When your copy arrives, I’d love to see it! Take a picture and tag me or send it my way. I want to see Obinna out in the wild!

Kindle Unlimited readers: Obinna is officially LIVE in KU!

And a very special thank-you to all the individuals, bookstores, and readers who helped make this release such an amazing one. From sharing the book to stocking it on shelves, ordering copies, and simply cheering me on—thank you.

Another Yoruba Demon has entered the world. And we keep going.

Grab Yoruba Demon: Obinna

Will I See You?

I’ll be at these in-person events for the rest of the year:

• October 3 - Collingswood Book Festival, Collingswood, New Jersey, USA

• October 10 - The Great Big Book Swap After Dark, Dover, New Jersey, USA

• October 17 - Books, Blooms, & Magic, Freehold, New Jersey, USA

• November 14 - Royal Book Bash, Annapolis, Maryland, USA (if you’re in the DMV and would love to attend, I’ve got free General Admission tickets for you! Simply reply to this email with the word INTERESTED, and I’ll send you the details.

• November 15 - The Black Girl Book Fair Tour, Washington, D.C., USA

Save the dates and grab tickets, I’d love to meet you if you’re nearby!

Save the dates, grab tickets, I’d love to meet you if you’re nearby!

Thank you!

XoxO

I’ve put together some freebies and sales to celebrate the release of Yoruba Demon: Obinna, including a sale on Yoruba Demon: Femi and a limited-time opportunity to read the YDBC origin story for free.

Without further ado, this is going to be a very pictorial letter.

Grab the origin story

Grab the deal!

ICYMI, on Obinna’s release day, I’ll be signing copies at The Ripped Bodice, the first romance-only bookstore in New York! This is a huge milestone for me, and I’d love your help making it a big one for Obinna too.

If you know anyone in the area, please spread the word and encourage them to grab a copy during release week. I’d love to sell out and build some strong momentum so the bookstore knows they should keep my books on their shelves.

Also, if you’re in the DMV and would love to attend a book event, I’ve got free General Admission tickets to the Royal Book Bash to celebrate!

Just reply to this email with the word INTERESTED, and I’ll send you the details.

What early readers are saying 🥰

FYI, I'm getting feedback on Yoruba Demon: Kemi’s book.

Will I See You?

I’ll be at these in-person events for the rest of the year:

• October 3 - Collingswood Book Festival, Collingswood, New Jersey, USA

• October 10 - The Great Big Book Swap After Dark, Dover, New Jersey, USA

• October 17 - Books, Blooms, & Magic, Freehold, New Jersey, USA

• November 14 - Royal Book Bash, Annapolis, Maryland, USA

• November 15 - The Black Girl Book Fair Tour, Washington, D.C., USA

Save the dates and grab tickets, I’d love to meet you if you’re nearby!

Save the dates, grab tickets, I’d love to meet you if you’re nearby!

Thank you!

XoxO

The past weeks have been a rollercoaster.

I’m supposed to be sending this message from Canada, but here I am, learning patience with life and with my toddler, who happily makes a mess and then looks at me like, ‘Good job.’

But there is some good news: someone saw me this past week and asked if I was an intern!

So apparently, despite everything, I’m still giving young and employable in this economy. I’ll take it!

Life Updates: Learning patience and questioning my life

I swear, if you want to learn patience, have—or live with—a toddler who is actively trying to destroy everything in sight and seemingly auditioning for the role of Most Determined Person to Give Their Mother a Heart Attack.

I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve screamed “NO!” into the void or had to physically stop myself from losing my mind. One of my monitors has already been sacrificed because this tiny human apparently believes they are Spider-Man and can climb absolutely EVERYTHING.

And have I mentioned the attempts to slip their hand out of mine at the most dangerous possible moment? Because holding Mommy’s hand is optional when they can hop and skip by themselves and investigate exciting things on their own.

Please keep me in your prayers.

YDBC Updates: Obinna + Upcoming Cover Reveals!

FYI: the official physical copy pre-order for Yoruba Demon: Obinna ends September 21. If you haven’t placed your pre-order yet, now is the perfect time to do it.

And if you preorder through one of the participating bookstores, you’ll get some exclusive merch while supplies last! For example, you can snag the limited first run of the YDBC Member Cards—two cards for each of the first four Yoruba Demons.

Once this first batch is gone, they’re gone until the next YDBC release. So if you’re a collector, this is your chance!

For those waiting on retailer links (Amazon US, UK, Canada, Japan, and more), the links are live! Visit your closest bookstore to ask/grab a copy and ask your libraries to stock up on copies.

What early readers are saying 🥰

And if you’re interested in placing a bulk order for your book club, library, school, or organization, simply reply to this email, and we’ll make it happen.

Get Yoruba Demon: Obinna now

Writing Updates: Yoruba Demon: Kemi / Irreplaceable

I’ve got about ten chapters left to wrap up Kemi and Boma’s story. Yep, Kemi’s love interest is a Bayelsa guy who speaks Pidgin even in his thoughts. I won’t lie, this man has made me question my Pidgin skills. But we move!

Yoruba Demon: Kemi will be out December 10, and I can’t wait to add this emotional story to the rest of the series.

And because Kemi has me experimenting with all sorts of things, I’ve also been testing my chia pudding skills. All I’m going to say is… I’ve discovered a tasty recipe.

I’m also back in the draft of Irreplaceable, which is now set for release on February 8, 2027. It’ll be the final book in the Catching Feelings series and my last big goodbye to the Lagos Lovin’ characters.

Of course, you haven’t seen the last of them completely. You’ll still spot them popping up as side characters in other books, because apparently I’m not capable of letting my characters leave quietly.

Tour Updates: Something Special for Obinna’s Release + What happened at Petersburg, Virginia

On Obinna’s release day, I’ll be signing copies at the first romance-only bookstore in New York! (psst, you’re the first to know)

And this is a HUGE DEAL because, as far as I know, no one from my lineage has done this before. Laughs in Rema’s Hehehe

If you know anyone nearby—or want to help me keep my books on their shelves—please grab a copy during release week and spread the word!

I’ll try to vlog the experience. Here’s to many more wins!

And in case you missed it… I SOLD OUT for the first time at Petersburg Book Fest! Check out the videos for the full story!

Will I See You?

I’m really excited—and honestly grateful—to be out and about meeting readers and fellow authors. If you’re in any of these areas, please come say hello!

Here’s a video detailing the in-person events I’ll be at for the rest of the year:

Save the dates, grab tickets, I’d love to meet you if you’re nearby!

Expect more letters as Obinna’s release draws close!

XoxO

Catch up here…

OBINNA

THE WEST AFRICA EXPANSION MEETING is twenty-seven minutes old, and I’m calculating the many ways I can destroy the ex-NLRC regulator without leaving fingerprints.

“The NLRC complaint has pushed back Ghana by six weeks,” Taiwo, head of legal, says. “His regulatory contacts are… sympathetic.”

Sympathetic. What a word for bribery.

“Push the appeal anyway. Get me a meeting with Commissioner Adeyanju.”

“Sir, I don’t think—”

“That was not a request.”

Chuks appears in the doorway with hunched shoulders and a tight jaw.

“Meeting adjourned.”

The legal team files out. Chuks waits until the door closes behind the last one before stepping inside and locking it.

“What.”

“That SageMedia Network journalist. Miss Nentawe. She’s been taken.”

“By who?” He has my full attention now.

“Dala’s people. The secondary operation—the one running the match-fixing through the Ivory Coast league.” Chuks looks pissed and sympathetic at the same time, which is a peculiar combination on his face. “In her digging, I think she found the wrong thread. Followed it sideways instead of straight. Ended up in Dala’s business—”

“They think she’s fair game.”

“Looks that way, sir.” Chuks hesitates. “Or they think she’s connected to you. There are rumors already. If they believe she’s digging on your behalf, taking her sends a message to both of you.”

Dumb fools. All of them. Dala and his entourage of nincompoops.

Dala sees a journalist digging into his operations and assumes I’m the one holding the shovel. Because that’s what he would do. Hell, it’s what most of us would do.

“Where is she?”

“A warehouse in Oregun. One of Dala’s lieutenants—Kingsley—runs it. Small-time muscle. Big-time ego.”

She’s not my asset. If I do nothing, Dala’s people send their message and release her. Bruised, probably. Scared, definitely. She’ll drop the investigation or she won’t—but either way, it’s not my problem.

If I intervene…

“How long has she been there?”

“Three hours, maybe four.”

Three hours zip-tied to a chair. I know what that does to a person. I know because I’ve been on the other side of it—not the chair, but the room. Watching men break down, cry, beg, bargain. Watching the moment they realize that nobody is coming.

She’s not mine. But if I get her out, she owes me.

I curve my lips into a devious smile.

“Chuks.”

“Ódògwù?”

“Get the Kingsley guy on the phone.”

The call connects on the third ring.

“Ódògwù PuntPlay here,” Chuks says as introduction.

“Ódògwù…” Kingsley’s voice is thick—Mbaise boy trying to sound Lagos. “To what do I owe—”

“Tell me you’ve not done something irrevocable to her.”

Silence. Calculating silence.

Kingsley isn’t stupid. He wouldn’t be running Dala’s muscle if he were.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Tshew… I overestimated the fool.

“The woman in your warehouse,” I say, my patience thinning. “The journalist. You have her because you think she belongs to me.”

I let that sink.

“And if I did?”

My jaw tightens.

“Then you’ve made a very expensive mistake.”

“Ódògwù, she’s putting her nose where she has no busi—”

“She’s a journalist. Asking questions is her job description.”

“You know that’s not what this is.”

“What I know,” I say evenly, “is that if a single hair on her head is out of place, this conversation becomes much more complicated for everyone involved.”

Kingsley laughs.

It’s the wrong response. I bite the inside of my cheek and force myself to stay patient.

“I’m on my way to get her, and you’re going to hand her over. I’m calling to tell you how that’s going to happen.”

Stunned silence. Then a short, disbelieving laugh.

“Why would I do that? I don’t answer to you. Dala is—”

“Tell Dala I know about Ivory Coast. And the Ghanaian clubs. The three he’s been running scores through since February. Tell him I have the bank records. Tell him the only reason the EFCC hasn’t knocked on his door is because I haven’t decided whether to be the one knocking.”

I let that settle.

“Then tell him the journalist is under my protection now. If he has questions, he can call me himself.”

Silence.

Longer this time.

“Ódògwù,” Kingsley says carefully, “she’s not worth this. She’s just a girl with—”

I close my eyes briefly.

Just a girl.

This is the thing with people who lack foresight.

If only he knew.

“Let me make this simple for you,” I say. “Whether you think she’s important or not is irrelevant. She’s leverage. And I don’t allow other people to hold what’s mine.”

Muffled voices fill the line, as though he’s covering the phone and consulting someone nearby.

When he comes back, his tone has changed.

“Fine. Come collect your leverage. But Dala won’t forget this.”

“Tell Dala I’m counting on it.”

I end the call.

Chuks reaches for his other phone. “I’ll get the team to—”

“You’re coming with me.”

His stare flicks up. He’s right to be confused. Sending Chuks is my usual play.

This is strategy, nothing more. I need to oversee the handoff. Make sure nothing slips.

Truth? I want to witness the moment she understands she owes me.

40+ Chapters to go…

Releases September 30, 2026.

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FURE

Nova City sheds its corporate skin after midnight. The Ascent towers behind me, their lights dimming as the respectable go to bed. Ahead, the streets narrow, neon lights multiply, and the Undercity stirs to life like a creature waking from sleep.

“This is going to be incredible,” Ernest says from the passenger seat. My cousin has been vibrating with energy since I picked him up. “I’ve waited three months for this. Three months of background checks and interviews and—”

“And my name on the line,” I remind him. “If you embarrass me—”

“I won’t. I swear. I’m cool. I’m very cool.”

He is not cool. He’s practically bouncing.

I take the next turn onto a street with no name, past a building with no address. You don’t find Club Nova on a map. You find it because someone brought you, and they only bring you if you’re worth the risk.

My father’s gift, though he’d never phrase it that way. A networking opportunity, he called it, when he sponsored my membership five years ago. A place where deals happen that can’t happen anywhere else. I stopped attending regularly three years in. The masks felt suffocating. The anonymity felt like a lie.

But I kept the mask.

The Venetian piece sits heavy in my jacket pocket now. Black lacquer, gold trim, a gift from a client whose deal I closed at two in the morning in one of the private rooms. I should have thrown it away when I stopped coming. I kept it instead. Didn’t ask myself why.

I know why now.

The parking structure swallows the car. Ernest’s eyes are wide, trying to absorb everything—the unmarked elevator, the attendant who takes my keys without speaking, the air change when the doors close. Heavier. Charged.

“Remember the rules,” I say as we descend. “Don’t stare. Don’t approach anyone without invitation. Don’t—”

“I know, I know. You told me countless times.”

“Don’t embarrass me.” I slip on my mask.

The weight settles. The scowl settles with it—same expression that’s saved me in boardrooms and courtrooms and every uncomfortable social situation my father has ever thrust me into. Behind the mask, I can be anyone. Behind the mask, I don’t have to be Chief Edoja’s perpetually disappointing son, still unmarried at thirty-two, still chasing approval I’ll never receive.

The elevator opens. And I literally hear Ernest suck in air and forget to release it.

I don’t blame him. The transformation from the street to this is crazy. Outside, Club Nova is a forgotten warehouse in a forgotten block. Inside, it’s velvet and shadow, gold light pooling on surfaces that seem to drink it in. The music doesn’t play so much as it lives in the walls—a pulse you feel in your chest, your throat, the base of your spine.

Bodies move languorously as no one rushes here. No one needs to prove they belong. Regulars drift like predators, languid, certain. Staff circulates with drinks that never empty. Masks are everywhere—some elaborate, some simple, all serving the same purpose.

Anonymity. Freedom. Permission.

Shit.

“Put on your mask,” I say through clenched teeth.

Ernest fumbles with the simple black domino I’d sent to him. His excitement is gauche. Anyone can see he’s new. His eyes are too wide. Smile’s too eager. He’s practically vibrating as we cross the threshold, taking in the chandeliers dripping crystal, the servers in their fitted black, the air thick with expensive perfume and whispered secrets.

“This is—” he starts.

“Don’t,” I cut him off. “Don’t gawk. Don’t exclaim. These people can smell desperation, and desperation here is worse than poverty.”

He swallows hard. Nods. Tries to compose his face to look bored.

The club’s magic settles over me like a second skin. A subtle enchantment that makes everything feel both more real and less consequential. Names spoken here won’t be remembered clearly. Faces seen behind masks will blur in memory. It’s why the powerful come. It’s why they stay. The freedom of anonymity is worth more than money to men who have everything except the ability to be truly themselves.

A server appears at my elbow. “Counsel. It’s been some time.”

“It has.”

“Your usual table?”

“Not tonight. Just the bar.”

Ernest is craning his neck, taking in the room. Politicians I recognize from magazine covers. A CEO whose wife thinks he’s at a conference in Geneva. Old money who reside at the Harbor sitting in corners where they’ve sat for decades, watching newcomers with bored contempt.

And then there are the performers.

The Ladies and Lords of the House move differently from the guests. They carry the room’s attention like a garment, wearing it comfortably. They choose their partners, not the other way around. They see things no one else sees—what you want before you know you want it.

“Oh,” Ernest breathes. His gaze has snagged on a group near the stage. One of the women laughs and gestures him over.

“Go,” I say. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

“That leaves a lot of room.”

He’s gone before I can respond, practically tripping over his own feet to reach them. I watch him fold into the group—a strip poker invitation, based on the cards being shuffled—and cringe internally. He’ll learn. They all do.

I turn back to the bar. Order a whiskey.

She’s not here tonight.

It’s an unwelcome thought, so I push it away.

I scan the room instead. Take inventory. The Curator is nowhere to be seen, but that’s normal—they appear when they choose to, and they choose rarely. The private elevator in the corner catches my eye. I’ve never used it. Asked about it once. “The Penthouse,” a colleague said. “You only know what goes on there when you’re invited.”

My whiskey sits untouched. The ice melts slowly. I should leave. I have briefs to review, a motion to draft, Oreva’s situation to handle. But I stay. Watch the dancers on stage. Watch the couples disappearing into private rooms. Watch the door like I’m waiting for someone.

Six months ago.

The memory surfaces unbidden, sharp as broken glass.

A woman with a nose ring that caught the amber light. Puffy lips curved into a smile that was equal parts invitation and challenge. Movements so practiced they looked effortless—hips swaying, hands trailing, every gesture premeditated to make a man forget his own name.

She’d selected me from across the room. Walked through the crowd like she was parting waters, never glancing back to see if I followed. Of course I followed. Every man in the room would have followed.

The private booth she led me to was small, intimate, lined in velvet so dark it swallowed sound. She’d pushed me into the seat and stood before me, just out of reach.

“Why so angry,” she’d said.

“I look angry?”

She’d let out a soft, tingling laugh. “You do… I’ve been watching you.”

The lap dance that followed left me hard for days. She knew exactly where to touch, where to avoid, how to build anticipation until I was gripping the armrests to keep from grabbing her. She whispered promises against my skin—what she could do, what she wanted to do, what she might consider doing if I came back.

Then she stopped. Right at the edge of everything. Pulled back with a maddening smile.

“Come back,” she’d said. “Maybe next time you’ll earn the rest.”

I’d left my business card tucked into her costume like a desperate fool. She never called. I told myself I didn’t care—that she was just another performer, another masked fantasy, another body in a club full of bodies.

I’m still telling myself that. Six months later, in a city of millions, and I still think about the curve of her smile. The scent of mint on her breath. The way she looked at me like she could see through every wall I’ve ever built.

Fuck it.

I down the whiskey in one burning swallow. Signal for another. The bartender pours. The ice cracks. The music transitions into a slower, darker rhythm and the crowd adjusts to match—bodies moving closer, conversations dropping lower.

She’s not here. She’s probably never coming back. She was one night of almost, and I need to stop—

The scent hits first. Mint. Vanilla… And white musk?

Then the voice, directly behind me, close enough that her breath moves the air against my ear.

“Want to use the bathroom?”

Every nerve in my body fires at once. I don’t turn around. Can’t turn around. My hand tightens on the glass I’m holding. I’m surprised it hasn’t shattered.

“That depends.”

“On?”

I set the glass down carefully. “On whether you’ll leave me hanging again.”

I can hear the teasing smile in her voice. “Only one way to find out.”

She walks away without waiting for my answer. Weaves through the crowd with practiced grace, not looking back, because she knows.

She knows I’ll follow her.

I’ll follow her till morning comes.

ROTKINEN

THE GENERATOR NEXT DOOR COUGHS to life at 6:47 a.m. I’ve been awake since 4:12, mind circling back to places I don’t want it to go.

A holding room. Polished cuffs. Silk against my eyes.

This Sunday morning is mine. Turmeric tea, silence, my nails, and nobody else’s emergency.

While the mask dries, I inspect last night’s work. Nude pink, neat, filed into cute squares. The left thumb has a tiny smudge near the cuticle that nobody but me would notice.

I notice. So, I fix it.

Some women do this for attention. I do this for the mirror. For the version of myself I constructed from rubble.

Schoolboy.

I meant it when I said it.

At work, on my social media pages where I post my Do Better documentaries and mini-docs, even in the column I earned in the nation’s favorite newspaper where every quarter I write about the systems eating at society—Obinna Okwuluoka is so young for what he does.

The people I usually investigate are older. Men and women with decades behind them. Which makes him unsettling. If he’s this powerful at his age, what kind of man will he be at fifty?

And, honestly, he’s not as tall as I expected. I’m five-eleven barefoot and I’ve never once bought flat shoes on purpose—so I spend most of my life looking down at grown men and watching them hate it. From his photos I assumed he’d be the exception, that he’d tower. He’s say… six-one or six-two, and in my heels I’d have half-inch on him.

I make my tea and carry it to the small table by the window.

After my release, I should have called someone. That’s what normal people do—call a friend, vent, get told they’re overreacting. But the last friend I had who knew about my uncle, who held me when the betting app notifications stopped and the eviction notices started, she moved to Canada three years ago. We mostly text on birthdays now.

I open WhatsApp. Tap my uncle’s name.

He picks up when I’m almost giving up.

“Rotkinen.” His face fills the screen. He’s in his security uniform—the navy blue one with the estate logo on the breast pocket. Behind him, I can see the gate of whatever Ajah mansion he’s guarding today.

“Good morning, sir.” I tilt the phone so he can’t see the remnants of the mask on my hairline. He teases me when he catches it, and we banter until he starts yawning.

“What’s for breakfast today?” I ask. “Come and inspire me.”

His pause tells me he knows what I’m indirectly asking. He shifts the phone and I catch a flash of his collarbone through the uniform collar. Keener than last month.

“Garri and groundnut,” he says.

“Haba, Uncle Cephas. That one is exam week food now. Serious talk uncle, ngha ma seme chinchin ne?”^[1]

“It is what I have I will eat. mang’tan a pin nyok ngan kat.”^[2]

It’s at the tip of my tongue to ask, are you gambling again? But I don’t, because he’ll deny it, and then I’ll push, and then he’ll do that thing where his eyes go flat and distant like I’m talking to a wall, and then I’ll feel like I’m twelve again—watching daddy do the same thing before he disappeared into a betting shop in Pankshin and didn’t come home for three days.

So, I say, “I’ll send you something to buy food. Real food.”

“Ehn… keep your money.”

“Ehn, send it back to me if you know my account number nau.”

His lips curve into a small smile. “Thank you. Small mummy.”

He says it like an accusation. Like mummy wasn’t the one who held him together after his wife left. Like she didn’t send him money every month, scraping it from a teacher’s salary that barely covered our own rent.

“Ngha rot ha^[3].” I end the call before my throat can do anything stupid.

I send him enough to eat for the rest of the month. That’s if he doesn’t feed it to whatever betting app has its teeth in him.

The thing about loving someone who gambles is that you become a gambler too. Every transfer, you’re placing a bet. Maybe this time he’ll use it for food. Maybe this time he won’t sit in a corner shop watching football scores. You know the odds. You play anyway.

That’s why I’m investigating a man whose empire runs on those odds. Obinna Bernard Okwuluoka. The man who kidnaps a journalist and uses silk. Whose company plasters every danfo, every billboard, every football jersey from Epe to Satellite Town. The company that probably has my uncle’s fingerprints somewhere in its user data. He funds youth programs and community outreach under CSR^[4], though I’d bet my next month’s salary he has no idea what half his CSR team actually does to make the company look good.

That man sat across from me and told me my investigation was “inconvenient.”

If he thought silk blindfolds and metal cuffs would scare me off, he miscalculated.

I’m scared. I’m also furious.

The fury is stronger.

I wash my mug. Dry it. Place it handle-right in the cabinet. Wipe the counter and fold the towel into thirds.

I’ve got work to do.

THE STUDIO IS A GHOST TOWN on Sundays.

Fluorescent lights reveal empty desks, the faint smell of Francis’s microwaved jollof from Friday lingers in the break room. I come in because I can think here. The apartment is for ritual. The studio is for war.

I’m prepping Friday’s segment—an education funding piece that’s solid but won’t set anything on fire—when Eucharia appears.

My editor moves like the weather. You don’t hear her coming. You just feel the atmospheric pressure change, and then she’s there, dropping a brown envelope on your desk like it’s a summons.

“Rotkinen.”

“Hi Eucharia.”

She taps the envelope. Her acrylic nails are perfect—French tips with stones, buffed smooth. They’re better than mine. I try not to stare.

“PuntPlay,” she says. “The mini-doc your followers are raving about.”

Although my pulse jumps, my face stays neutral.

“What about it?”

“The higher-ups are interested. There’s a new angle.” She pulls a chair, sits on it backward—Eucharia does things like that, sits on chairs backward, perches on desks, leans against walls at angles that shouldn’t be comfortable. “Obinna Okwuluoka. Born and mostly raised in Atlanta, Georgia, USA. Founder. CEO. Old money father—the Okwuluokas of Ekwulobia. Political connections reaching into Aso Rock. The man is untouchable.”

She slides a photo out of the envelope.

I already know what he looks like. I’ve been in a room with him. He removed a silk blindfold from my face with steady, long fingers. I know what he smells like. His charcoal shirt, the understated cufflinks.

But I look at the photo anyway.

Dark suit, no tie, glass with amber liquid in his hand. Standing next to someone shorter, as he often must. Square jaw. Calculating eyes pulling me in.

I break the connection by looking at Eucharia.

“And?” I say.

“There are whispers. Match-fixing in the Finnish league—his club plays there. If we crack this, Rot, we go international. Not social media international. I’m talking network pickup. CNN. BBC.”

She’s watching me with those editor eyes. The ones that can tell if you’re hungry enough.

I am hungry.

But not for the reasons she thinks.

I almost tell her by almost saying: I’ve already met him. He kidnapped me weeks ago. He sat across from me and told me to back off. I told him I’d been investigating systems my entire career, and then he let me go. Uncuffed me himself. Told me he’d be watching.

I don’t say any of that.

Because saying it would involve me explaining why I didn’t report it. Explaining why I’m still investigating instead of filing charges. Explaining the part where he released me and I walked out confused instead of triumphant. Explaining why I’ve spent two weeks trying to put Obinna Okwuluoka in a category and failing every time.

“When do I start?” I say instead.

“You already have.” She stands, flips the chair back around. “File’s yours. Don’t let me down.”

She leaves the way she came.

I open the envelope. Financial summaries. Corporate structure. A list of subsidiaries I’ll need to cross-reference. A printed screenshot of an online forum where someone anonymous claims PuntPlay’s Finnish league results are “statistically impossible.”

I photograph everything. Upload to my encrypted drive. Label the folder: O. Okwuluoka.

Then I stare at his photo.

I’ve seen most of this file already—I pulled them before the kidnapping. But now I know things the file doesn’t capture. The exact shade of his eyes up close—darker than they photograph, calculating in a way that feels personal rather than professional. I know his voice doesn’t match his lanky stature. Deeper, more resonant, fills a room without being raised. I know his hands are careful—

I’m scared of what you represent.

Those were his words. Amongst other things.

He admitted he was scared. Of me.

And then he let me go.

Rich. Connected. Untouchable.

We’ll see.

I work for two more hours. Cross-referencing company registrations. Mapping the corporate structure—PuntPlay sits under Midas Venture Capital, which sits under Okwuluoka Holdings, which itself nests under three layers of offshore entities. Clean on the surface, but those structures cost serious money to maintain. Something is in there.

The Finnish league connection is thin but interesting. PuntPlay sponsors FC Kouvola, a third-division club. The forum post claims their last eight home results defied every predictive model. Could be luck. Could be a small club on a run. Could be worth pulling until it unravels.

I make notes in shorthand—a habit from Jos. I developed it in school while communal violence crackled at the edges of the city. It looks like Ngas script had a child with algebra. If someone ever takes my notes, they shouldn’t be able to make sense of a single line.

I leave the studio at half five, arrive home before seven, then decide to take a walk that doubles as a mini grocery restock.

On my way back, the hairs at my nape lift.

Someone is watching me.

Is it his people? Is he tracking me still? He said he’d be watching my work—does that mean watching me?

I keep walking. Don’t turn around. I learned a long time ago that turning around gives them power. I scan casually. Peripheral vision. Reflections in shop windows.

There’s a man walking thirty meters behind me. Baseball cap, dark shirt.

Could be Obinna’s security. Could be a guy I’ve been ignoring. Could be just a man on a regular Sunday evening walk.

I cross the street. Pause at Mama Sidi’s shop, pretend to look at the sachets of detergent hanging like bunting across the front. Use the reflection in the glass cabinet to scan behind me.

The man in the cap is gone. Or… was he never there? Maybe he turned a corner. Wait, is he standing somewhere I can’t see, waiting for me to start walking again?

Gosh, I’m being paranoid.

Except I was kidnapped two weeks ago, so maybe it’s not paranoia. Before, I’d felt it sometimes—the vigilance that comes with being a woman alone in Lagos, with having survived what I survived in Benin City.

My therapist—the one I saw for four sessions before I decided I was fine—called it hypervigilance. Said it was my nervous system staying ready for a threat that already passed.

I’m not breakable. I broke already. What’s left is the version that doesn’t break.

But my hand is shaking when I reach my door, and it takes me two tries to fit the key.

I go inside. Lock the bottom. Lock the top. Slide the bolt.

I stand in my dark apartment with my back against the door and breathe. My heart is going crazy. Auditioning for a heart attack.

Count.

Count!

Four in. Hold for seven. Out for eight.

After putting the groceries away, I prepare my bath—boiling water, pouring it into the tub until it’s too hot, the way I like it. Then I sink in until the water touches my collarbones and close my eyes.

Too late, I realize I should have brought my phone for music, because the water is too quiet. And in quiet, my mind wanders.

Breathe.

One. Two. Three—

A holding room. Silk against my eyes. His footsteps approaching. The click of the chair as he sat across from me. His voice: “Miss Nentawe.”

No. Not that. Further back.

A hand on my wrist. A boy’s hand, but strong. The sweet chemical scent that was all shades of wrong. A tablet dissolving under my tongue that I didn’t put there. The room tilting. The ceiling fan spinning slower and slower and—

I surface abruptly, water going everywhere. My elbow cracks against the edge of the tub and pain shoots up to my shoulder. I’m gasping. The bathroom is fogged. I get out of the tub. The mirror above the sink is a white blank. Why can’t I find myself in it?

Oh…

“I’m fine.” My voice bounces off the tiles. It’s a thin, sorry voice. Not the voice that told Obinna Okwuluoka I’d been investigating systems my entire career, that I wasn’t afraid of him, that men who made him look like a schoolboy had sat across from me before.

“I moved on.”

I pull the bath plug. The water drains.

“I’m fine. I’m fine. I’m fine,” I mutter as I stand, wrap myself in a towel, avoiding the mirror.

My phone screams in the silence. My heart jumps.

I grab it.

Whew… my aunt.

“Aunty Paddy.”

“Rotki!” Her warm, familiar voice melts my heart. “You’ve finally picked! I’ve been calling, you no dey answer.”

“It is work,” I say, steadying my breathing by placing a hand to my tummy. “You know how it is.”

“Work, work, work,” she clicks her tongue. “Is it that work that’ll carry you when you fall sick? Kai. We have not seen your face since all these days fa. How you dey?”

I lean against the wall, slide down slowly until I’m sitting on the edge of the bed.

“I’m fine, Aunty.”

“Fine ke?” she scoffs. “Don’t tell me that one. Even your voice sef is somehow. You that I know.”

I swallow. “I’m just tired. Long day.”

“Hmm.” We stay silent for a while before she asks softly. “Are you eating well at all?”

“Yes.”

“Are you sleeping?”

I hesitate, smiling wanly. “I try.”

“Rotkinen…” She says my full name the way only she does, drawing it out like a prayer. “You this girl. You too dey carry everybody matter for head. You think say you strong pass everybody? Talk true, how you dey?”

I let out a small breath. “Aunty Paddy I’m fine. For real.”

“Ehen. You will say you are fine nau.” Another click of her tongue. “Come and stay with us small. Even if it’s one weekend. Come. I’ll make tuwo for you. You’ll relax your body. Laugh small. Na this same Lagos we dey o.”

I nod even though she can’t see me. “Okay. I’ll come.”

“When?”

“Soon.”

“Soon when? Don’t tell me soon-soon. Give me a day. If not, I will come and carry you myself.”

“Aunty—” I laugh softly.

“I’m serious. You think I can’t enter keke and find you?”

“You can.”

“Exactly.” Her tone softens. “Take care of yourself, okay? And don’t forget to pray. You are doing well, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Good girl.” She pauses, before adding: “We are here. You’re not alone, eh?”

I exhale. Silent tears stream down my cheeks. “I know.”

“Okay. Go and rest. I will see you soon kwo?”

“Yes, Aunty. Soon.”

I pull on my nightgown. Check the front door—all three locks. Check the windows. Check the back door to the small balcony I never use.

Everything secured. Everything in its place.

I get into bed, slippers left perpendicular because that’s just how they go. Set my alarm for 5:30 a.m. Connect my phone to charge.

The room is dark. The air is still. My body won’t settle. I stare at the ceiling crack.

My mind, initially occupied with scheduling a visit to Aunty Paddy and the Ngas Women’s Association, soon drift towards the holding room. The chair. The soft, expensive silk pressing against my eyelids. I couldn’t see anything, but I could hear everything—his unhurried footsteps, the creak of leather as he sat, the feel of his eyes on me.

My body remembers the way my pulse jumped when he spoke. The way my skin prickled when his footsteps came closer. The way I sat straighter in that chair, hyperaware of every inch of myself, because I couldn’t see him but I knew—he was seeing me.

“Miss Nentawe.”

I reflexively press my thighs together, remembering the richness of his voice.

Sleep.

But the memory keeps coming. The zip ties—not too tight, tight enough. The vulnerability of being bound, being blind, being completely at someone’s mercy. My senses on high alert.

I turn onto my side. Then my back. Then my side again.

His hands were careful when he removed the blindfold—

Stop. Stop. Stop.

But my hand has already moved. It is resting on my stomach, over the thin silk of my nightgown.

I’m just finding a comfortable position. I’m not—

His voice: “I’m scared of what you represent.”

My fingers drift lower.

No. This is insane. He kidnapped me. Threatened my career. He’s the man whose company is probably bleeding my uncle dry, whose empire was built on the desperation of people like my father. I want to destroy him.

My hand slips under the fabric anyway, my mind going somewhere I have no business letting it go.

The first touch is electric. I’m swollen, sensitive, and the brush of my fingertips sends a jolt through me that makes my hips lift off the mattress. I’m wet. Dripping. And I hate it—hate my body for this, hate the memory for lodging itself somewhere primal and unreasonable.

But I don’t stop.

I circle slowly, the way I’ve done countless times before. Building sensation using pressure in measured increments, relying on a method I’ve mastered to give myself what I need when no one else can be trusted to.

In my head, it’s his voice edging me on.

“Miss Nentawe.”

“I’m used to people being reasonable.” That infuriating certainty.

“I’ll be watching your work with interest.”

I slide two fingers inside myself and my breath catches. I’m thinking about his hands now—the ones that removed the blindfold, the ones that held the polished cuffs. What would they do if they touched me? Would they be gentle like this? Unhurried? Would he take his time the way he took his time in that holding room, making me wait, making me wonder?

These thought… I don’t know where they’re coming from, but they’re doing the trick tonight.

I press my free hand against myself and abandon caution. The measured pace I began with unravels, replaced by urgency. Need takes over, stripping away grace until all that remains is the relentless pursuit of release.

His eyes, cold and calculating across that table. Looking at me like I’m playing with fire. Only for him to admit he was scared—of me, of what I represent. Scared of—

“Hmm… hmmm…”

My back arches off the bed, thighs clenching around my hand. The sounds leaving my mouth lives somewhere between a gasp and a moan, his name bitten off before it fully forms. Orgasm tears through me in waves—yes, yes—I ride it with my eyes squeezed shut, seeing nothing but silk, shadow and smirking lips.

When it ends, I lie there. Breathing. Wet fingers resting against my thigh.

Did I just have the best orgasm in months thinking about the subject of my investigation? What is wrong with me?

This isn’t attraction. This is trauma response. This is my wires getting crossed somewhere between terror and arousal because my brain doesn’t know the difference between the two. My therapist would have something clinical to say about it. Threat and desire activated overlapping neural pathways. Something like that.

But here, in the dark, with the evidence of my betrayal sticky between my thighs, the clinical explanation doesn’t help.

I want to destroy Obinna Okwuluoka. I also want—

No. I don’t want anything. This was a release. A physical necessity. It means nothing.

I get up. Wash my hands and the rest of myself.

When I finally sleep, I dream about dark eyes and a man who peeled silk from my face.

I wake up angrier than when I went to bed.

Good.

Anger is fuel. Anger gets things done.

^[1] Ngas for what are you eating today?

^[2] Ngas for Stop stressing me.

^[3] Ngas for I love you.

^[4] Corporate Social Responsibility

40+ Chapters to go…

Releases September 30, 2026.

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Order Yoruba Demon: Obinna

Back in 2020, I organized an anthology that was published in February 2021 called Nights at Club Nova. It featured short stories set inside an exclusive, mysterious nightclub where every patron underwent rigorous screening before entry, wore enchanted masks, and stepped into a world where magic, secrets, and desire intertwined.

My contribution to that anthology was a story titled The Lady of the House and I wrote as Temi Nenye.

It was erotic and so much fun to write.

But even after the anthology was published, Club Nova never really left me. The ‘nameless’ characters stayed with me, and the world kept expanding in my head. Last year, I finally gave in and decided to return—not just to rewrite The Lady of the House, but to reimagine the entire universe around it. The story grew. The mythology deepened. New characters demanded their own stories.

And that’s how House of Nova was born!

An urban fantasy erotic romance series where Lagos’ elite play dangerous games behind enchanted masks.

Five couples. One secret house. Desire has never been this deadly.

The planned series includes:

• Book One: TLH

• Book Two: TKS

• Book Three: TMH

• Book Four: TWH

• Book Five: TFH

I’ll be sharing snippets from The Lady of the House as I work on it, and I can’t wait to welcome you into this world.

Share

One last confession: these shorter projects have become my creative palate cleanser. Whenever my main novels become emotionally heavy or I feel burnout creeping in, I find myself returning to drafts I’ve long forgotten. It’s where I get to experiment, indulge my imagination, and tell stories that lean into obsession and desire before diving back into my plot-focused longer novels.

Welcome to the House of Nova where;

Every mask conceals a truth.

Every room holds a secret.

And every secret demands a price.

Just popping into your inbox with some exciting news...

You can now pre-order the paperback edition of Yoruba Demon: Obinna no matter where you are in the world!

Whether you’re in the US, UK, Canada, or Australia—or grabbing the hardcover in Nigeria, Ghana, or anywhere across Africa—you can now place your preorder through your favorite bookstore or retailer.

There’s more…

Collect the YDBC Member Cards

This is something I’ve been working on behind the scenes for a while, and I’m so excited to finally share it with you!

Thank you for the love you’ve been showing the YDBC members. Seeing you connect with these characters, talk about them, and welcome them into your hearts has been such a joy. I wanted to create something special that lets you keep a little piece of their world with you.

Here’s another reason to preorder through participating bookstores...

You’ll receive exclusive YDBC Member Cards—collectible keepsakes inspired by the Yoruba Demons Billionaire Club.

There are currently 8 cards to collect—2 for each of the four Yoruba Demons—featuring character highlights, fun facts, and exclusive artwork. As the series grows, so will the collection, making them the perfect keepsake for longtime readers.

These cards are available while supplies last. Once the current stock runs out, they’ll return with the release of another YDBC book, giving you a chance to continue building your collection with each new story.

Even if you’re an ebook reader, you can still collect the cards and build your YDBC collection one release at a time.

I genuinely can’t wait to see your collections grow over the next few years.

Help Bring Obinna to Your Shelves:

Request It. Read It. Recommend It.

In the meantime, we’re about 60 days away from release day! Help bring Obinna to your shelves by requesting it, reading it, and recommending it.

Don’t be shy about reaching out to your favorite local bookstore or library and asking them to stock Yoruba Demon: Obinna. Reader requests genuinely help books find their way onto shelves, and every recommendation makes a real difference in getting Obinna into more hands around the world.

If you’re part of a book club, you can also place group orders at a discounted rate, making it even easier to read and discuss Obinna together.

Here’s to an amazing new month ahead!

Your Weekend Read Is Waiting

Don't Leave Kunle Hanging

If you haven’t met him yet, Yoruba Demon: Kunle is still waiting patiently for you. His friends-to-lovers story is out now, and I’d love for you to show him some love. He’s also now available in paperback on Amazon and in my store, so you can grab your copy wherever is easiest for you.

As always, thank you for reading, sharing, reviewing, and making this journey so special.

Get Yoruba Demon: Kunle now

Will I See You?

I had a great time at Romanticonn and connected with so many new readers! Here’s my recap on IG.

Catch me at events before September 30th to grab early copies of Yoruba Demon: Obinna.

I’ll be at the following in-person events for the rest of the year:

• August 8 — Charmed and Bound at the Flemington Corn, Tomato & Beer Festival, Flemington, New Jersey, USA

• August 15 - Indies & Bookworms, Baltimore, Maryland, USA

• August 22 - Romance After Dark Fair, Columbus, New Jersey, USA

• August 29 - Harlem Book Fair, Harlem, New York, USA

• September 12 - Petersburg Book Fest, Petersburg, Virginia, USA

• September 18 - 20 - Love Among the Pages, London, Ontario, Canada

• September 26 - Mercer County Library Book Festival, Hamilton, New Jersey, USA

• October 3 - Collingswood Book Festival, Collingswood, New Jersey, USA

• November 14 - Royal Book Bash, Annapolis, Maryland, USA

• November 15 - The Black Girl Book Fair Tour, Washington, D.C., USA

Save the dates and grab tickets, I’d love to meet you if you’re nearby!

XoxO

Between smoky skies, whatever virus seems determined to make the rounds this summer, and the general drama of life, please remember to take care of yourselves. Wash your fruits and vegetables, stay hydrated, get some rest where you can, and don’t ignore the signs when your body asks you to slow down (speaking to myself too).

In short: take a deep breath in.

The world will still be there when you come up for air.

Life Updates: Big Girl Moves - Turning 2 in a Minute!

This little one will officially be turning two in a minute, and I can’t quite believe it.

She’s now insisting on walking through the store by herself, reaching for Mommy’s hand like she’s been doing it all her life. Can you believe it?

Now... I did end up chasing her down an aisle and immediately regretted not putting her in a trolley. But for those first three minutes? She absolutely nailed it.

These little milestones have a way of sneaking up on you, and I’m trying my best to soak them all in.

What’s new with you? I’d love to hear what’s been bringing you joy lately.

Thank You for Showing Up for Kunle

Thank you for every preorder, every direct purchase from my website, every review, every message, every post, and every recommendation.

This release has reminded me why I do this.

One thing that has especially meant the world to me is seeing so many of you choose to buy directly from my website. It’s hard to put into words, but it makes me feel seen. Knowing you intentionally chose to support me in that way has been one of my favorite parts of this release, and I’m incredibly grateful.

If you haven’t picked up Yoruba Demon: Kunle yet, this weekend is the perfect excuse to slow down, relax, and escape into a friends-to-lovers romance that’s been years in the making.

Get Yoruba Demon: Kunle now

Your Favorite Author be Feeling Like a Superstar

And speaking of feeling seen... Friends and family kept sending me screenshots and links asking if I’d seen it. Yep, I recently got featured (meaning yesterday featured) in Zikoko Magazine, and I felt like a superstar.

It’s one of those moments that makes you pause and appreciate how far you’ve come and how many people are cheering you on.

Thank you for being part of this journey. Now… let’s aim for The New York Times next. A girl can dream, right? 😉

Yoruba Demon: Obinna is Almost Here

September feels both far away and right around the corner, and I’m equal parts excited and nervous for you to finally meet Obinna and Rot.

Oh! And the official playlist is already out if you’d like to be a few steps ahead before diving into their story. Give it a listen and start soaking in the vibes.

Eeeek! I seriously can’t wait for you to enter their world.

Yoruba Demon: Obinna is almost ready for the printers, and if you’ve been thinking about preordering, now is the best time. The discounted preorder pricing on both the ebook and paperback won’t last forever, so this is your chance to grab your copy before release.

For those waiting on retailer links (Amazon US, UK, Canada, Japan, and more), I haven’t forgotten you! As soon as they’re live, I’ll send them your way—hopefully in my next newsletter.

I’m also excited to share that the list of participating bookstores across Africa keeps growing. If your favorite bookstore doesn’t have Yoruba Demon: Obinna on its shelves, don’t hesitate to ask them to place an order—it really does make a difference.

And if you’re interested in placing a bulk order for your book club, library, school, or organization, simply reply to this email, and we’ll make it happen.

Listen to the playlist

Get Yoruba Demon: Obinna now

Writing Update: Yoruba Demon: Kemi

While Obinna is getting ready for the world, I’ve already moved on to the next project.

I’m currently writing Yoruba Demon: Kemi, tentatively scheduled for release in December.

What can I tell you?

Drama.

Lots of drama.

And plenty of pidgin. 😂

Her love interest is Boma, a Bayelsa man, and the two of them are already proving to be a handful. I have a feeling they’re going to keep me entertained—and stressed—for the rest of the year.

See YOU in London, Canada

Some of you may remember that I was originally scheduled to attend Love Bants & Signatures in September. Unfortunately, that event has since been cancelled.

The good news? I’ll still be in Canada!

You can find me at Love Among the Pages in London, Ontario, from September 18–20.

If you’ve never been to a book signing before, consider this your sign to change that. They’re such a fun way to geek out over books, discover new authors, reconnect with your favorites, and meet fellow readers who love romance, books I mean, just as much as you do. I always leave these events with a full heart—and with books I didn’t mean to pick up, lol.

One small favor, though: I’ll be traveling light. If you’d like to purchase books from me at the event, simply reply to this email and let me know which titles you’d like me to bring so I can pack accordingly.

I hope to see you there!

Will I See You?

I’m really excited—and honestly grateful—to be out and about meeting readers and fellow authors. If you’re in any of these areas, please come say hello!

I’ll be at these in-person events for the rest of the year:

• July 25 - RomantiConn, Trumbull, Connecticut, USA

• August 15 - Indies & Bookworms, Baltimore, Maryland, USA

• August 22 - Romance After Dark Fair, Columbus, New Jersey, USA

• August 29 - Harlem Book Fair, Harlem, New York, USA

• September 12 - Petersburg Book Fest, Petersburg, Virginia, USA

• September 18 - 20 - Love Among the Pages, London, Ontario, Canada

• September 26 - Mercer County Library Book Festival, Hamilton, New Jersey, USA

• October 3 - Collingswood Book Festival, Collingswood, New Jersey, USA

• November 14 - Royal Book Bash, Annapolis, Maryland, USA

• November 15 - The Black Girl Book Fair Tour, Washington, D.C., USA

Save the dates and grab tickets, I’d love to meet you if you’re nearby!

I’ll be sharing my writing and publishing goals for the remainder of the year in another newsletter soon. Oh, and how to grab/read Yoruba Demon: Kunle in paperback,

Until then, thank you for reading my stories, recommending them to friends, leaving reviews, and supporting these books in every way you do. Every review, every purchase, every share, and every kind word helps these stories find new readers.

Happy reading!

XoxO

Get Yoruba Demon: Kunle now

Yoruba Demon: Kunle is officially out in the world, and I still can’t believe I get to say that.

What started as a short story written for a charity anthology has grown into a full-length novel that completely stole my heart and is stealing the heart of early readers.

Here’s what early readers are saying;

Kunle and Jasmine reminded me that love isn’t just about grand gestures—it’s about showing up, choosing each other, and finding your way back, one step at a time.

Thank you for every preorder, every message, every share, every review, and every bit of excitement you’ve shown this ‘surprise’ book. As an indie author, your support means more than you know.

If you enjoy the book, I’d be so grateful if you left a rating or review on your favorite reading platform. It helps other readers discover Jasmine and Kunle’s story.

I hope you laugh, swoon, and fall in love with these two the way I did.

Get Yoruba Demon: Kunle now

Happy reading!

XoxO

JASMINE

SOMEONE FORGOT TO SHUT THE gates of hell, because this early-morning July sun in upstate New York is working overtime. It presses straight down on my scalp, while heat creeps up from the asphalt, seeping through the soles of my shoes. The Boilermaker 15K is yet to start, and I’m already drenched—sweat sliding down my arms, collecting at my spine, turning my sports bra top into a second skin.

With kids weaving through the crowd and spectators pressed along the barriers, I feel almost naked out here. My sports bra is doing the bare minimum, what with my sweaty skin. A couple of shirtless guys walk past, and I have to actively stop my brain from wishing I were a boy.

If I’m being honest, I’d love to rip this sports bra off and exist the way they do—unbothered, unselfconscious. And if I’m being really honest, it’s not just the sun making my skin prickle like this.

I adjust my face cap and tap my watch again, more out of habit than necessity. The numbers look good, but I need to work on my breathing. Scanning the crowd, I take slower, deeper, controlled breaths. This is the part I love and hate in equal measure: the seconds before the gun, when the streets are packed with cheering strangers, when my body feels coiled and ready, when anything feels possible. There’s the promise of pain, yes, but also the promise of that post-race high that makes me believe I could outrun the version of myself that’s been holding back.

The race should begin in—

“Jas?” A deep, unfamiliar masculine voice cuts through my wandering mind.

Great, I frown. I’m not the only Jasmine running today.

Still, curiosity gets the better of me. I turn toward the voice to see who’s lucky to be my namesake, only my stomach flips before my brain catches up. I blink once, then again, hoping my eyes are lying.

Nope. They’re not.

“Kunle? Kay?” I say, not sure if I’m asking or confirming.

A flash of disbelief crosses his face before it is quickly masked by amusement. His mesmerizing blue eyes lock onto mine, holding me hostage as his familiar crooked grin settles in. The same one I’ve seen at the end of races, in group photos with kids from various outreach programs, in moments when I’ve felt a tug of pride for knowing him.

“I knew it.” His voice still carries that teasing lilt I remember from college, only now it’s deeper, like it matured along with him.

How in the world did we finally end up in the same race?

I let out a soft laugh, shaking my head. “Wow. I didn’t know you ran the Boilermaker.”

He shrugs, then slides a hand into the pocket of his black shorts. The watch on his wrist reminds me that some people might never get smartwatches—and that I need to make money in this life and the next.

“I’ve been around,” he says. “Here and there. You know me—I can’t resist a good race.” He quirks his mouth. “And this one promises a good drink at the finish line.”

Smiling, I arch a brow. “So alcohol is the motivation, huh?”

Before he can respond, I feel a light bump against my arm—a not-so-subtle reminder that I’m not standing here alone.

“Oh.” I gesture between them. “Miranda, meet my friend from college. Kunle.”

Kunle turns to her, wearing that easy charm of his. He offers her a confident smile and handshake. “Hi, Miranda. Nice to meet you. Sorry if I interrupted—”

“Nice to meet you too!” Miranda beams, her gaze bouncing between us like she’s watching a tennis match. “I’m the gym friend,” she says proudly. “We drove down from Newark for this, and it’s been amazing.”

“Oh.” Kunle nods, clearly entertained.

Miranda keeps going, offering up information I would’ve preferred to keep tucked away—like the fact that I haven’t left Newark, or that I’m still actively hunting for a job that matches what’s on my vision board.

“Yeah,” Miranda continues, waving a hand. “She suggested it, and I haven’t been—” She pauses, scoffs, then corrects herself, “—I mean, we haven’t been. You’d think being a state away would make the decision easier.”

“Hmm.” Kunle smiles, looking at me. There’s a glint in his eyes that says interesting.

“Come to find out that people fly in from Kenya for this!” Miranda gasps. “I’m so glad Jas was like, ‘Mira,’”—she imitates my voice terribly—”‘we have to go.’” She grins. “I never really go out of state because what’s the point, but this? This is amazing.”

She finally turns back to Kunle. “What about you? Drove in or flew?”

“Flew in from California.”

My brows shoot up.

“Ooh … The Golden State,” Miranda chimes in, delighted. “That’s so cool—that this event brings people from everywhere.”

“It really does,” Kunle says, his smile widening. Laugh lines crease the corners of his eyes, softening his face. Then his attention shifts fully back to me. “It’s really good to see you here.”

He pauses. “What about you, Jas? Are you doing that multi-city race thing you said you wanted to try?”

His question leads to a long, loaded silence, where I’m suddenly hyperaware of everything—the way his dark eyes sweep over me, the warmth of the sun on his skin, the flex of his arms as he shifts his weight. My heart stutters. Sweat prickles along my spine. I’m acutely conscious of every stray curl under my cap, every inch of damp fabric clinging to me.

Feeling oddly shy, I look away. How does he even remember that throwaway comment?

“No shit,” he says softly. “You are.”

I look back at him, and he is smiling in … admiration?

College—Jasmine’s Junior Year

Another group project? Lord have mercy!

When I graduate, it will be only my name on my certificate, and no one will realize other people contributed to whether I passed or failed a project. Why can’t projects be non-scorable? Like in case you get paired with the wrong person.

These are the thoughts passing through my head when the professor makes the announcement in a class of seniors and juniors. And they get worse when he starts reading out names.

“Group F will be Jasmine Darko and …”

God please, let it be someone in my class. Let it be someone I flow with. Let it be—

“Olakunle Doyle.”

Oh.

I glance up automatically, scrunching my brows at the raised hand of my supposed project partner. There must be a mistake. Is this a prank? I think to myself as my brain registers an annoyingly composed, dark-haired guy.

Great, I didn’t catch his name. Maybe it was Ol’Mckinley Doyle the professor said, and I misheard it.

Ol’Mckinley and I make awkward eye contact across the lecture hall. He gives me a small, polite nod and a quick smile, which I return with the bare minimum enthusiasm before going back to my notebook. I have a strong feeling that I’ll end up doing most of the “group” work.

After class, he approaches me with a notebook tucked under his arm. He looks like the kind of guy who never panics before deadlines. Or anything, really. Why do I have to be stuck with a stranger?

“Jasmine, right?”

“Yes,” I say, nodding. “Ol’Mckinley?” I scrunch my lips and my eyes. “I’m sorry—I didn’t get the name when—”

“It’s Olakunle,” he says, smiling. “But you can call me Kunle.”

Was that an accent?!

“Looks like we’re stuck together,” he continues.

“Lucky us,” I reply dryly, faking a smile while my brain permutates and combines the visible and audible evidence. I’m a first-generation immigrant, but the community my parents created for me and my siblings exposed us to other immigrants. And from my deduction of how he said his Yoruba first name—and how he doesn’t look Nigerian—I’m feeling very lost.

Oh God, I sound very snobbish and assuming.

“Do you mind us splitting the project right now?” he asks.

“Like now?”

“If you don’t mind.”

“Umm … sure. Give me a moment.”

“No problem. I’ll be outside.”

After catching up with friends and bidding my course mates goodbye, I find him at one of the long tables outside the lecture hall. He’s got the syllabus spread out in front of him, lightly tapping his pen against the page.

“Hey,” I say, dropping my bag before sitting next to him.

“Hey,” he offers, glancing up. “First things first—how do you want to split this?”

Man is straightforward. Efficient. And … okay. Not so terrible. This might not be a bad pairing after all.

As we talk timelines and research angles, he pronounces my last name perfectly, the way my parents pronounce it whenever they’re introducing themselves or talking to customer service representatives.

“And Jasmine Darko hits submit.”

Darko.

Dar—as in dark—then koh as in go.

I look at him sharply. “You didn’t butcher that.”

He raises an eyebrow. “Should I have?”

I narrow my eyes. “Most people do.”

“Well,” he says, “that’s a shame. I like the name. It’s a Ghanaian name, right?”

There’s something in his tone that makes me pause. Curious now, I press my lips into a smile, liking his flow.

“My parents are Ghanaian. You’re Nigerian?” I ask.

He blinks like what I said was confusing, before smiling wide. “Born and bred.”

You must be kidding me!

I laugh out loud and immediately regret it, curbing my excitement by pressing my lips together and forcing a serious face. But his expression remains amused instead of offended.

“I’m sorry,” I say quickly. “I just—wait. What? You’re Nigerian?”

“Lagos,” he says. “I grew up in Ikoyi.”

“I knew I heard something in your accent.”

He tilts his head. “What about it?”

“It’s—” I gesture vaguely. “Not what I expected when you corrected me about your name.”

“Ah.” He leans back, folding his arms. “There it is.”

I feel heat crawl up my neck. “No, I didn’t mean—”

“You meant you assumed I’d sound a certain way,” he finishes, still smiling. “It’s okay. Happens all the time.”

I study him more closely now. The confidence. The ease. The way he doesn’t rush to explain himself.

“I’m first-generation,” I say instead. “My parents moved here before I was born. We’re … very Ghanaian at home.”

He nods slowly. “That tracks.”

“Excuse you?”

He chuckles. “You’ve got the cadence. You switch when you’re emotional.”

I freeze. “I do not.”

“You do,” he says gently. “Especially when you’re confused—or would I say … annoyed?”

I open my mouth to argue, then stop. Because—damn it—he’s right.

“So,” I say, changing tactics, “how did you end up here? And who gave you these genes?”

“Diplomatic life,” he replies. “My father’s Irish. He was working in Nigeria when he met my mother. She’s a Yoruba princess.”

I roll my eyes; he catches it, and we both laugh.

“Does that work every time?” I ask.

“Yes,” he chuckles, holding his belly. “But really, she is a princess. My full name is Olakunle Adefolawe-Doyle.”

“Okay … Nigerian prince.”

We laugh.

“I promise you, I’m not that Nigerian prince.”

We chuckle again, earning the curious stares of other students.

“Anyways,” he continues when our humor settles, “we moved around a lot—Nigeria, London, Brussels. And I adapted too.”

“Hence the play with accents?”

He shrugs.

“I have another question for you. I know this sounds like an interview right now, and I’m sorry—”

“Don’t be. I’ll only answer if I want to.” His mesmerizing blue eyes strips me of all nervous energy floating around me.

“Cool, cool,” I say, licking my lips. “My question is … growing up and moving around a lot, did you feel like you belonged anywhere?”

He studies me as he thinks through my question, and I offer the friendliest smile I can cook up, curiosity licking at my brain.

“Yes,” he says finally. “Eventually. You learn that culture isn’t where you’re born—it’s what you choose to carry with you.”

Deep …

“Okay,” I smile slowly. “I like you a little more now.” I pinch the air with my thumb and middle finger.

“That’s a good thing—but wait, did you like me before this like?”

I laugh, shaking my head. “Has anyone ever told you that you have a way of getting under one’s skin?”

“I do?” he asks, offering me a lopsided grin.

I’m not answering that. It will only make his head swell and explode.

I gather my notes and place them in my bag. “Don’t play with me. You’re easy to talk to. And don’t read much into it.”

He gathers his notes too and stands. “I won’t. But I will say this—”

“Yes?” I raise a brow waiting for him to use a stupid line.

“I’m glad I got paired with you.”

I don’t know why that makes my chest warm, but it does.

15+ chapters to go…

Releases July 14, 2026.

Read Yoruba Demon: Kunle now

You might already be aware—especially if you follow me on social media—that while Obinna’s story is getting its final polish (and trust me, it’s a big one!), I couldn’t leave you hanging.

So... I’m taking us back into the Yoruba Demon world with a brand-new novella.

Today, I’m so excited to reveal the cover for Yoruba Demon: Kunle, releasing July 14, 2026! Yes, just next week.

If you have a soft spot for the quiet guy in the friend group...
If you love years of unresolved tension...
If friends-to-lovers is your weakness...
If you're convinced the softest hearts make the best heroes...

Then Kunle and Jasmine’s story is for you.

He's a Nigerian-Irish billionaire building a legacy across continents. She's a Ghanaian-American powerhouse protecting the life she's built. Falling in love was the easy part. Choosing each other is where it gets complicated.

What to expect

🏃 Sports romance
🥇 Marathon runners & training partners
🥹 Emotional romance
🔥 Spicy!!!
📖 A story you can finish in one sitting

Blurb

Not all demons play fair; some wait six years to make their move.
Kunle has loved Jasmine since the day they met on that college track — and never once told her how he felt. Now she's back in his orbit, close enough to touch, and the words he swallowed back then are finally clawing their way up.

Yoruba Demon: Kunle releases July 14 and will be available on all major ebook retailers.

I hope you’ll join me for this quick return to the Yoruba Demon universe before Obinna’s unforgettable story this September.

Thank you, as always, for reading, cheering me on, and making this journey so special. I can’t wait for you to meet Kunle.

Will I See You?

I’m really excited—and honestly grateful—to be out and about meeting readers and fellow authors. If you’re in any of these areas, please come say hello!

I’ll be at these in-person events for the rest of the year:

• July 25 - RomantiConn, Trumbull, Connecticut, USA

• August 15 - Indies & Bookworms, Baltimore, Maryland, USA

• August 22 - Romance After Dark Fair, Columbus, New Jersey, USA

• August 29 - Harlem Book Fair, Harlem, New York, USA

• September 12 - Petersburg Book Fest, Petersburg, Virginia, USA

• September 18 - 20 - Love Among the Pages, London, Ontario, Canada

• September 26 - Mercer County Library Book Festival, Hamilton, New Jersey, USA

• October 3 - Collingswood Book Festival, Collingswood, New Jersey, USA

• November 14 - Royal Book Bash, Annapolis, Maryland, USA

• November 15 - The Black Girl Book Fair Tour, Washington, D.C., USA

Save the dates and grab tickets, I’d love to meet you if you’re nearby!

Until my next letter where I share how to grab/read Yoruba Demon: Kunle, happy reading and stay jiggy!

XoxO

Subscribe now

Old newsletter Archive

OBINNA

APAPA’S WAREHOUSE REEKS OF DIESEL, the metallic tang of rust, and the acrid scent of fear-induced sweat. I learned from a very young age to recognize that sharp, almost sweet, chemical signature. Despite its lovely aroma, the scent is most appropriate for individuals who acquire it by being rather naughty.

Chuks walks three steps ahead, his shoulders filling the corridor. Two of my security detail flanking the entrance stand silently, gazes fixed forward, not acknowledging our presence.

It’s been two weeks since I let her go.

Two weeks since I watched her walk out of that holding room—spine straight, defiant, tall even barefoot—and thought: she’ll stop now. She’ll understand what’s at stake and she’ll stop.

She didn’t stop.

She’s digging harder. Her latest moves suggest she’s exploring the limits of my empire, seeking a weakness.

But that’s not why I’m here.

I’m here for the man in the chair.

Mid-forties. White shirt that probably looked expensive twelve hours ago. Now it’s damp, creased, the collar dark with sweat or… blood. Hard to tell.

His wrists are zip-tied to the armrests. Professional. Not cruel—we’re not animals.

He looks up when I walk in.

He says, “Ódògwù…” with a pleading voice that’s all over the place.

I pull a chair from the corner, the metal loud against concrete. I sit, cross one leg over the other, and study him like a balance sheet. I’m looking for the line item that doesn’t add up.

“Chimobi…”

I know his name. I know his wife’s name, his daughter’s school, the mortgage on his house in Lekki Phase 2, the car he bought last month—the one that should have been a red flag to his supervisors, because a mid-level finance manager at PuntPlay does not drive the latest GLE.

He swallows.

“Four hundred and twelve million naira,” I say, like I’m reading from a menu. “Skimmed over fourteen months from the West Africa expansion fund. Routed through a shell account in Cotonou—very creative, I’ll give you that—then washed through your cousin’s logistics company in Onitsha.”

His breathing changes.

“Your daughter starts at Greensprings next term. Fees are, what—four million a year? Your wife’s shop in Tejuosho turns maybe six hundred thousand monthly. Your mortgage is one point two million quarterly.” I sigh. “The math is not mathing, Chimobi.”

“Ódògwù—please, I can explain—Ódògwù —”

“I’m not asking you to explain. I’m not.” I say in a placating tone. “I’m telling you what I know. Your explanation is irrelevant because we both know what happened. You saw money that wasn’t yours, and you took it. The question isn’t why—greed is boring and universal. The question is: who else?”

His eyes dart left. A small involuntary micro-expression.

“Because you’re not smart enough to build that Cotonou route alone. And your cousin in Onitsha is a drunk who can barely manage his books. Someone showed you the gap. Someone told you where to push.” I lean forward, elbows on my knees. “Give me the name, and your daughter still goes to Greensprings.”

The silence that follows is deafening.

He breaks in under ninety seconds. They always do.

Hmm.

The name he gives me is interesting. Not who I expected. Oh well… measures have to be taken.

I stand. The metal chair scrapes against the concrete again. I button my jacket.

“Chimobi.”

“Ódògwù. Biko. Enwere m ezinụlọ—Ódògwù —”

Ah… playing the kinship card? As a polyglot, I love that when English runs out, people reach for the language closest to their bones.

He looks up with wet eyes, runny nose, his dignity somewhere on the floor between us.

“Everyone has a price, Chimobi. Yours was embarrassingly low.”

I leave him breathing and alive but broken in the ways that matter—reputation, leverage, the illusion that he could steal from me and still sleep well. But breathing. I’m not my father. Umendiego would have taken the man’s house.

Me? I just took his options.

My ex-wife called this my black heart. She wasn’t wrong.

Chuks holds the car door open as I slide in, grateful for the air-conditioning.

The gentle sway of the car lets me close my eyes, breathe deep, decompress and reset.

I don’t enjoy that. The warehouse. The seeing a grown man cry. Dismantling his defenses until he gives me what I need. Noticing how his breath shifts when he realizes I’m not bluffing. The exact moment the fight leaves his body.

I don’t not enjoy it either.

That’s the part Justina couldn’t live with. Not the money, not the travel, not even the women—yes, there were women, I won’t pretend otherwise. In the end, she left with one of the houses in Buckhead and a settlement that would make most men weep.

I didn’t weep. She said that proved her point.

She might have been right about that too.

But here’s what Justina never understood, what nobody outside my blood understands: yesterday morning, I was making dinosaur noises for a nine-year-old, promising his seven-year-old sister I’d bake blueberry muffins on my next visit, letting Kamso lecture me about Tylosaurus apex predators while Kodi negotiated the number of the muffins we’d bake.

The warehouse and the muffins co-exist in the same heart.

Chuks pulls into traffic. Apapa to Banana Island is a journey measured not in kilometers but in patience, and Friday traffic is God’s personal joke on anyone foolish enough to have somewhere to be.

“That Nentawe woman,” Chuks says, eyes on the road. He delivers information the way surgeons deliver diagnoses—without inflection, leaving you to decide how to feel about it.

“What about her?”

“Ódògwù, she’s not stopping. She called the office again this morning. She called three times. Sent another email to legal asking about licensing structure for the West Africa expansion.”

I watch the city crawl past the tinted window. Danfo buses. Hawkers weaving between bumpers with their wares. A woman in a blue wrapper with two kids crossing four lanes of traffic like the overhead bridge was hung there for decoration.

I should have expected this.

Two weeks ago she sat across from me in that holding room with silk blindfold marks fading on her face, and she looked at me unafraid. Calculating. Cold-storm eyes cataloguing me the way I catalogue investments—measuring return, assessing risk, finding the angle.

I’ve sat across from warlords and oil barons and men who make you look like a schoolboy playing dress-up, she’d said.

No one talks to me like that. No one calls me a schoolboy. No one looks down at me and tells me I’m playing dress-up in a room where she’s the one in cuffs. No one.

Yet I let her go.

“Forward the emails to Taiwo,” I say. “Let legal handle it.”

“Legal said she’s asking different questions now. Not is PuntPlay a scam or are you ruining Nigerian youths. She’s asking about regulatory approvals. Which agencies. Which officials. The blueprint of the West Africa expansion.”

Impressive. Smart questions. She listened, then. When I told her she was building a simple story while the truth was complicated, she listened.

“I think she’s not just investigating PuntPlay anymore,” Chuks continues. “She’s investigating the framework around it. The regulators. The policy gaps.”

“Keep monitoring,” I say. “But no interference. She wants to dig, let her dig. Just tell me where the shovel points.”

“Understood.”

I have bigger problems than a journalist who won’t stay scared.

Former NLRC chairman and current WAGER vice-chair has been circling the West Africa expansion for months now, like he can smell the money all the way from his mansion in Maitama.

The man practically wrote modern sports betting regulation in Nigeria. Then retired with a handshake, national honors, and enough political goodwill to last three lifetimes. Only to quietly build shadow companies designed to exploit every loophole he personally authored into law.

He wants in. Or he wants me out. Either way, he’s filed a regulatory complaint with the NLRC—some nonsense about our licensing framework violating section 47(b)—and it’s slowing my timeline.

My personal phone buzzes. The screen shows a photo of a man with dreadlocks wearing glasses and grinning.

“Obinnaya.” The way he says my name—full, unhurried, like he’s tasting every syllable—is uniquely Jidenna. “Where you dey nau?”

My dearest twin brother. Born seven minutes after me, though he insists those seven minutes gave me an unfair advantage I’ve been exploiting ever since.

“I’m in traffic.”

“Waka waka. Traffic where?”

I smile. “I never travel. I dey Lagos. What do you want?”

He pauses. Listening. To what, exactly, I’ve never been sure. God, the universe, the peculiar frequency that runs between us. When we were boys in Atlanta, he’d wake up crying from nightmares that were mine. I’d feel his fevers before he told anyone. Our father called it nonsense. Our mother called it a gift, twin bond, telepathy.

“The balance has shifted.” His voice drops—not to a whisper, but to the register he uses when he’s not being my brother but being whatever else he is. The part of him I don’t fully understand and have learned not to question. “Two weeks ago, I felt a change. I told you then, but now it’s different. Now it’s… unsettled. Like a frequency that hasn’t found its note yet.”

I shift in my seat. “Oga, I’m coming from a warehouse where I literally destroyed a man’s career on over four hundred million theft. I’m not in the mood for frequency distribution or spiritual punditry.”

“This isn’t about business. Well, not directly. Let’s see—what have you done differently recently?”

“Abeg, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You’re lying. I can feel it all the way from here.”

“Then stop feeling. Develop a black heart.”

He lets out a short, warm laugh. “You’re still carrying what she said about you having a black heart to heart?”

I look at his face on the screen. My twin. Brown-skinned where I’m fair—he took after our mother, Hafsa, who is from Borno State. I took after our father, Umendiego. In complexion, my jaw, even in temperament. Things people praise in a man and pity in a husband.

Jidenna’s dreadlocks frame his face. He arrived with them—born with thick, tangled strands that neither dad’s family nor Hafsa’s could explain. Not a single ancestor on either side carried that hair. Our grandparents recommended the sàrà àká tradition: cut them off, appease whatever spirit sent them. Hafsa refused. Leave my son’s hair, she told them. And that was the end of the conversation.

“Jokes aside, bro. I need you to pay attention,” Jidenna says. “Not to your moves or strategies. Definitely not to the board. To yourself. I need you to pay attention to you. When was the last time you were still? When was the last time you stopped thinking, stopped planning? The last time you just… chilled?”

I don’t answer. Because the answer is I don’t remember, and he knows it.

“The frequency that shifted two weeks ago—it hasn’t settled. It’s still looking for its note.” He pauses. “I think you’re part of what it’s looking for. And I think you’re afraid to let it find you.”

I scoff. “Oga. Me. Afraid?”

“Yes, I believe so. The question is whether you let it run you or you run it.”

He hangs up. Seven minutes younger and still so annoying.

I stare at the phone, then out the window. Traffic hasn’t moved.

I roll his words around. Jidenna has been doing this since we were fifteen—calling at odd hours, saying things that sound like riddles and prophecy. When he told me not to sign with the first investors for PuntPlay, I ignored him. Lost eight months and twenty million learning he was right. When he told me Justina would leave, I laughed. Signed divorce papers six months later.

I don’t ignore Jidenna anymore.

Okay, I do, sometimes.

Because I’m human and he can be annoying.

I toss the phone onto the seat, adjust my silver cufflink, and think about Hafsa. She sounded really tired last week and had the nerve to lie to me that it was lack of sleep.

I think about daddy in Atlanta, running his empire with Agozie beside him, expecting results from me the way the sun expects the earth to turn.

I think about PuntPlay, the business that made me Ódògwù before I inherited the title.

I think about Chimobi in that chair. The way his eyes went flat the moment he realized I already knew everything.

And I think about her.

That journalist. Miss Nentawe.

Now that she’s digging harder, the smart play is to have her discredited. A word to the right editor. A whisper about conflicts of interest. Pressure that doesn’t leave fingerprints.

I don’t make the call.

Instead, I watch the city crawl past the tinted window.

Isn’t it wild that the first person in ages who doesn’t flinch at me is the one going after everything I’ve built?

40+ Chapters to go…

Releases September 30, 2026.

Add to Goodreads

Order Yoruba Demon: Obinna

I hope this month has been kinder to you than the last couple of weeks have been to me.

First, tour season has been going so well, and I’ve genuinely enjoyed connecting with readers and authors alike. There’s something special about meeting people who’ll laugh, cry, scream, and fall in love with the characters I’ve created. Thank you to everyone who has stopped by my table, attended events, shared posts, and supported me in person and online.

Now… if you have toddlers in daycare, then you already know they don’t just bring home artwork (I got my first Mother’s Day artwork and my heart melted)—they bring home entire biological warfare packages. One minute everyone is fine, the next your whole household is coughing in surround sound. The last week absolutely knocked me off my feet, and while I’m recovering now, it definitely disrupted my writing schedule and timelines more than I planned.

Still, I’m grateful.

This season has also been filled with sunshines, graduations, anniversaries, celebrations, and watching people I care about step into new chapters of their lives. There’s something beautiful about seeing friends achieve milestones they worked hard for.

Yoruba Demon: Updates

Now to the part many of you came for…

Obinna is currently going through the next round of edits with feedback from my editor. I still don’t have a confirmed release date yet because, well… life has been interesting. But don’t worry—we’re getting there.

FYI, pre-orders motivate me, so…

Pre-Order Obinna

And because I like surprises, there’s also another Yoruba Demon story coming around the time Obinna releases.

Some of you may remember Yoruba Demon: Kunle, a short story that originally appeared in the RomanceinCNY anthology. Well… it’s getting its moment. I’m expanding it from five chapters to sixteen, so please anticipate it—and a cover reveal coming soon.

Here’s the blurb:

Not all demons play games; some run straight for you.

Kunle, a Yoruba Demon Billionaire who runs for causes never planned on colliding with his past at a summer race. Jasmine didn’t expect a silly bet and one reckless afternoon to unravel years of restraint. What begins as a charged reunion quickly exposes old wounds, buried desire, and a connection that refuses to stay casual.

Also, thank you so much to everyone reading and reviewing Yoruba Demon: Femi and Yoruba Demon: Tunde on Amazon and Goodreads. Reviews genuinely help more than you realize. They increase visibility, help other readers discover the books, and tell retailers that the stories are worth recommending.

And if you haven’t yet, Yoruba Demon: The Brotherhood is still available for free here:

Download Now

The Catching Feelings Series

Website | Amazon | TikTok Shop (US)

Thank you all so much for the love you’ve shown Imagine That and Implication. Watching readers connect with this series has been such a rewarding experience for me.

The next and final book in the series, Irreplaceable, is currently set for release this summer.

Anticipate it!

And if you haven’t started the series yet—or need a refresher before the finale—this is the perfect time to catch up on the previous books, spread the word, and leave reviews. Reviews help visibility so much and continue to introduce new readers to the series.

You can also motivate me to keep writing by placing your preorders. Trust me, authors notice every single one.

More to come.

Pre-Order Irreplaceable

WTLCTD Updates

I’ve officially sent out the first ten chapters of WYL, the first book in the WTLCTD series.

Thank you for all the excitement and love you’ve already shown this story and world. Seeing your reactions has honestly made me even more eager to share the full journey with you.

And now, you finally get to know what WTLCTD means:

I’ll save the meaning of WYL for another letter.

For now… just anticipate this book.

You can read more and catch up here:

Your Next Summer Read

Escape, a Twin Bliss Resort novel, recently got a brand-new cover and interior design makeover. It’s currently available on my website and makes the perfect summer read if you’re looking for romance, tension, and an escape into something warm and immersive.

Read Escape now

New Releases from Author Friends

Here are two new releases I think you’d really enjoy!

PS: The Time & Ash duology follows the story of Yoruba Demon: Obinna’s father—his rise, his romance, and the choices that shaped the man he became.

Time and Ash duology by Rosemary Okafor.

The narrative unflinchingly explores the burdens women bear to uphold their husbands’ crowns, even when the cost is their own thinning edges, their silence, their sacrifice. Indigo himself strays into waters far beyond his depth, discovering that reverence and status do not guarantee control, wisdom, or absolution.

At its core, this duology is a richly layered examination of marriage, motherhood, and a love that persists despite betrayal, pride, and unmet expectations.

This is a deeply immersive read—one that will make you laugh, simmer with anger, and smile in recognition. I highly recommend this to readers who enjoy emotionally honest storytelling and complex family dynamics.

Read Time & Ash

Sweat With Me by L. Leigh

A raw, emotionally charged story about desire, control, and reclaiming autonomy. Amara’s marriage is cold, suffocating, and shaped by silence, neglect, and the threat of FGM disguised as “correction.” Her affair with her gym instructor is reckless and morally messy, but it becomes the spark that forces her to confront the life she’s been surviving instead of living. Bold, uncomfortable, and deeply human, this is a fearless exploration of what happens when a person eventually choose themselves.

Read Sweat With Me

Will I See You?

I’m really excited—and honestly grateful—to be out and about meeting readers and fellow authors. If you’re in any of these areas, please come say hello!

I’ll be at these in-person events this year:

• May 31 - Delaware Author Fair, Wilmington, Delaware, USA

• June 6 - Juneteenth Freedom Festival, Edison, New Jersey, USA

• June 7 - Freehold NJ Juneteenth, Freehold, New Jersey, USA

• June 13 - The Pink Profit Vendor & Craft Pop-Up, Merchantville, New Jersey, USA

• June 20 - 6th Annual Juneteenth Celebration, West Winsdor, New Jersey, USA

• July 25 - RomantiConn, Trumbull, Connecticut, USA

• July 31 till August 2 - Black Writers Weekend, Atlanta, USA

• August 15 - Indies & Bookworms, Baltimore, Maryland, USA

• August 22 - Romance After Dark,

• August 29 - Harlem Book Fair, Harlem, New York, USA

• September 5 - Love Bants & Signatures, Ontario, Toronto, Canada

• September 26 - Mercer County Library Book Festival, Hamilton, New Jersey, USA

• October 3 - Collingswood Book Festival, Collingswood, New Jersey, USA

• November 14 - Royal Book Bash, Annapolis, Maryland, USA

• November 15 - The Black Girl Book Fair Tour, Washington, D.C., USA

Save the dates and grab tickets, I’d love to meet you if you’re nearby!

My next letter will be about Obinna’s release dates. Till then…

Happy reading and stay jiggy!

XoxO

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Old newsletter Archive

ROLA

December 1999

Two years in America.

I turned eleven in November. My birthday didn’t fall during Thanksgiving week this time, so Mummy made puff-puff and a boxed cake from the grocery store, the kind you only had to add eggs and oil to. We had a small party in the apartment—just the three of us, plus Abigail and her mother.

Mummy found me a dress from the church donation box, pink with white lace at the sleeves. It was a little tight under the arms and too long at the hem, but when I put it on, I stood in front of the mirror longer than usual.

For the first time in a long while, I thought I looked pretty.

Two years.

In some ways, it felt like forever. I could barely remember Lagos now, could barely summon the details of our compound or my school or the face of Aunty Funke. Those memories were fading, replaced by new ones: the subway, the corner store, Abigail’s laugh, the shade of gray that Brooklyn’s sky turned in winter.

In other ways, it felt like no time at all. Like we had just arrived, were still arriving, would always be arriving. Strangers in a strange land, never quite settling, never quite belonging.

Things were better, though. Objectively better.

Mummy had been promoted at the hotel. She was a supervisor now, which meant slightly better pay and slightly more regular hours. We had even moved into a bigger apartment in the same building—two real bedrooms instead of one.

Toba’s “room” was really a converted storage closet, barely wide enough for a mattress and a small shelf bolted to the wall, but he claimed it proudly anyway.

“We live in a three-bedroom apartment,” he would say whenever he wanted to annoy Mummy.

I had friends at school now. Real friends, not just Abigail. Girls who invited me to birthday parties and passed me folded notes during class. They called our apartment phone to ask for help with homework or projects, and sometimes just to talk.

Nobody really commented on my accent anymore either. Toba said I was starting to sound American now, which felt both exciting and a little sad.

Sometimes I would catch myself saying words differently than Mummy did and feel guilty after, like I was slowly misplacing parts of myself. But mummy was proud.

And Toba was doing better too. He was in ninth grade now—high school—and the bullying had mostly stopped. He had grown taller over the summer, broader through the shoulders. His size made people think twice before trying him. And he wasn’t scared to fight back anymore either.

I was glad for that.

He had finally found his place somehow, somewhere between popular and invisible. The teachers knew his name. The boys on the basketball court called for him sometimes. People laughed at his jokes now instead of his accent.

But.

There was always a but.

As much as I tried to act normal, the nightmares hadn’t stopped.

Not every night anymore, but often enough. Once or twice a week, I would wake up gasping, my heart racing, the man from the stairwell behind my eyes. His hands. His breath. The moment before I bit him, when I was certain—absolutely certain—that I was going to die.

The doctors said this was normal. Mummy had taken me to a free clinic after the third month of nightmares, worried that something was wrong with me. The doctor—a tired-looking woman with kind eyes—had explained about trauma, about how the brain processed fear, about how these things took time to heal.

“She needs to feel safe,” the doctor said. “Support her. Let her know she’s protected. The nightmares will fade eventually.”

They did fade, a little. But they never disappeared entirely. Even now, almost a year later, I could be fine for weeks and then suddenly—out of nowhere—the dream would come. The stairs. The hand. The breath. And I would wake up screaming, and Toba would be there, holding me, whispering that it was okay, that it wasn’t real, that nothing was going to hurt me.

“I’ve got you,” he would say. “I’ve got you. You’re safe.”

And I would press against him and let his heartbeat slow mine, let his warmth drive away the cold terror, let his presence fill the void the nightmare had opened.

Sometimes I wondered if I would ever be able to sleep without him. If I would ever feel safe on my own, in my own bed, without his arm around me and his breath against my hair.

Sometimes I wasn’t sure I wanted to.

And when the nightmares came, there was only one cure.

“Toba?”

A rustle from the closet-bedroom. Then footsteps. Then my door opening, his silhouette in the frame.

“Nightmare?”

“Yeah.”

He crossed to my bed without another word. Lifted the covers. Slid in beside me. His arms came around me, warm and solid and safe, and I pressed my face against his chest and breathed.

“Same one?” he asked.

“Always the same one.”

“You’re safe now. You know that, right?”

“I know.”

“No one’s going to hurt you.”

“I know.”

But knowing wasn’t the same as feeling. And when his arms were around me, I felt safe in a way that no amount of knowing could replicate.

“Toba?”

“Yeah?”

“I don’t want you to sleep in the closet anymore.”

His arms tightened slightly. “What do you mean?”

“I mean... every night. Sleep here. With me. It’s cold in the closet and lonely and—” I hesitated, searching for the words. “And I need you. I sleep better when you’re here. I feel safer.”

“Rola, Mummy said—”

“Mummy’s not here at night. She’s always working. And I’m tired of being scared in the dark.”

He was quiet for a long moment. I could feel him thinking, weighing, the options.

“Okay,” he said finally. “Until the nightmares stop.”

“What if they never stop?”

“Then...” He didn’t finish the sentence. Maybe because he didn’t have an answer. Or maybe because the answer make me sad if he said out loud.

“Thank you,” I said.

“Go to sleep.”

“You too.”

“I will.”

But he didn’t. I knew he didn’t. I could feel him holding me, feel the tension in his arms, feel the way he listened to every sound in the building, ready to fight anything that threatened me.

My brother. My protector. My home.

* * *

The days fell into a pattern. School, homework, dinner, television if Mummy was feeling generous with the electricity, sleep. On weekends, church—the Nigerian Pentecostal congregation that had adopted us, where Mummy raised her hands and cried during worship. Bored, I sat in the children’s section trying to understand what Jesus had to do with us, with our lives, this city and everything that had happened since we got off that airplane.

Toba came to church too, but he didn’t participate the way Mummy wanted him to. She would scold him in whispers before service, sometimes sharp enough to feel like threats, saying he was inviting the devil into his life with that attitude.

So he sat in the back when he came to church.

Arms crossed. Shoulders stiff. Watching everything and everyone with obvious indifference.

When the pastor talked about faith and trust and God’s plan, Toba’s jaw would tighten. And when the church erupted into “Amen!” and “Hallelujah!” around him, he stayed silent.

“Why don’t you like church?” I asked him one Sunday after the service, as we walked home through streets that were emptier than usual because even Brooklyn seemed to rest on Sundays.

“I don’t dislike it.”

“But you don’t believe it either. I can tell.”

He was quiet for a moment.

“I believe in things I can see,” he said finally. “Things I can touch. Things I can protect.”

“Like what?”

“Like you. Like Mummy. Like this.” He gestured at the street around us, the buildings and cars and people. “I believe in what’s real. What’s here. I don’t need a God to tell me right from wrong.”

“But Mummy says—”

“Mummy needs to believe in something bigger than this.” His voice wasn’t unkind, just matter-of-fact. “She needs to think there’s a reason daddy didn’t care about us and why we came here. That it’s part of some plan. Some purpose.”

“Maybe there is a reason.”

“Maybe. Or maybe things just happen. Maybe the universe doesn’t care about us at all, and we have to make our own meaning.”

I thought about that. About a universe that didn’t care. About making our own meaning in a world that didn’t offer any.

“What’s your meaning?” I asked.

He glanced at me, a small crooked smile twisting his tight pink lips.

“You,” he said simply. “You’re my meaning. Keeping you safe. Making sure you’re okay. That’s the only thing I care about.”

I should have felt loved. Should have felt grateful. And I did—those things were there, underneath.

But something else was there too. Something that made my chest and tummy warm. So warm I wanted to be closer to him, as close as two people could possibly be.

I was eleven years old.

I didn’t understand what we were becoming. Didn’t understand the boundaries between us were blurring. Day by day. Night by night. Didn’t understand that the safety I felt in his arms was beginning to transform into a flame that would eventually consume us both.

All I knew was that the world was large and frightening and full of people who might hurt me. And in that world, there was only one person who made me feel truly safe.

Toba.

My brother. My everything.

* * *

Mr. Henry started coming around more often.

Not to our room—Mummy would never allow that. She would never let a man see the cramped space where we lived, the mattresses on the floor, or the hot plate we cooked on because the building’s kitchen was too far away and too dirty. But he appeared at church every Sunday, always finding his way to Mummy’s side during fellowship. And sometimes, during the week, he would show up at the building.

“I was in the neighborhood,” he would say, standing in the hallway, a bag of groceries in his hands. “The plantains at the African market were so fresh, I bought too many. Please, take some.”

Or: “My sister sent garri from home. I cannot finish it alone. For your children.”

Or: “Sister Adunni, your daughter mentioned the heater is broken again. I know a man who can fix it. Let me make some calls.”

Mummy always protested. Always said it was too much, that she couldn’t accept, that he was too kind.

But she always accepted. And sometimes, when she thought we weren’t watching, she would touch the things he brought—the bag of rice, the tin of palm oil, the yams wrapped in newspaper—with something like wonder. Like she had forgotten what it felt like to have someone take care of her.

I was eleven now. Old enough to understand what was happening.

“He likes her,” I told Toba one night, after Mummy had gone to bed early—exhausted, as always, but smiling slightly from the soup Mr. Henry had dropped off that afternoon. “Deacon Henry. He really likes her.”

“I know.”

“Do you think she likes him back?”

Toba was quiet for a long moment. We were in my room—our room, really, since he slept here every night now—lying side by side in the darkness.

“I think,” he said slowly, “that Mummy is scared.”

“Scared of what?”

“Of wanting things. Of hoping. Of letting someone in and having them hurt her.”

“Like Daddy hurt her?”

“Yes. Like Daddy. Like everything that made her run away and come here.”

Mummy was Daddy’s second wife. According to what Toba had heard, Daddy’s family had wanted him to marry her, but he had already gone ahead and married another woman—one who had given him a child before Mummy ever entered the picture. Whenever mummy did something he didn’t like, daddy insulted her easily, swearing at her in Yoruba and calling her names.

She fought with the other wives too, never backing down when words were thrown at her. People in our compound said she was “strong,” but Toba and I saw the parts of her that strength was covering.

Even now, I noticed the way she flinched sometimes when men raised their voices. She kept everyone at arm’s length. Even us. Her children.

“Maybe it would be good for her,” I said. “To have someone. Mr. Henry seems nice.”

“Nice isn’t the same as safe.”

“What do you mean?”

Toba rolled onto his side, facing me. In the faint light from the window, I could see the outline of his face—the strong jaw he was growing into, the serious eyes.

“I mean that Mummy gave herself to someone once. To Daddy. And look at what it cost her. Her youth. Her freedom. Her whole life in Nigeria. Everything.” He paused. “I don’t think she has it in her to risk that again. Even for someone nice. Even for someone who brings groceries, fixes heaters and makes her laugh.”

“That’s sad.”

“It’s safe. There’s a difference.”

We lay there in silence for a while. From the next room, I could hear Mummy’s breathing—deep and even, finally resting.

“Toba?” I yawned.

“Yeah?”

“Are you ever going to let someone in? When you’re older? Are you going to... find someone?”

The question hung in the darkness between us. I felt him tense beside me, felt the shift in his breathing.

“I already have someone,” he said finally. His voice was low and strange. Almost a whisper.

“Who?” I whispered back.

He didn’t answer. Just reached out and took my hand, threading his fingers through mine.

“Go to sleep, Rola.”

I wanted to push, wanted to make him explain. But his hand was warm in mine, and his presence beside me was solid and safe, and somewhere between one breath and the next, I fell asleep.

* * *

TOBA

June 1999

Our apartment was unbearably hot.

New York summers, I was learning, were almost as brutal as Lagos—but different. In Lagos, the heat was dry. You could fight it with shade and cold water. Here, the humidity pressed down like a weight, thick and suffocating, soaking through your clothes and into your bones.

The room had no air conditioning. We had a small fan that Mummy bought at a garage sale—a plastic thing that oscillated back and forth, pushing hot air from one corner to another. Someone at church had told her to put a bowl of ice in front of it, but the ice melted so fast we might as well have been pouring money down the drain.

“I’m dying,” Rola announced from her spot on the bed. She was lying on top of the covers, wearing the shortest shorts and the thinnest tank top she owned, her arms and legs spread wide to expose as much skin as possible to the useless fan.

“You’re not dying.”

“I’m definitely dying. This is what dying feels like. Hot, sticky and miserable.”

“You’ve never died before. How would you know what it feels like?”

“I’m very intuitive.”

I laughed despite the heat. Rola had gotten funnier over the past months, becoming more American in her humor. Learning to use sarcasm as a shield the way the kids at school did. I liked this version of her, even as I missed the softer, more innocent version from Lagos.

But Lagos was a long time ago now. Almost two years. Sometimes it felt like a dream, like something I had imagined. The compound with its coconut tree. Kids playing football on the street. The sound of motorcycles and impatient drivers honking. All of it fading, day by day. Replaced by the reality of this room with its brick wall view, its broken drawer and heat that never let up.

“Toba?”

“Hmm?”

“I’m hungry.”

“There’s rice from yesterday.”

“I don’t want rice from yesterday. I want something cold. Ice cream.”

“We don’t have ice cream.”

“I know.” She sighed dramatically. “But I can dream.”

I got up, went to the refrigerator and opened it. Inside were the remains of yesterday’s dinner, a half-empty carton of milk, and three eggs. Not exactly a feast.

“What if I made fried eggs?” I suggested. “And toast? The bread isn’t too stale yet.”

“That’s hot food. I want cold food.”

“Cereal then. With the last of the milk.”

She scrunched up her face, acting like she was thinking hard about it. I loved that face. Loved the way she took small decisions seriously, as if they mattered.

“Fine,” she said finally. “Cereal. But you have to eat with me.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“I don’t care. I don’t want to eat alone.”

So I made two bowls of cereal—the cheap kind that came in big bags instead of boxes. We sat on the bed together, eating in silence, the fan pushing hot air past us, sounds of the city drifting through the open window.

This was our life now. Small moments. Simple meals. The two of us, together, surviving.

“Toba?”

“Yeah?”

“Do you ever think about going back to Lagos?”

I paused, my spoon halfway to my mouth. It wasn’t a question she asked often. We had an unspoken agreement not to talk too much about the past, about what we had left behind.

“Sometimes,” I admitted. “But we can’t go back. You know that.”

“I know. I just... sometimes I miss it so much it hurts. The heat here is bad, but at least in Lagos the heat made sense.” She gesticulated with her spoon, waving it this way and that. “Here everything feels wrong. Like how can we be freezing one moment and the next, we’re sweating like Christmas chicken? And the sun doesn’t go down until nine in the night!”

I held back a laugh.

“I still don’t think we’re supposed to be here,” she concluded before spooning more cereal into her mouth.

“We’re supposed to be wherever we are,” I said. “That’s how it works. We’re here now, so this is where we belong.”

“But what if I never feel like I belong? What if I always feel like a stranger?”

It was a big question. Too big for a summer afternoon in a hot room. But I tried to answer it anyway.

“Then you find the things that make you feel less like a stranger,” I said. “People. Places. Moments. You build belonging out of small pieces. That’s what everyone does.”

“What pieces do you have?”

I looked at her. My sister. My responsibility. My whole world, really, whether I admitted it or not.

“You,” I said. “You’re my piece. As long as I have you, I belong.”

Her mouth curved into a bright, warm smile that made the heat almost bearable.

“You’re my piece too,” she said. “My only piece.” When she went for a wink, we both giggled at her twitching.

We finished our cereal. Watched some TV—a cartoon marathon on one of the channels we got for free, the antenna Mummy had rigged up from coat hangers pulling in fuzzy images of talking animals and superheroes. Rola laughed at the jokes, even the ones that weren’t that funny, and I watched her more than I watched the screen.

At fifteen, I was starting to understand things I hadn’t understood before. That the world was harder than it looked. That people could be cruel for no reason. That the gap between who you were and who you were supposed to be could feel like an ocean.

But when I was with Rola, none of that mattered. When I was with her, the ocean shrank to a puddle. Cruelty faded to background noise. The world became manageable. Survivable. Almost okay.

Was that normal? I didn’t know. I had nothing to compare it to. Other boys at school talked about their siblings like they were nuisances, obstacles, people they tolerated rather than loved. “My sister’s so annoying,” they would say, rolling their eyes. “I wish I was an only child.”

I couldn’t imagine feeling that way about Rola. She was annoying sometimes, sure—what ten-year-old wasn’t? But underneath the annoyance was something deeper. Something that felt less like sibling affection and more like... necessity. Like she was air, water and food. I couldn’t survive without her.

Mummy came home around six, exhausted as always, carrying a bag of groceries from the discount store. She kissed both our foreheads, asked about our days, heated up yesterday’s rice for dinner. We ate together at the small table, the fan still pushing hot air around, the sounds of the building mixing with the sounds of our spoons against bowls.

“I got a raise,” Mummy said halfway through the meal.

We both looked up.

“A small one,” she added quickly, before we could get too excited. “But enough. I’ve been looking at bigger apartments. Two bedrooms. Maybe we can move by the end of summer.”

“Really?” Rola’s face lit up. “My own room?”

“Maybe. We’ll see.”

I should have been happy. More space. More privacy. The chance to sleep without Rola’s elbow in my ribs, her hair in my face, her body pressed against mine in the narrow bed.

But fear twisted in my chest at the thought.

“The two-bedroom places are more expensive,” I said. “Are you sure we can afford it?”

Mummy gave me the look she gave me when I was being too adult, then smiled wanly.

“Let me worry about what we can afford,” she said.

“But mummy, on the long run, can we—”

“You just focus on school. Both of you.”

We finished dinner. Washed the dishes. Watched more TV until it was time for bed.

When darkness finally came, bringing with it a slight—very slight—cooling of the air, Rola curled up next to me like she always did now, and I held her like I always did. I tried not to think about a future where we might have separate rooms. Separate beds. Separate lives.

This is temporary, I told myself. We won’t always live like this. We won’t always need each other this much.

But even then, I knew I was lying.

We fell asleep together, two pieces of a whole that didn’t make sense without each other.

* * *

ROLA

March 1999

“You don’t go down there anymore,” Mummy said, standing at the sink, peeling potatoes with quick, practiced hands. I hated potatoes now because it felt like she had replaced yams with them. Yams used to be ordinary in Lagos. Here, they felt like prized possession you only saw in memory.

“Don’t play with those girls on the corner,” she continued. “You stay with Abigail now. You hear me?”

“Yes, Mummy.”

“Abigail is a good girl. From a good family. You go to her house, or she comes here. That is all.”

Her voice made it sound simple. Like friendships were things you could assign the way you assign chores.

I nodded again.

Nothing was the same after the incident.

Not the street. Not Mummy’s voice when she said “corner.”

That was what we called it now—”the incident.” A clean, clinical word. As if giving it a neutral name could strip away the terror, the violation, the feeling of his hands on me and his breath in my face and the certainty, absolute and total, that I was going to die in that stairwell.

The police never caught him. Two weeks after it happened, a detective called to say they were “deprioritizing” the case. No witnesses. No camera footage. The description I gave—white male, forties, brown coat—matched a thousand men in Brooklyn. The bite mark I left on his hand would scar, but unless they found him for something else, there was no way to trace it back.

“We’ll keep the file open,” the detective said. “If anything comes up.”

Nothing ever came up. He was still out there, somewhere. Walking the same streets. Maybe looking for another girl to grab in another stairwell. I tried not to think about it, but some nights, when I couldn’t sleep, I imagined him. Wondered if he thought about me. Wondered if he remembered the taste of his own blood when I bit through his flesh.

I hoped he did. I hoped the scar ached every time the weather changed.

I couldn’t walk past the spot anymore. Every day, going up and down the stairs to and from our apartment, I had to pass the landing between the first and second floors. And every day, my heart would start pounding and my palms would start sweating and I would run—actually run—up or down until I was past it, until I was safe.

Except nowhere felt safe anymore.

The world had cracked open and shown me what was hiding underneath. Monsters. Real monsters, not the ones in stories, not the ones you could defeat with magic words or brave deeds. Real monsters who looked like ordinary people, who walked the same streets, who could grab you when you least expected it and—

I couldn’t finish the thought. Couldn’t let myself imagine what would have happened if I hadn’t bitten him, if I hadn’t run, if I hadn’t screamed and made it to the door in time.

Mummy changed after the incident. She tried to come home earlier, though it meant less money. She walked me to school in the mornings, even when it made her late for work. She checked the locks obsessively—three times, four times, five times before she was satisfied. At night, I heard her praying, asking God for protection she wasn’t sure He would provide.

But the biggest change was Toba.

He was everywhere now. Always watching. Always present. Even when he was at school and I was at school, he called the main office at lunchtime to make sure I was there. He met me outside my building every afternoon, standing on the sidewalk like a soldier on guard duty, scanning every face that passed until he saw mine.

At first, I was grateful. The fear still lived in my body like a second heartbeat. Having Toba there, having him close, made me feel like I could breathe again. Like maybe the world wasn’t as dangerous as it had revealed itself to be.

But as the weeks passed, I started to notice other things.

The way he always positioned himself between me and the door. The way his eyes tracked my movements around the room, even when I was just getting a glass of water. The way he held me at night—every night now, because I couldn’t sleep without him.

“Toba?”

“Hmm?”

We were in his bed. My bed now too, really, since I hadn’t slept in my own bed since the incident. It was late—past midnight—and Mummy was working the night shift. The building was quiet except for the usual sounds: pipes clanking, distant TV’s, the ever-present hum of the city outside.

“I need to go to the bathroom.”

“I’ll come with you.”

“You don’t have to—”

“I’ll wait outside the door.”

This was how it was now. He waited outside the bathroom while I peed. He stood at the kitchen corner while I made my cereal. He followed me to the window when I wanted to look outside.

Part of me felt suffocated.

But a bigger part of me felt loved.

No one had ever paid this much attention to me. Not Mummy, who loved me but was always working. Not Daddy back in Nigeria, who had looked at me like a disappointment from the day I was born. Not my friends, not my teachers, not anyone.

Only Toba. Only my brother.

From the kitchen window, I could see the corner where Deidra and the other girls jumped rope.

Some afternoons, when Toba was in the shower or on the phone with one of his school friends, I would stand there with my forehead pressed to the cold glass and watch them. The ropes turning. The girls counting. Sometimes Deidra would look up, a small frown on her face, scanning the building like she was trying to remember which window was mine.

I never waved.

I didn’t know how to wave from inside a body that no longer knew how to be ten.

Once, just once, I heard her voice through the cracked window — Rola? You up there? — clear as a bell on a still afternoon, the sound carrying up the brick. I stepped back from the glass and pretended I hadn’t heard. Pretended I wasn’t home. Pretended I was someone who didn’t know the rhythm of double-dutch, didn’t know what it felt like to laugh for two hours without thinking about anything.

After a few weeks, she stopped looking up.

Toba was the center of my world now. The sun I orbited around. The only thing that made me feel safe in a universe that had proved it wasn’t.

“Toba?”

“Yeah?”

I had come back from the bathroom. He was sitting up in bed, waiting for me, a silhouette against the faint light from the window.

“Thank you.”

“For what?”

“For... everything. For being there. For not leaving me alone.”

He was quiet for a moment. Then he reached out and took my hand, pulling me back toward the bed.

“I told you I would protect you,” he said. “I meant it.”

“I know.”

“Nothing bad is ever going to happen to you again. I promise.”

I climbed into bed beside him. Pressed myself against his warmth. Let him wrap his arms around me and hold me close.

I was ten years old. I didn’t understand what was happening. Didn’t understand the way my heart beat faster when he held me like this. Didn’t understand the complicated tangle of fear and safety and something else that lived in my chest whenever I was near him.

I only knew that I felt protected. That I felt loved. That I felt, for the first time since the incident, like maybe everything would be okay.

And home was Toba.

Home would always be Toba.

***

Toba also became more protective—he would check on me multiple times a night, waking from sleep to make sure I was still there, still breathing, still safe.

“You don’t have to keep checking,” I told him one night, after he had sat up for the third time to look at me. “I’m okay.”

“I know.”

“Then why—”

“Because I need to know. I need to see it.” His voice was fierce in the darkness. “I need to know that you’re real and you’re here and nothing happened to you while I wasn’t paying attention.”

I didn’t argue. How could I? He was afraid for me. He loved me. And in those weeks, when the nightmares came every night and I woke up screaming, his fear felt like the only thing holding me together.

Mummy noticed the change too. She saw us clinging to each other, saw the way I couldn’t let Toba out of my sight, saw the way he hovered over me like a guardian angel.

“You need to give each other space,” she said once, gently. “You’re not little children anymore. You can’t be attached at the hip forever.”

But she didn’t push. She was too tired, too overwhelmed by work and bills and the endless demands of survival. And maybe she thought our closeness was normal, a result of the trauma, something that would fade as I healed.

It didn’t fade.

It grew.

Spring turned to summer. The nights got warmer. The apartment got stuffier. And Toba and I got closer, in ways that felt natural and inevitable, in ways I didn’t question because I didn’t have the words to question them.

I was ten years old. He was fourteen.

We didn’t know what we were becoming.

We just knew that we needed each other.

And need, I was learning, was a force stronger than reason. Stronger than rules. Stronger, maybe, than anything.

* * *

PS: This is not a love story… this is what love did to them.

TOBA

February 1999

It happened on a Tuesday.

Years later, I would remember that detail with strange clarity—the day of the week, the weather outside (cold, grey, threatening snow that never came), the quality of light in the classroom window. The mind holds onto these things even in chaos. The mind creates anchors in ordinary details when the extraordinary is too much to process.

I was at school when it happened, sitting through a math class I didn’t need because I had learned all this years ago in Lagos, watching the clock tick slowly toward 3 PM when I could finally go home. The teacher, Mrs. Henderson, was explaining fractions with the patient condescension of someone who assumed everyone in the room was a step behind. I had solved these problems at eight years old. I could have solved them in my sleep.

My mind was wandering the way it often did during these hours. Thinking about dinner—would Mummy have time to cook, or would it be another night of cold sandwiches eaten standing up? Thinking about the history essay due next week—American Revolution, a subject I found fascinating and strange, this country’s origin story of fighting for freedom while enslaving millions. Thinking about nothing in particular, just letting time pass, counting down the minutes until I could leave this building and its humiliations.

Then the classroom door opened and the principal’s secretary appeared.

Mrs. Carlisle was her name. A thin woman with reading glasses perched on her nose and grey hair pulled back in a bun so tight it looked painful. I’d seen her a dozen times, always behind her desk in the front office, always looking harried and slightly annoyed. But now her face was different. Tight with urgency, maybe, or fear.

“Adetoba Oni?” She murdered my first name but I knew she was asking for me. “You need to come with me.”

The other students turned to look at me. Some with curiosity. Some with eager malice that hoped I was in trouble, that relished the prospect of the African kid being marched out of class for some unknown offense. Darnell Thompson was grinning—I’m sure he was composing the jokes he would tell later.

I got up, but she said to grab my things.

I gathered my things and followed the secretary out, trying to keep my face neutral, trying not to show the fear that was already building in my chest. In Nigeria, being called to the principal’s office meant a caning. Here, I didn’t know what it meant, only that it couldn’t be good.

The walk down the hallway felt endless. Our footsteps echoed on the linoleum. Mrs. Carlisle said nothing, and I was too afraid to ask.

The principal’s office. Wood-paneled walls, framed certificates, an American flag in the corner. And my mother, sitting in one of the chairs meant for students, which was wrong—she should have been at work, she was always at work, she couldn’t afford to miss even an hour—and she was crying, which was worse. Mummy never cried in public, she waited until she thought we couldn’t hear.

The principal was talking, his mouth moving, words coming out that I couldn’t quite hear through the rushing in my ears.

“...your sister... incident... police have been called...”

Rola.

Something had happened to Rola.

The words landed like blows. Sister. Incident. Police. Each one hitting harder than the last, until I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think, couldn’t do anything but stand there with my heart trying to escape through my chest.

“What happened?” My voice didn’t sound like mine. “What happened to her?”

The next hour was a blur of fragments.

The taxi ride home—Mummy and I crammed into the back seat while the meter ticked higher and higher, money we couldn’t afford to spend, money that would come out of groceries or electricity or something else essential. Mummy was still crying, silent tears streaming down her face, and I held her hand because I didn’t know what else to do. The driver kept glancing at us in the rearview mirror, his expression somewhere between sympathy and annoyance. We were a drama he hadn’t signed up for.

Police cars were outside our building. Two of them, lights flashing red and blue, drawing neighbors to their windows like moths to flame. People were watching from doorways, from fire escapes, from the sidewalk across the street. Mrs. Chen from the third floor. The teenagers from 4B who always played music too loud. The old woman from the first floor who never smiled. All of them watching, all of them curious, all of them grateful that the drama was happening to someone else’s family.

The climb up three flights of stairs that felt like three hundred. My legs were shaking. My hands were shaking. Everything was shaking, the whole world trembling on its axis, rearranging itself into something I new. Each step was an eternity. Each landing was a mile. And the closer we got, the more afraid I became of what we would find.

The door to our room, which was already open, which should never have been open. The lock was intact—no forced entry, the police would say later—but the door was ajar, light spilling out into the dim hallway, exposing our private space to anyone who walked by.

And Rola.

She was sitting on the bed, wrapped in a blanket, a female police officer next to her speaking in a low, gentle voice. When she saw me, her face crumpled and she started to cry—really cry, the kind of sobbing that comes from somewhere deep, somewhere broken.

I crossed the room in three steps and pulled her into my arms. She clung to me like she was drowning and I was the only solid thing in the ocean. Her whole body was shaking.

“What happened?” I asked, my voice coming out harder than I intended. “What happened to her?”

The policewoman explained. Calmly. Professionally. Like she had explained things like this before, to other families, in other small rooms.

Rola had been walking home from school. The normal route—down Atlantic Avenue, past the bodega, turn left at the laundromat, three blocks to our building. Abigail had been sick that day, so Rola was alone.

A man had followed her.

White. Older. Wearing a coat too big for him and shoes that didn’t match. Smelling of alcohol and rotten stuff.

He followed her for two blocks before she noticed. Then she started walking faster. Then he started walking faster. Then she was running, her backpack bouncing against her shoulders, her lungs burning, her heart pounding.

She made it to the building. Made it inside. Made it to the stairs.

But he was faster.

He grabbed her on the landing between the first and second floors.

I couldn’t listen anymore. My hands were shaking. My vision was going red at the edges. Every word the policewoman spoke was a knife sliding between my ribs.

“She’s okay,” the policewoman said.

Look at her! I wanted to scream. Look at my sister shaking in my arms! How could you possibly say she’s okay?

It was obvious Rola was not okay.

“She bit him,” the policewoman continued. “She bit him hard that she drew blood. He let go and she ran. She did exactly the right thing.”

The right thing. As if there was a right thing when a grown man grabbed you in a stairwell. As if there was any response that could make what happened acceptable.

They never caught him. The police took a description—white male, forties or fifties, brown coat, no other identifying features—and added it to a file that would probably never be opened again.

Just another predator in a city full of predators, one officer said, not even bothering to hide his indifference.

Mummy blamed herself. I could see it in her face as the police left, as the neighbors’ curiosity faded, as the ordinary sounds of the building resumed around us. If she hadn’t been working so much. If she had walked Rola to school. If she had arranged for someone to pick her up. If, if, if.

But I didn’t blame Mummy.

I blamed America. I blamed this city, this neighborhood, this building with its broken locks and its indifferent residents and its stairwells where children could be grabbed by strangers. I blamed myself for not being there, for being at school doing math problems I didn’t need while my sister was running for her life.

That night, after Mummy finally fell into an exhausted sleep, I sat on the edge of my bed and looked at Rola.

She was in her own bed, where Mummy had insisted she sleep, but she wasn’t sleeping. Her eyes were open, staring at the ceiling, her body absolutely still. The way a rabbit freezes when it senses a predator nearby.

“Rola?”

No answer.

“Rola, can you hear me?”

Her eyes moved. Found my face. In the dim light from the window, they looked enormous. Terrified.

“I’m scared,” she whispered.

“I know.”

“He was going to—” Her voice caught. “He was going to—”

“He didn’t.”

“But he was going to.”

I crossed the small space between our beds. Sat on the edge of hers. Took her hand in mine.

“Listen to me.” I made my voice as steady as I could, even though everything inside me was screaming. “No one is ever going to hurt you. Do you understand me? No one. Not ever. I won’t let them.”

“You weren’t there.”

“I know. And I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Rola. But I’m here now. I’m here, and I’m never going to let anyone touch you again.”

“How can you promise that?”

I looked at her—my baby sister, ten years old, who had just experienced something no child should ever experience. Who had been grabbed by a stranger in a stairwell and had fought her way free through pure animal instinct. Who was lying in this bed, in this room, trusting me to make her safe in a world that had just proved it wasn’t safe at all.

“Because I will kill anyone who ever tries,” I said.

I meant it.

At fourteen years old, having never thrown a punch that landed properly, having never won a fight in my life, I meant it with every cell in my body. Every fiber. Every atom.

Anyone who tried to hurt my sister would have to go through me first. And if they got through me, I would come back. I would find them. I would make them pay.

“Toba?”

“Yeah?”

“Can I sleep in your bed tonight?”

I didn’t hesitate.

“Come on.”

She crossed to my bed. Climbed in beside me. Pressed her body against mine, her head on my chest, her hand clutching the front of my shirt like I might disappear if she let go.

And I held her. Wrapped my arms around her and held her as tight as I could without hurting her. I could feel her trembling—little shudders that ran through her body like aftershocks.

“I’ve got you,” I whispered. “I’ve got you. No one’s going to hurt you. Not ever again. Not as long as I’m alive.”

She didn’t respond. But slowly, so slowly, the trembling stopped. Her breathing deepened. Her grip on my shirt loosened.

She fell asleep.

And I lay awake all night, holding my sister, staring at the darkness, making plans.

* * *

ROLA

November 1998

The church held a dinner for all the immigrant families.

I had never heard of Thanksgiving before coming to America. The concept seemed strange to me—a whole day devoted to eating too much food and saying thank you for things. In Nigeria, we said thank you before every meal. We said it when someone gave us something, when someone did something kind, when God answered our prayers. We didn’t need a special day for it.

But Mummy said this was important. “It’s an American tradition,” she explained while braiding my hair that morning—it made me homesick for Lagos even though she was right there. “We are Americans now. We should learn their traditions.”

So she dressed us in our best clothes—the ones from the church donation box—and walked us to the community center attached to the church. It is a building made of cinderblocks painted yellow, trying very hard to be cheerful.

The room was full of people I half-recognized from Sunday services. Other Nigerian families, mostly, but also people from Ghana and Senegal and places with names I couldn’t pronounce. All of us immigrants. All of us far from home. All of us gathered around long tables covered in food that looked nothing like anything I was used to.

“What’s that?” I whispered to Toba, pointing at a brown, glistening thing at the center of the biggest table. It looked like a chicken had been blown up to the size of a small dog and then shellacked with all the oil in the world.

“Turkey, I think.”

“It looks scary.”

“It tastes like chicken. But different. Drier.”

“How do you know?”

He shrugged. “A kid at school told me. His family has it every year.”

I studied the turkey suspiciously. Next to it were bowls and platters of other strange things—orange mush that I later learned was mashed sweet potatoes, something lumpy and brown called “stuffing” (though I couldn’t figure out what it was stuffed into), a dish of green beans drowning in what looked like mushroom soup, and a bowl of cranberry sauce that was so red it seemed almost angry.

We found seats at one of the long tables, squeezing in between the Johnson family—whose daughter Abigail had become my closest friend in school—and the Isholas, who had just arrived from Nigeria last month. They kept looking around with the same bewildered expression I remembered from our first weeks here.

“Rola!” Abigail scooted over to make room for me. “I saved you a seat. Did you see all this food? The Americans make so much food. My mother says it’s wasteful, but I don’t care. I’m going to eat until I burst.” She chuckled, her face filled with mischief.

“Is it good?”

“Some of it. The turkey is boring but the pie is amaziiiiing. Wait until you try the pumpkin pie. It’s like nothing you’ve ever had.”

Pastor Ifeanyi stood at the front of the room and raised his hands for silence. He was a small man with a big voice, and when he spoke, everyone listened.

“Let us say grace,” he announced. “On this day of Thanksgiving, we have much to be grateful for. We thank God for bringing us safely to this country. We thank Him for the opportunities He has given us. We thank Him for this community, for each other, for the food on this table and the roof over our heads…”

He went on for a while. Next to me, Abigail’s stomach growled so loudly that she clapped her hand over it, embarrassed. I had to bite my lip to keep from laughing.

Finally, finally o, the prayer ended and we were allowed to eat.

I tried everything, just like Mummy told me to. The turkey, which was indeed dry and needed more salt, maggi and pepper than was available. The mashed potatoes, which were creamy and strange. The cranberry sauce, which was so sweet it made my teeth ache. The stuffing, which had an interesting texture, like bread but not bread. And the pie—the pumpkin pie that Abigail had promised me—which was unlike anything I had ever tasted, creamy like custard and spicy with puff-puff’s nutmeg.

“Do you like it?” Mummy asked, leaning over to wipe a smear of orange from my chin.

“Yes, Mummy.”

“Good.” She smiled. “This is our first Thanksgiving. We have many things to be thankful for.”

“Like what?”

“Like you.” She touched my cheek gently. “And your brother. And God’s grace that brought us here safely.”

I looked across the table at Toba. He was eating mechanically, silently, his eyes fixed on his plate. He had been quiet all day, quieter than usual, and I knew something was bothering him. But when he felt me watching, he looked up and his face changed. He smiled at me and mouthed: Are you okay?

I nodded.

He nodded back.

And for one moment, in the middle of all these strangers eating strange food and giving thanks for things I wasn’t sure I was thankful for, hope sparked in my chest. Maybe, despite everything—the small room with the brick wall view and cold that never seemed to stop—living in America would be okay. Maybe we could build something here. Maybe the three of us, together, could survive this.

Maybe, I thought with a smile, watching Mummy laugh at something Mrs. Johnson said, while Toba snuck an extra piece of pie onto my plate after mummy said I’d had enough.

Maybe this place could become home.

* * *

After the dinner, Abigail and I snuck outside to get away from the adults. The evening was chilly but not unbearable. We sat on the steps of the community center, looking up at the sky that had few stars out.

“Do you like it here?” Abigail asked. “In America?”

I pretended to think about it.

“Sometimes,” I said. “Sometimes I hate it and I want to go back to Nigeria more than anything. But sometimes... sometimes it’s okay. Like today. Today was nice.”

“Yeah.” Abigail pulled her jacket tighter around her. “Today was nice.”

“Do you ever miss home?”

“All the time. I miss my grandmother. And my friends from school. And the way the rain sounded on our roof during rainy season.” She was quiet for a moment. “But I can’t go back to Jamaica. My family can’t go back. So I try to find things to like about here instead.”

“Like what?”

“Like pizza. And the library—did you know you can borrow books for free? As many as you want? And...” She glanced at me sideways, a small smile on her face. “And friends. Like you.”

I smiled back. “Like you too.”

We sat there for a while longer, two immigrant girls on the steps of a church in Brooklyn, learning how to be grateful for small things in a big, strange country. Learning how to survive. Learning, slowly, how to belong.

When Mummy called for me, I went inside feeling lighter than I had in month even though tomorrow I would wake up in that small room with its brick wall view and feel sad again. Cold would seep into my bones and I would cry for home the way I sometimes did, late at night when I thought no one could hear.

But tonight, I had pie in my belly, a friend who understood and a brother who loved me.

Tonight, was perfect.

* * *

The days after Thanksgiving felt different.

It was as though we got together to remind ourselves to stay thankful through the cold, gray December weather that made you want to stay in bed forever.

I started paying attention to things I hadn’t noticed before. The way the light hit our window in the morning, turning the brick wall golden for a few minutes before the sun moved on. The sound of Mrs. Garcia singing in the apartment above us. She sang in Spanish—I didn’t understand it—and it was beautiful. The smell of bread from the bakery two blocks over, drifting through the streets on cold mornings.

“You seem happier,” Mummy said one evening, looking at me with curiosity. “What changed?”

“Nothing,” I said. “Everything.”

She didn’t push. She rarely did anymore—too tired from work, too worn down by the constant struggle of keeping us alive. But I caught her smiling to herself as she went back to folding laundry, making me wonder if she was remembering something from her own childhood.

Abigail and I became real friends that winter. Not just school friends who sat together at lunch, but friends who told each other secrets. She taught me about American things I didn’t understand—why everyone cared so much about Christmas shopping, what a snow day was, how to make hot chocolate from a packet. I taught her Yoruba words, the ones Mummy still used when she was too tired to speak English, and she taught me patois phrases from her Jamaican grandmother.

“You’re lucky,” Abigail said one afternoon, as we walked home from school together. The first real snow of the winter was falling, soft flakes that melted on our cheeks. “You have your brother.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean you’re not alone. You have someone who’s always on your side. My older brother moved out when I was six. I barely remember him.”

I thought about Toba. About waiting for him every day after school. How he made sure I ate dinner before he did. Thought about him holding me at night when the nightmares came. His presence made everything bearable.

“Yeah,” I said. “I’m lucky.”

“Do you guys fight?”

“Sometimes. Not really. Not like other siblings.”

“That’s weird.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean all the siblings I know fight all the time. Like, they can’t be in the same room without arguing. But you and Toba...” She trailed off, searching for the right words. “You’re like best friends instead of brother and sister.”

I didn’t know how to respond to that. Because she was right, and I hadn’t thought about it that way before. Toba and I didn’t fight. Not really. We disagreed sometimes, had small arguments about stupid things, but the whole sibling warfare I saw in movies and heard about from other kids—the hair-pulling, name-calling, room-invading chaos—that wasn’t us.

“We’ve been through a lot together,” I said finally. “Coming to America. Leaving everything behind. It’s just us and Mummy now. I think that makes us... different.”

“Different how?”

“I don’t know how to explain it.” I shoved my hands deeper into my coat pockets. “We need each other. Not just the way families do. More than that. Like… if something happened to him, I don’t know who I would be anymore.”

Abigail was quiet for a moment.

“That sounds intense,” she said carefully.

“It is.” I glanced at her, worried I had said too much. “Is that weird?”

“A little.” She smiled so I knew she wasn’t making fun of me. “But not bad weird. I think it’s kind of beautiful, actually. Having someone who knows you that well. Someone you can count on no matter what.”

“Yeah.” I returned her smile, relieved. “It is beautiful.”

“Lucky you.”

We walked the rest of the way in silence, snow drifting around us in soft spirals, the city muffled and hushed under winter.

I didn’t know then how complicated that luck would become. How the closeness I treasured would twist into something else, something that would either save us or destroy us.

I only knew that loving him felt as natural as breathing.

We turned onto Story Avenue, and that’s when I saw her.

Deidra was on her stoop with two of the older girls, their breath rising in small clouds, a jump rope coiled between them. Her parka swallowed her whole, and her knit cap sat crooked over her ears.

She saw me too. Lifted her chin in acknowledgment.

I did the same.

“Who’s that?” Abigail asked.

“A girl from the corner. She taught me double-dutch in summer.”

“I didn’t know you knew people around here.”

I kept walking. “She’s just a girl from the corner.”

But even then, I turned back before the corner disappeared, just to see if she was still watching me.

* * *

PS: This is not a love story… this is what love did to them.

TOBA

September 1998

Eighth grade was different.

Not better—different.

I had learned how to survive in this school now. Learned its rhythms and its rules, the ones that actually mattered, not the ones printed in the student handbook. I knew which hallways to avoid between classes. I knew which stairwells were safe and which were controlled by boys whose names I didn’t know but whose faces I had memorized. I knew which bathrooms you could use and which would get you robbed or beaten or both.

I had also grown. Four inches over the summer, sprouting up like the plants Mummy sometimes talked about growing on a balcony we didn’t have. My shoulders had broadened. My voice had deepened, cracking sometimes at unexpected moments but mostly deep and solid. I wasn’t the scrawny new kid anymore. I was… I honestly didn’t know. Just that the other boys looked at me differently.

Darnell still called me “African.” Still made monkey sounds when I passed. Still tried to shake me down for money I didn’t have. But the physical attacks had stopped. Maybe because I had gotten bigger. Maybe because he had gotten bored. Maybe because word had spread about what happened in June—the day I finally hit back.

I didn’t win that fight. Not even close. But I had proved that I would fight, that I wouldn’t just curl up and take it anymore. Sometimes showing that you had something worth protecting—even if it was just your pride—made the predators move on to easier prey.

The classes were easier now too. My English had improved dramatically over the summer, absorbing American TV in the laundromat where Mummy sometimes took us, reading free newspapers people left on the subway, listening to how the other kids talked and copying their rhythms, their slang, their ways of making words sound lyrical.

I could code-switch now. When I was tired or angry, the Nigerian accent came out—the rounded vowels, the musical rises and falls of Yoruba-influenced English. But when I needed to blend in, I could flatten my voice to sound more Brooklyn. More… American. It wasn’t perfect, and I kept learning.

Still, school was a place to survive, not enjoy. A place to get through. The real part of my day came after. The walk home. Unlocking the door to find Rola waiting for me.

“How was school?” she’d ask from her spot on the bed, legs crossed, homework spread around her even though she didn’t really need help with any of it. She was smart—smarter than me—but she liked the ritual of us doing homework together. Liked having something to share.

“Fine.”

“Did anyone bother you?”

“No.”

“Good.” She’d pat the space beside her. “Come help me with this math problem.”

I’d drop my backpack and sit next to her.

Her math homework was easy—multiplication tables that I had mastered years ago in Lagos—but I didn’t tell her that. Instead, I went through each problem with her, patient and slow, watching her work through the logic, praising her when she got it right, gently correcting when she got it wrong.

This was what our afternoons looked like now. Homework first. Then TV if we had electricity and cable, which we usually did thanks to a neighbor who had figured out how to steal it from the building’s main line. Then dinner—whatever Mummy had left for us, reheated on the hot plate, eaten on the bed because we didn’t have a table.

And always, always, Rola close beside me. Her small body leaning against mine. Her warmth the only warmth in this gray room.

“Toba?”

“Hmm?”

“Can I sleep in your bed tonight?”

I should say no. I knew I should say so. Mummy had started talking about how Rola was “getting too big” to share a bed with her brother. How we needed to “start being proper.” How I should sleep on the floor or in the closet we had converted into a tiny bedroom for exactly this purpose.

But Mummy wasn’t here. She was working the night shift at the hotel, wouldn’t be home until nearly dawn. And Rola’s voice had that quality it got when she was afraid.

“Why?” I asked.

“I had a bad dream last night.”

“What about it?”

She was quiet for a moment. Her hand found mine and squeezed.

“I don’t remember exactly,” she said. “I just remember being scared. And I woke up and you weren’t there and the room was so dark and I could hear sounds from outside and I didn’t know what they were and I—” Her voice broke slightly. “I just want to feel safe, Toba. I feel safe when you’re there.”

How could I say no to that?

“Okay,” I said.

“Really?”

“Really.”

Her smile was like sunrise—sudden and warm and making everything else seem less gray.

“Thank you,” she said. “You’re the best brother in the whole world.”

“I’m your only brother.”

“So? You’d still be the best even if I had a hundred brothers.”

I laughed. And she laughed too. In that small room with its brick-wall view, broken drawer and a smell that stuck no matter what mummy burnt, we were two kids being silly together. Brother and sister. Best friends. Each other’s whole world.

That night, she curled up beside me in my narrow bed, her head on my chest, her hand gripping my shirt like she was afraid I would disappear if she let go. And I lay awake for a long time, staring at the ceiling, feeling the weight of her against me, wondering when holding my sister had started to feel like the only important thing in my life.

Mummy came home just before dawn. I heard her key in the lock, heard her footsteps, felt her pause in the doorway. Looking at us. Her two children, tangled together in sleep.

I kept my eyes closed, pretending to be asleep. Waited for her to say something. To separate us. To remind me that this wasn’t proper.

But she didn’t. She just stood there for a long moment, then turned away and went to her own bed.

Maybe she was too tired to fight. Maybe she saw something peaceful in us that she didn’t want to disturb. Maybe she understood, in some way I couldn’t articulate, that this was what we needed. Each other. The only stability in a world that kept shifting under our feet.

Whatever the reason, she let us be.

And I was grateful.

* * *

The next morning, Rola woke up before me.

I felt her stirring against my chest, felt her sit up slightly, felt her eyes on me. I pretended to stay asleep, curious what she would do.

She didn’t get up. Didn’t leave. Just lay there, looking at me, her breath soft and even.

“I know you’re awake,” she said quietly.

I opened my eyes. She was propped up on one elbow, watching my face with that serious expression she got when she was thinking.

“How did you know?”

“Your breathing changed.”

“Maybe I was dreaming.”

“You weren’t.” She paused. “I watch you sleep sometimes. When I can’t sleep. It helps.”

I didn’t know what to say to that. Didn’t know what it meant that my ten-year-old sister watched me sleep. Didn’t know if it was normal or strange.

“Why does it help?” I asked.

“Because you look peaceful. You look like nothing can hurt you. And if nothing can hurt you, then nothing can hurt me too.”

I sat up, facing her. In the morning light filtering through the window—gray light, city light, nothing like the golden Lagos mornings I remembered—she looked smaller than she was. Fragile.

“Nothing’s going to hurt you,” I said. “I promise.”

“You can’t promise that.”

“I can. I am.”

“But what if—”

“No.” I took her hands in mine, squeezed them tight. “No what ifs. I’ll protect you. Always. Whatever it takes.”

She searched my face, looking for doubt, for lies, for the cracks that adults always had when they made promises they couldn’t keep.

She wouldn’t find any.

Because I meant it. Every word. I would protect her with my life, with my breath, with everything I had. She was my sister. My responsibility. My reason for existing.

I didn’t know, then, how dangerous that kind of devotion could become.

I didn’t know that love, taken too far, can become its own kind of prison.

I only knew that I would do anything for her.

* * *