DINNER WITH WOLVES
767 Words
The office on the third floor had my name on a temporary placard beside the door.
I stared at it for a moment.
Amara Okafor. Legal Consultant.
Legal consultant. In the building of the man I was marrying. Working against the man trying to destroy him. Using skills I had spent three years acquiring for a future that was supposed to look nothing like this.
Lagos, I thought, has a very particular sense of humor.
I went inside.
The office was small but well-equipped. Desktop computer, printer, a bookshelf that someone had already stocked with company law references and three years of Okonkwo Holdings' legal filings.
Someone had also left a flask of hot tea on the desk.
I didn't know whether that was kindness or surveillance.
In this family, I was beginning to suspect it was both.
I had been there forty minutes when the door opened without a knock.
Zion.
He looked at the nameplate. Then at me. Then at the files already spread across my desk.
Something moved behind his eyes.
"My mother told you," he said. Not angry, just quiet.
"Yes."
"She didn't consult me."
"No," I agreed. "She didn't consult either of us. That seems to be her management style."
He stepped inside and closed the door. The office suddenly felt significantly smaller.
"Amara." He said my name the way he said everything — with the deliberate weight of a man who chose every word like it cost him something. "You don't have to do this."
"I know."
"The debt is canceled regardless. That was the agreement."
"I know that too."
He looked at me. "Then why?"
I set down my pen. Looked up at him properly — at this cold, complicated, carefully constructed man who had walked into my father's house and turned my entire life upside down.
"Because Valentina Morrow is good," I said. "I could tell from forty seconds in a corridor. And whoever is advising your uncle is better than Mr. Briggs." I picked my pen back up. "And because I have a first class degree from Unilag and nothing has ever been handed to me in my life." A pause. "And I really, genuinely, cannot stand losing."
Silence.
"Neither can I," Zion said quietly.
It was possibly the most human thing he had said to me.
I nodded once. "Then we should get to work."
He looked at me for one long moment.
Then he pulled out the chair across from my desk and sat down.
We worked for three hours.
He knew every clause of his father's will from memory. Every codicil, every amendment, every line that Emeka's lawyers were going to challenge. He walked me through the history of Okonkwo Holdings the way a surgeon describes anatomy — precise, unemotional, thorough.
I took notes. Asked questions. Pushed back where I saw gaps.
At one point I said, "This clause here is the weakest point. Emeka's lawyers will go for this first."
Zion looked at the page. "My father's solicitor said it was airtight."
"Your father's solicitor," I said carefully, "is a seventy-year-old man who learned contract law before the Companies and Allied Matters Act was amended. With respect to Mr. Eze, airtight in 1995 is not airtight now."
Zion stared at me.
"I need his full file by tomorrow morning," I said.
He pulled out his phone and sent a message without another word.
Two minutes later it was confirmed.
I wrote something in my notepad.
He listens. I underlined it. When the argument is sound, he actually listens.
That, I had not expected.
At nine o'clock he stood to leave.
At the door he paused. "Have you eaten?"
I looked up. "I'm fine."
"That is not what I asked."
I opened my mouth.
Closed it.
"No," I admitted.
He said nothing. Pulled out his phone. Typed something.
Fifteen minutes later, Daniel appeared with food from a restaurant whose name I recognized as one I had walked past many times and never entered because my entire monthly budget wouldn't cover a starter.
I looked at the food.
Looked at the door Zion had already walked through.
Tobenna appeared in the doorway instead, grinning like a man who had been waiting for exactly this moment.
"He ordered for you," Tobenna said cheerfully. "He remembered you don't eat pepper. From one dinner." He leaned against the doorframe. "For reference, he has never once remembered how I take my coffee and we have lived in the same house for twenty-six years."
I looked at the food.
"Tobenna, go away" I said.
He went.
But he was still grinning.
- Writer
