan,” he said. “To keep seeing. To show people their beauty, even when they forget. Maybe it won’t buy an empire. But it gives dignity. And sometimes, that feeds better than bread.”

Something flickered behind her eyes—annoyance, curiosity, calculation—then vanished.

“You speak like an artist,” she said. “Artists die poor. I didn’t raise my daughter to inherit poverty dressed as passion.”

“Mother—” Clara began.

Margaret cut a glance that clipped sentences. “Enough.”

She rose, smooth as a verdict. “You will shoot tonight’s gala. If your pictures impress me, we will discuss whether you belong in this orbit. If not, you will disappear from it.”

Musa’s throat tightened. “And if I refuse?”

Her smile was winter. “Then you prove you’re not serious. And Clara learns her instincts cannot be trusted. Either way, I win.”

She turned and left. The door sighed closed.

Clara exhaled, shoulders falling a fraction. “I’m sorry,” she said softly. “She tests everyone.”

“Did I pass?” Musa asked.

“I don’t know,” Clara admitted. “But you’re still standing. That’s more than most.”

Sophie appeared like a period at the end of a long sentence. “The gala begins at eight,” she said briskly. “Ms. Bennett wants results.”

Musa nodded. His hands found the camera and held on.

-End of Chapter 3