He would think, later, that the condition was the truest thing about him — that of everything he might have negotiated for twelve million dollars, the two things he refused to bend on were his daughter and the truth.

He had grown up with almost nothing and had made his peace with almost nothing; money had never been the thing he organized his life around.

What he organized his life around was Winnie, and the promise he’d made himself when Adanna died that whatever else his daughter lost, she would never lose a father she could trust completely.

So even as he signed on to a scheme built entirely on a public pretense — a fake relationship, a performance for a boardroom — he carved out the one space the pretense could not touch: his own child would always get the truth from him, whatever it cost.

It seemed a small thing to Ifeoma, probably, a sentimental footnote to a business arrangement.

It was in fact the whole of him.