Still, he returned the next day as a hungry stranger. Mama Bisi refused him food until he agreed to clear a large plot behind the compound for 100,000 naira. He worked under the sun while Sade and Kemi mocked him from the shade. At night, they threw him a plate of sour garri and watery soup like scraps for a dog. Amara came quietly after everyone slept and placed a neat bowl of rice and stew beside him, along with one of Papa Jonah’s old shirts.
—I am sorry for how they treated you.
Those 7 words entered his heart more deeply than any expensive perfume, any polished speech, any beauty dressed in silk.
Now, as Mama Bisi offered Amara as payment, Tunde looked at the girl’s tearful face and saw not weakness, but a soul that had survived too much.
—I accept.
Amara gasped.
Sade clapped her hands in shock.
—This dirty man wants her?
Mama Bisi smiled coldly.
—Good. Kemi, pack her things.
Amara began to shake.
—Please, Mama. Let me stay. I will work. I will not complain.
Mama Bisi leaned close.
—Your presence has blocked my daughters for too long. Leave before your bad luck eats this house.
A small torn bag was thrown at Amara’s feet. Tunde picked it up, then held out his hand. Amara looked at him through tears, terrified of the unknown.
—Amara, I swear on my mother’s life, no harm will touch you with me.
She did not know why his voice felt safe. She only knew the house behind her had never been home. As they stepped through the gate, Mama Bisi whispered to her daughters that Chief Adewale’s son was coming soon, and with Amara gone, he would have no choice but to choose one of them. But at the end of the dusty street, 3 black SUVs were already waiting.
Part 2
Amara stopped walking when the convoy doors opened and men in dark suits bowed before the same dusty stranger who had been clearing Mama Bisi’s farm. Her fingers slipped from his hand as fear and confusion flooded her face, but Tunde only turned gently and said nothing, because the truth was too heavy to drop on her in the middle of the road. They entered the first SUV, and as the vehicle rolled toward the city, Amara sat stiffly beside him, clutching her torn bag like it contained her whole life. She kept expecting him to shout, to touch her roughly, to laugh at her foolishness, but he only asked the driver to lower the air conditioner because she was shivering. By evening, they arrived at a mansion so large that Amara thought it belonged to a governor. The gates opened by themselves, the compound lights glowed like stars, and house staff lined the entrance with
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