And I am still the chief executive of this company.”

It was the boldest thing Emeka had ever watched a person do, and its boldness lay in the inversion.

Obadiah had scheduled the vote for this exact morning because he was certain her physical absence would prove his entire case — that a woman too sick to attend was a woman too sick to lead, that the empty chair at the head of the table would speak louder than any argument.

He had weaponized her body against her one final time.

And Ifeoma, rather than hiding her sickness or pretending to a strength she didn’t have, had done the opposite of everything he expected: she had put her bare, ravaged head on a hundred screens and dared the room to look.

She did not disguise the IV or the exhaustion or the bones showing in her face.