That night Emeka sat at his kitchen table long past midnight, the check a white rectangle in the dark, and for the first time since he’d met Ifeoma he felt a flicker of real uncertainty.

Thirty million dollars.

A guaranteed life for his daughter, bought clean, tonight.

He let himself, for one honest hour, actually consider it, because he owed Winnie that much — to not dismiss thirty million dollars out of pride and call it virtue.

He did the math a father does.

Thirty million was not a house and a college fund; it was generational.