Emeka watched Ifeoma hand the resignation letter back and understood that he was seeing the exact quality that made her worth defending.

She had every right and every reason to destroy Simone.

The woman had betrayed her, had photographed her private contract, had handed a predator the medical records of Ifeoma’s own dying body.

A colder executive — Obadiah, for instance — would have ended Simone without a flicker, made an example of her, and been within their rights.

But Ifeoma had looked at the betrayal and seen underneath it the thing that produced it: a daughter, cornered, protecting a sick father with the only leverage she had, exactly the way Ifeoma herself had spent her life trying to be worthy of Amani.

She did not excuse it.