The documents in my hand felt heavier than lead. Fifty years of my family's stolen history—the only proof that I wasn't just a "street boy," but a rightful heir to the empire Alexandra was now leading.
She stood before me, her hand outstretched, her eyes a storm of fear and desperation. "If you love me," she had said.
I looked at the yellowed parchment, then at the gold band on her finger. If I kept these papers, I could sue her. I could take half the company. I could be the most powerful man in Nigeria. But I would lose the only woman who ever looked at me and saw a human being instead of a contract.
"Xavier, please," she whispered, a single tear tracing a path down her cheek. "If the Board gets a whiff of this, they will use it to destroy us both. They'll say you're an infiltrator. They'll take the company from me and throw you in a cell for 'fraud.'"
"I know," I said, my voice barely a whisper.
Slowly, I reached out and placed the folder into her shaking hands.
She let out a breath she had been holding for a lifetime. But she didn't tuck them away. She walked over to the small decorative fireplace in the corner of the villa's bedroom. She struck a match, the small flame flickering against the darkness.
"Alexandra, wait—" I started, my heart leaping into my throat.
She didn't wait. She touched the flame to the corner of the first page. The dry, old paper caught instantly, the orange glow illuminating her face as she watched her father's greatest sin turn into gray ash.
"I won't build our future on a lie," she said, her voice regaining that 'Ice Queen' steel. "And I won't let your family's history be used as a weapon against us. We are going to fix this, Xavier. Not with old papers, but with new ones."
She turned back to me as the last of the evidence crumbled into the hearth. "Tomorrow, we fly back to Lagos. I'm calling a special session of the Board. I'm naming you Co-Chairman. Not because of a marriage contract, but because I'm giving you back the 50% that was always yours."
I was stunned. She hadn't burned the papers to hide the truth; she burned them to take the power away from the lawyers and keep it between us.
"You'd give up half your power?" I asked, pulling her into my arms.
"It was never mine to begin with," she whispered, resting her head on my chest. "It was ours. It just took us seventy thousand words to realize it."