Ayo looked at Kelechi. “Get her number before she escapes. I want a conversation. Not about lamps.”
Maya’s eyes were plates. I stared at him because people don’t just… do that. Not to me. Not without a slide deck and a mutual introduction on LinkedIn and seventeen calendar holds.
“I have a job,” I said, slow because my brain had become soup. “A very loud one.”
“Good,” he said. “Two options. You tell me how to stop one of my companies from bleeding money, as a paid consult through your firm. Or you ignore me and we pretend today was only about physics. I’m content either way.”
He stepped back to the SUV like a man who expects the world to meet him halfway and doesn’t sulk when it doesn’t. Kelechi. finished swapping numbers with Maya, who had somehow already run a background check with h
