But while he was winning outside, inside he was quietly losing something.
Sleep.
Peace.
Rest.
Back to the present.
Anthony got up and walked to the floor-to-ceiling window. The city lights glittered below like stars that had come down to Lagos just to show off.
He folded his arms.
“People are sleeping peacefully. Just like that,” he muttered, as if sleep were free food being shared somewhere and nobody had invited him.
He turned back into the room.
His bed looked soft, inviting, expensive… useless.
“I bought you for comfort, not decoration,” he told the bed.
The bed said nothing, because even the bed had given up on him.
Anthony had tried everything.
One doctor had adjusted his glasses and said, “You need to relax your mind.”
Anthony had blinked. “My mind runs companies. It doesn’t relax.”
Another doctor prescribed strong sleeping pills.
The result?
Anthony slept, yes—but woke up looking like someone who had borrowed sleep and could not pay it back.
Groggy. Confused.
Once he had even greeted his driver with, “Good afternoon, my shareholders.”
The driver had almost resigned.
Then came the herbalist, a serious-looking man with beads and confidence.
“This one is spiritual,” the man said.
Anthony raised an eyebrow. “Sleep is now doing juju?”
The herbalist ignored him and gave him a dark, suspicious-looking liquid.
“Drink this.”
Anthony sniffed it. “If I die, I will come back and sue you.”
He drank it anyway.
That night, nothing happened except stomach pain.
Anthony sat in his luxury bathroom at 2:00 a.m.
“Wonderful. Now I can’t sleep, and my stomach is protesting.”
Then came the prayer warriors.
They prayed.
They shouted.
They anointed.
One even laid hands on his pillow like it was a stubborn demon.
“You spirit of sleeplessness, come out!”
Anthony whispered, “If it comes out, please send it back inside my head.”
Nothing changed.
The only person who understood him was Mama Grace.
She knocked gently and entered his room the next morning.
