CHAPTER 15
By the time we landed in Abuja, I wasn’t the same girl that boarded the plane in Lagos.
The Abuja air was different. It clung to my skin like a promise and a warning, thick with politics, lust, and lies — a city where women like me were either prey or predators, and I had no plans of bleeding for anyone. I stepped out of the car in a slitted gold dress that caught every camera flash like it had been dipped in vengeance. My heels hit the carpet like gunshots. Zino trailed behind me in a suit cut sharp enough to wound. His hand rested on the small of my back, but it wasn’t possessive — it was political. A calculated visual: the daughter of Chief Jaja escorted by the son of a hotel king. We were spectacle. Speculation. s*x and strategy wrapped in couture.
But tonight wasn’t abou
