Imani had imagined many versions of seeing him again. None of them felt like this. Her chest tightened. Her fingers almost loosened around the tray in her hand.
Chidi’s face did not show shock for long. It settled too quickly into calm. Cold calm. The kind that made it worse. He let his eyes move over her uniform, her tired face, and the tray in her hand. He took in everything—the fall, the struggle, the distance between the girl she used to be and the woman standing before him now.
Something dark moved behind his eyes.
Satisfaction.
Pain.
He had wanted her to feel something one day, but the moment he truly saw how far she had fallen, the victory did not taste the way he had expected.
Nora turned toward Imani and smiled faintly, not yet understanding the depth of the silence between them.
Imani forced herself to step forward and do her job.
“Good evening, sir,” she said, but her voice almost betrayed her.
Chidi leaned back in his seat. “Good evening.”
Nothing in his tone suggested they had once been in love. Nothing in his face suggested he had ever known her deeply.
Then with deliberate calm, he glanced at Nora and said something low enough to sting and public enough to wound.
He referred to Nora as his fiancée.
Imani felt it like a blow, but she held her face steady. “Would you like anything else?”
“That will be all.”
She nodded and turned away before her expression could break.
For the rest of the night, she moved like someone in a dream. She could feel him in the room even when she was not near him. Every time she glanced toward that section, Nora was still beside him, smiling, relaxed, close.
By the time her shift ended, Imani was too shaken to think clearly.
Meanwhile, Chidi did not look as calm as he wanted Nora to believe. He had pictured this meeting differently in his mind many times. He had imagined anger. He had imagined satisfaction. He had imagined finally looking down on the woman who once made him feel small.
Instead, seeing her in that uniform—tired and thin, with quiet struggle in her face—unsettled him. Part of him wanted her to feel the insecurity he had once felt. Another part wanted to pull her out of that place immediately.
That confusion was where his revenge began.
The next day, Imani arrived at her office and sensed tension before she even reached her desk. People were whispering. Managers were moving too fast. Files were being carried in and out of offices.
Not long after, the news spread.
Their company had been acquired by CI Tech.
Imani’s blood ran cold.
An hour later, she was called into a meeting room. When she entered and saw Chidi seated there in a dark suit, calm and unreadable, her stomach tightened.
He looked up as if this were a normal business morning.
“Sit down.”
She did.
The manager spoke with careful excitement, explaining restructuring, new expectations, new opportunities. Imani barely heard half of it. Then came the part that mattered.
“Mr. Bello has personally requested that you work directly under him as his personal assistant.”
Imani looked at Chidi in disbelief.
His face did not change.
By afternoon, her new role had begun.
It was not the role itself that hurt. It was the way he used it. He gave her work far below what someone in her position should have handled—errands, unnecessary scheduling tasks, repeated changes, tiny humiliations wrapped in professional language. Nothing so obvious that others could challenge it. Just enough to make her feel it.
Imani said little. She did the work because she needed the salary.
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