Selene's POV
The text had arrived while she was reviewing fabric samples with Zara.
"Thank you for sitting with me while Kofi recovered. I meant what I said about wanting to have better coffee and better conversation. Are you willing to try?"
Zara had looked over her shoulder, read the message, and gone very still.
"Who's that?" she'd asked carefully.
"Nobody," Selene had said, too quickly. "Just a business contact."
Zara had raised her eyebrows in that particular way that suggested she knew Selene was lying, but was choosing—for now—to let it go.
That had been four hours ago.
Now, alone in her bedroom, Selene stared at her phone screen. At the message. At the number that had sent it.
She could delete the message. Block the number. Pretend it had never happened.
Instead, she typed back: "Okay."
One word. No elaboration. No false warmth or unnecessary friendliness. Just a confirmation that she was willing to sit across from him and have a conversation that wasn't mediated by business or desperation or the particular urgency of hospital waiting rooms.
His response came within seconds: "Tomorrow? Lunch? There's a restaurant in Ikoyi that serves both terrible coffee and interesting conversation."
Selene stared at that message.
He was making a joke about the hospital coffee. He was referencing something intimate that had happened between them in a moment of mutual vulnerability. He was acknowledging their shared experience without demanding that she acknowledge what it meant.
She typed: "Time and place?"
He sent an address and a time: 1 PM.
Then he sent something else: "Also, I should probably be in your phone as something other than my full name. In case you need to call and don't want people knowing who it is. What do you want to call me?"
Selene's breath caught.
He was giving her agency. He was letting her decide what he meant to her, what role he played, what name would represent him in her private world.
She didn't respond immediately.
Instead, she opened her contacts.
There it was: "Osei (rival)" - the name she'd given him when she first returned to Lagos and began her research on Osei Holdings. A label that had defined their entire dynamic. A marker that said this man is an enemy.
She stared at it.
The irony was almost unbearable. She'd labeled him as rival while her son was drawing pictures of him. While she was keeping his drawing in her bag. While she was reading three-year-old journal entries about his hands and his quiet voice and the way he'd made her believe she could survive.
She took a breath.
And she deleted "Osei (rival)."
In its place, she typed: "D"
Just that. Just the single letter that represented the stranger from The Black Veil. The man who'd held her hand in the dark. The man whose child she'd raised alone. The man who apparently had spent three years looking for her while she spent three years trying to forget him.
She stared at that contact name for a long moment.
"D."
It was intimate in its simplicity. It stripped away the formality of "Mr. Osei" and the accusation of "rival." It was just... a letter. A placeholder for a man she didn't know how to name yet because naming him properly meant admitting something she wasn't ready to admit.
Her phone buzzed.
Text from D: "I'm waiting to hear what you want to call me."
She typed back: "D. I'm calling you D."
There was a pause. Longer than before. Like he was processing what that meant. Like he understood that by giving him that name—that private, intimate, one-letter name—she was giving him access to something in her that was separate from the world. Separate from business. Separate from strategy and survival.
Finally, his message came through: "I like that. I'll be D for you. Just D. Nobody else."
Selene's hands started shaking.
She stared at that message.
"Just D. Nobody else."
Like he was declaring something. Like he was saying: for you, I'm not the CEO of Osei Holdings. I'm not the man who rebuilt a company from ash. I'm just the man who held your hand in a masked bar three years ago. I'm just the man who's been looking for you ever since. I'm just D.
She read it again.
Then she did something she hadn't done since she found out she was pregnant: she allowed herself to believe in the possibility of something good.
She called Zara.
"I'm going on a date tomorrow," she said, without preamble.
There was a beat of silence on the other end of the line. Then: "A date. With who?"
"With Damien Osei."
The silence was longer this time. Then Zara asked very carefully: "Isn't he the guy you were supposed to destroy?"
"Yes."
"And you're going on a date with him."
"Yes."
"Selene." Zara's voice was gentle. "What happened?"
Selene looked at her phone. At the contact name: "D." At the messages that had unfolded over the past three days. At the reality that had been slowly reorganizing itself around a truth she'd been running from since she landed in Lagos.
"I realized I was in love with him before I ever hated him," she said quietly. "And now I'm having trouble remembering which feeling came first."
Zara didn't say anything for a long moment. Then: "This has something to do with why you came back to Lagos, doesn't it? This has something to do with Kofi and why you were so determined to—" She stopped. "Oh my God. It's him. Damien is—"
"Yes," Selene said, cutting her off. "But he doesn't know that he knows. And I'm not ready to tell him. Not yet."
"Selene." Zara's voice was intense. "You can't go on a date with him without telling him he's Kofi's father."
"I know."
"You can't."
"I know, Zara." Selene's voice was steady. "But I need to know who he is first. I need to know if the man from The Black Veil is the same man who sits across from me in conference rooms. I need to know if he's looking for me or if he's looking for her—the woman in the gold mask, the stranger he held."
"What if he's looking for both?"
Selene didn't answer, because she was afraid that was true. Afraid that he was looking for a version of her that no longer existed. Afraid that when she finally told him about Kofi, it would become about obligation instead of choice. About responsibility instead of love.
She stared at her phone.
At the contact name that was just a letter.
At the man she was supposed to destroy but had somehow become the man she was terrified to lose.
"I have to go," she said quietly. "I have a date to prepare for."
After Zara hung up, Selene sat in the darkness of her bedroom, phone in hand, staring at "D."
She changed her lock screen to a blank black background—something safe, something that wouldn't reveal anything to anyone who looked.
Then she opened her messaging app and scrolled through his texts, reading each one like she was trying to decode something written in a language she almost remembered.
"We met before. I know we did."
"I've been looking for you since the night you disappeared."
"You always did see things other people couldn't."
"It's not a coincidence that I'm your primary rival. It's obsession."
Wait—that last one wasn't real. She'd written that herself, in her own mind, as a possibility.
But what if it was true?
What if everything he'd done since she landed in Lagos—the business moves, the strategic positioning, the careful proximity—had all been designed to get close to her?
What if the man she'd planned to destroy had been building a bridge toward her the entire time?
Her phone buzzed one final time.
Text from D: "I'm nervous about tomorrow. Is that strange? I feel like I'm meeting you for the first time and I've been waiting to meet you for three years. What if you don't like who I actually am?"
Selene's eyes burned.
She typed back: "What if I like you too much?"
She sent it before she could second-guess herself.
His response came immediately: "Then we figure it out. Together. Like we should have three years ago."