Part 1
At his daughter’s 7th birthday dinner, Lagos billionaire Tade Balogun lined up 5 wealthy women in his marble living room and asked the child to choose a new mother.
The room went silent.
Outside the glass walls of the mansion in Banana Island, the lagoon glittered under the night lights. Inside, the air smelled of roses, expensive perfume, grilled prawns, and money. Politicians, business partners, aunties in gold gele, and women with diamond bracelets watched as little Zina Balogun stood beside her father in a white dress, clutching the old teddy bear her late mother had given her before dying 3 years earlier.
Tade was 36, handsome, feared in boardrooms, and richer than most men who pretended not to envy him. He owned shipping contracts, luxury apartments in Ikoyi, restaurants in Abuja, and a tech investment company that newspapers loved to praise. But every night, when the gates closed and the house became quiet, he was only a widower listening to his daughter cry into her pillow.
