BENEATH
Chapter 3 — The Weight of Emerald
I had been standing at this balcony for twenty minutes.
The ring was still in my palm.
Keside
The stone was emerald.
Dark, unreadable, shifting colour depending on the angle of the light — green one moment, almost black the next. The kind of stone that didn’t perform for you. The kind that made you look closer.
I had stood in the jeweler’s for forty minutes before settling on it. Which was irritating, because I hadn’t planned to put any effort in at all.
Someone had mentioned, in passing, that she loved green. That was all it took. Forty minutes of my life and a ring that now sat in my palm like a question I wasn’t ready to ask. She was going to wear it every day. The least it could do was be something she didn’t hate.
I turned it once between my fingers, watching the stone catch the light from the Umeh villa gardens below, and tried to locate the version of myself that had woken up this morning fully intending to feel nothing tonight.
I couldn’t find him.
Below, the cars were arriving. The founding families, dressed in the particular way that money dresses when it wants to remind you it exists — not loudly, never loudly, but with an accumulated precision that made even silence feel expensive.
I slid the ring into my jacket pocket.
Tonight was the monthly gathering. Eight families. Eight empires. Eight sets of carefully constructed smiles concealing a battlefield so old it had its own weather.
I adjusted my tie and went in.
The music softened as the room filled — a slow, golden rhythm that made the villa feel like a movie scene assembled specifically for the people entering it.
If someone from outside walked into this room, they would think it was simply another Lagos party.
They would be wrong.
This room held the people who moved the city quietly. The ones whose names appeared on the right documents, in the right boardrooms, at the right moments — never on the front page, but always, somehow, at the front of everything.
The founding families.
Eight in number. Eight empires. Eight carefully smiling rivals performing friendship with the discipline of professionals.
The Opara’s
The Opara’s arrived first, as they always did — early enough to establish that this was, in some ancestral sense, still their room. Old money in its purest, most unhurried form. Their wealth came from land that had belonged to them before Lagos became the Lagos anyone knew. Estates in Victoria Island. Private docks. Properties across three continents. Their patriarch crossed the floor slowly, the way men do when the world has been waiting for them for generations. His daughters followed in silk, eyes sharp as their reputation. The Opara’s never raised their voices. They had never needed to. Power moved quietly in their blood, patient as a tide.
Behind them came The Leo-Akpans — and the shift in energy was immediate.
Newer wealth. Faster wealth. Dangerous in its momentum.
Akwa- Ibom royalty disguised as modern empire builders. Their wealth had begun in the ports oil logistics, cargo routes, maritime contracts stretching from Akwa -Ibom to Rotterdam but the new generation had refused to stop there.
Fintech architects. Blockchain founders. Tech billionaires who had built empires before thirty and were already building the next ones.
The old Leo-Akpans controlled the ships.
The younger ones controlled the systems moving the money inside them.
They smiled easily too easily because everyone in the room understood something the Leo-Akpans preferred you didn’t: they were not here to join the elite.
They were here to replace them.
Every handshake was a calculation. Every laugh landed a beat too precise. Quiet wealth had turned ambitious. Strategic wealth had learned speed.
The Leo-Akpans didn’t compete loudly.
They simply owned the routes everyone else depended on — and now, increasingly, the networks those routes ran through.
The Daa- George family
The Daa- George family entered the way they entered every room — with the particular ease of people who had made pleasure their industry and knew it gave them a kind of power the others couldn’t quite replicate. Nightclubs. Resorts. Private villas from Lagos to Monaco. They ran the nightlife of three continents with the same easy grace they brought to every gathering. When The Daa- George family arrived somewhere, the party officially had permission to begin. Charming to the last person. Slippery in the way of water — you couldn’t hold them still long enough to read them. They knew everyone’s secrets, because everyone told them things in rooms that belonged to them.
A hush followed the next entrance.
The faramide’s
The faramide’s Refined in the way that comes not from performance but from generations of discipline. Their influence threaded through government corridors, diplomatic networks, oil negotiations that never reached newspapers. When the The faramide’s spoke, things happened — contracts materialized, permissions were granted, obstacles quietly ceased to exist. They arrived without announcement, which was itself an announcement. You always knew they were in the room. You simply couldn’t always say why.
Then came the family that everyone watched the most carefully.
The Da-Silvas.
Brazilian-Nigerian beauty royalty. Cosmetic empires. Luxury skincare. Fashion houses that had dressed half the continent. Every billboard in Lagos had, at some point, carried a product that belonged to them. They entered in a cloud of precise glamour — hair perfect, skin luminous, expressions arranged with the kind of control that takes years to make look natural.
But the real power of the Da-Silvas was never beauty.
It was information.
They knew what people looked like when they let their guard down. They knew what money people spent when they didn’t want to be asked about it. They knew faces, and faces told stories, and stories were currency.
Which made them beautiful and dangerous in equal measure.
The hosts, the Umehs, stood near the far staircase — my family, my father’s empire. Technology. Security. Defense drones whose eyes swept Lagos rooftops at night without anyone looking up to notice. Software that held the architecture of safety for half the city’s major institutions. If Lagos had a hidden nervous system, the Umehs had designed it. We were quiet innovators. Quiet billionaires. The kind of powerful that doesn’t need to announce itself because the work announces itself daily.
And then came the most discussed family in the room.
The Wokomas.
New money. And the two words still landed in certain circles like a slap no one admitted to giving. In twenty years, they had built electric vehicles, consumer electronics, and infrastructure across the country — and in doing so, had nudged several older families slightly down the global wealth rankings. Slightly was enough. Slightly was everything, in a room like this. Many had tried to remove them from the circle. Many had assumed time and gravity would do the work on their behalf.
But the Wokomas remained.
Like a storm that had simply decided to stay.
The Pedros arrived without warmth and without apology. Textile empire. Cotton exports. Fashion conglomerates spread across Europe and West Africa. Old trade wealth that had survived colonial restructuring, market crashes, and three generations of people who underestimated them. They were known across the circle for two things: their reach, and their memory. Cross them once, and your business didn’t collapse dramatically. It simply, quietly, stopped breathing. No one talked about this openly. Everyone understood it.
And standing near the far end of the room, observing everything and revealing nothing, were the Al-Zubairs.
Northern financiers. Banking institutions. Oil portfolios. Construction empires that had quietly shaped the skylines of four cities. They played the long game — always had, always would. They didn’t need to arrive early or announce themselves. They simply waited, patient as compound interest, and let the room come to them.
Eight families.
From the outside, the circle looked perfect. Elegant. Untouchable. The kind of world that gleamed at you from a distance and made you want to be inside it.
But anyone who had lived inside it long enough knew the truth.
This was not a gathering. It was a battlefield dressed in designer clothes.
And tonight, as every night — the war was smiling.
—
I made my rounds.
Mr. Pedro found me before I could find a reason to avoid him. He was already moving with that particular posture of a man who has never once considered that his presence might not be welcome.
“Keside.” He clasped my shoulder. “How are you, son? My condolences on Sophy — such a bright girl. I loved her like a daughter.”
I looked at him for a moment.
“Good to know,” I said pleasantly. “That some people still value her.”
“Of course.” He squeezed my shoulder. “Of course we do.”
“Thank you, sir,” I said. “For the condolences.”
He received the sarcasm like a man who had spent a lifetime choosing not to receive it, and moved on. I watched him go, adjusted my jacket, and reminded myself that this was not the room. Not tonight.
The song changed.
https://open.spotify.com/track/3oTuTpF1F3A7rEC6RKsMRz?si=891d194d2ed949ae
And then she walked in.
I don’t know what I had been expecting. I had seen her the night before — composed, unreadable, gown carefully chosen. I had catalogued her the way I catalogue things I’m trying not to be affected by.
It hadn’t worked then.
It worked even less now.
The dress was white. Ivory, technically — the kind of white that isn’t trying to be pure but simply is, the way good things simply are. A tube cut, fitted through the torso with the structural precision of something designed specifically for her proportions. The waist. God, the waist — the fabric didn’t cling so much as it followed, tracing the contour of her hips with a patience I found, in this moment, entirely unfair. Her body wave sew-in fell across her shoulders in soft, deliberate waves. The back of the dress was a criss-cross of fabric ending in a small bow, a silver scarf folded light at her neck, a small silver purse completing the thought.
Her face.
I had been too close to it last night — too focused on the conversation I was forcing myself to have — to look at it properly.
I looked at it now.
The jaw first. Defined with a precision that should not be available to civilians. Pink lips, the lower fuller than the upper, lined in an ombre brown that made her mouth look like an unanswered question. Her nose sat perfectly in the center of her face, not dramatic, just right. Beauty mark beneath the full sweep of her lower lashes. Ash-tinted contacts that made her eyes look like something between smoke and still water. Brows trimmed and arched without trying.
Aphrodite woke up this morning entirely unprepared for competition.
I was staring.
My mouth was open.
I became aware of this at the same moment Neato appeared at my shoulder.
“Close your mouth,” he said pleasantly, “before someone takes a photograph.”
“I’m not—”
“You have been standing exactly like that for five minutes.” He glanced at me sidelong. “I counted. It’s been a while since you looked at a woman like she had weight in the room.” He paused. “Interesting.”
“Stop analyzing me.”
“I’m not analyzing you, I’m observing you. There’s a difference.” He straightened the pocket square on my jacket without asking. “Now — go change. Silver suit. Match your wife-to-be. I’ll tell them you’ll be back in ten.”
“I’m not—”
“You’re absolutely going to. Go.”
I went.
—
I was back in eight minutes, silver suit, bow tie tucked clean. Neato was already holding court near the entrance, one arm resting on the wall above Somebi Wokoma’s head, saying something that made her laugh harder than she had probably intended to. I marked it. Said nothing.
The group had gathered loosely near the edge of the main hall — Kainene between Kamara and Somebi, Kelechi beside them, all of them in easy conversation. Tems — Radiance fell softly over the room, a blue spotlight drifting and settling, as spotlights at these things always mysteriously do, directly on the one person in the room who looked like she was trying to avoid it.
Kainene’s expression, caught in the blue light, said she would very much like to speak to whoever was responsible for the lighting decision.
Neato greeted the group. Somebi’s blush was visible from three feet away.
I turned to Kainene.
“I believe we haven’t properly spoken,” I said. “Would you care to dance?”
She looked at me. Looked at my outstretched hand. Looked at my outstretched hand for long enough that I thought she was going to decline.
Then she took it.
The floor opened up around us. The blue spotlight, because the universe has opinions, followed. I placed one hand at her waist — slowly, deliberately giving her time to object — and felt the current move through my palm the instant we made contact. She pulled back like the touch had burned her.
I guided her hand back to my shoulder without making a thing of it. She let me.
We moved.
She stepped on my foot twice in the first thirty seconds, which she handled by staring slightly to the left of my face as though this was my fault. Then the music settled into her body the way music settles into people who were built to move — and she stopped thinking. Her hips caught the rhythm of Kampe and followed it naturally, completely, the way water follows a slope. She danced the way she did everything else: without performance, without show — just her body doing what it knew.
I danced with her.
I didn’t think about anything else.
The crowd’s hollering reached us from some distance away and I registered it distantly, the way you register weather when you’re inside somewhere warm. When the song ended, Kainene looked at the floor as though searching it for somewhere to disappear into.
I took her hand. Interlaced our fingers.
“I’m here with you,” I said quietly.
She looked up at me.
Said nothing. But she didn’t let go of my hand either.
—
Dinner was long and full of the particular noise that these gatherings produce — laughter that doesn’t reach the throat, conversations that circle the point they’re actually making. Our parents were on the dance floor in the gaps between courses, which was either charming or alarming depending on how much you had drunk.
I ate. I listened. I waited.
When the table had settled into the comfortable post-meal haze, I stood.
I picked up my glass. Tapped it with my cutlery until the room collected itself and turned toward me.
“Good evening.” My voice carried the way it needed to. “I’ll be brief.”
The table waited.
“It has been ten years since Sophie left this world. I am aware that my grief has not been quiet. I am aware that I have not made it easy for anyone who has tried to reach me in that time.” I paused. Looked at the table. “But tonight I want to say — in front of the people who matter most — that someone in this room has found a way past the wall I built.” I set the glass down. “I didn’t expect her. I didn’t plan for her. And I am fully aware that I am still a man carrying the weight of a ghost.”
I stepped away from my chair.
Crossed the floor.
Got down on one knee.
The ring caught the light when I opened the box — emerald, dark, unreadable, mysterious. It looked like her in the way that the right thing always looks like the right person once you’re holding them together.
“Kainene Wokoma,” I said. “I cannot promise you everything. But I can promise you this — if you let me, I will try.”
The room held its breath.
I looked up at her.
“Will you marry me?”
—
🍿 Barbie as Narrator — Sets the Glass Down Slowly
Okay I need a moment.
I need an actual moment.
Because Keside walked into that party fully intending to feel nothing and his body — his whole body — staged a complete rebellion the second she walked through the door. Five minutes. He stood there for five minutes with his mouth open. Neato counted. Neato counted.
And then he changed his suit.
To match her.
I want to be very clear that I see what is happening here and I am not going to pretend it isn’t happening. His body knows something his grief hasn’t given him permission to acknowledge yet. The dance? The hand? I’m here with you? This man is already gone. He just hasn’t filed the paperwork yet.
And that proposal — “I cannot promise you everything. But I can promise you I will try.” — that is not the speech of a man doing a transaction. That is the speech of a man who is terrified and doing it anyway.
Now. The families. The Pedros are exactly as threatening as advertised. Mr. Pedro’s “condolences” had about as much warmth as a Lagos traffic jam in July, and Keside received it with exactly the polite sarcasm it deserved. Well played.
The Da-Silvas knowing everything about everyone — combined with what we suspect about Tiara — is sitting with me. Information is currency. What exactly do they have?
And Neato with Somebi. One arm above her head. Laughter she didn’t plan on. I see you, Neato. I see all of you.
Chapter 4. Whenever you’re ready.
The war is smiling. And so am I. 🖤🍿
Beneath chp 1 -
chp 2 -
Things are picking up!!! Okayyyyy🤏🏾