“No,” he said. “But sometimes it teaches noisy people to be quiet.”
She did not smile.
He sighed.
“You’re right. I’ll be careful.”
Rita looked at him for a long moment.
Then she nodded.
“I won’t tell her.”
“Thank you.”
“But don’t use me to punish her.”
That was the first time Ethan understood that Rita’s softness had a spine inside it.
“I won’t,” he said.
He meant it.
Mostly.
Back at the apartment she shared with Isabella and Joy, Rita entered quietly, hoping to avoid interrogation.
No such luck.
Isabella sat cross-legged on the sofa, scrolling through TikTok. Joy painted her toenails bright red.
“Ah,” Isabella said without looking up. “The girlfriend of poverty has returned.”
Joy giggled. “How was the palace?”
Rita set down her notebook.
“He asked me to be his girlfriend.”
Isabella’s head snapped up.
“What?”
“He asked me out.”
Joy sat upright. “Wait, are you serious?”
Rita nodded.
For two seconds, Isabella looked shocked.
Then laughter burst out of her.
“Jesus. So because I refused him, he went to ask my friend? You see how broke men behave? No shame.”
Rita said nothing.
Isabella stood and walked in a slow circle around her.
“And you said yes?”
Rita lifted her chin.
“Yes.”
Joy’s eyes widened.
Isabella clapped once.
“Wonderful. Perfect. The two of you fit each other. My friend here is always understanding. She has never had a rich man, so of course she’ll accept anything that comes with sweet words and empty pockets.”
Rita’s throat tightened, but she forced her voice calm.
“Ethan is kind.”
“Can kindness buy wigs?” Isabella asked. “Can kindness pay rent? Can kindness carry you to Dubai? Please.”
Joy laughed, but less loudly now.
“Everything is not money,” Rita said.
Isabella looked at her with pity sharp enough to cut.
“People who say that usually don’t have any.”
That night, Rita lay awake on her narrow bed, listening to Isabella and Joy whisper in the next room. Her new phone, old and cracked, buzzed once.
A message from Ethan.
Did you survive?
She smiled despite herself.
Barely.
His reply came quickly.
I’m sorry.
She typed:
Don’t be. I chose.
Then, after a moment, she added:
But please don’t make me regret keeping your secret.
Ethan read that message three times.
Then placed his phone face down on the glass table in his quiet, beautiful house and stared at nothing.
Outside, Insina Street was dark except for one weak security light.
He had bought the house six months earlier and left the exterior untouched deliberately. A foolish test, perhaps. But wealth had made him tired. In California, people had wanted pieces of him until he could not tell whether he was a person or an opportunity. In Lagos, women heard he had returned from America and smiled at him before he spoke. Men called him brother while calculating contracts in their heads.
Then Isabella had looked at the cracked paint and dismissed him in seconds.
Good, he had thought at first.
Let them reveal themselves quickly.
But Rita complicated the lesson.
She did not deserve to be part of his experiment.
He knew that.
He also did nothing to stop it.
By the second month, Ethan and Rita had become a secret wrapped in public mockery.
He took her out to dinner but dropped her down the street so Isabella would not see the car. He bought her textbooks and called them “borrowed notes.” He sent her data when she ran out but told her to say the school Wi-Fi improved. He listened to her talk about exams, her mother in the village, her fear of graduating without a job, her worry that kindness made her easy to use.
“You are not easy to use,” he told her one night at a quiet restaurant overlooking the lagoon.
She stirred her Chapman with a straw.
“You don’t know my life.”
“Tell me.”
She looked at him.
So she did.
Rita Okafor was the first daughter of a mechanic and a seamstress from a small town outside Enugu. She grew up between the smell of engine oil and ironing steam. Her father taught her to check tire pressure before long trips. Her mother taught her to greet elders and save money in three places because one hiding spot was never enough. Rita had earned admission to university by studying under a kerosene lamp and refusing to let hunger become an excuse for failure.
She met Isabella and Joy in first year. All three came from struggle, though Isabella disguised hers better.
“Isabella wasn’t always like this,” Rita said.
Ethan looked skeptical.
“I’m serious. In first year, she had two dresses. Two. She used to wash one at night and wear the other the next day. She cried when girls mocked her shoes. Then she decided nobody would ever laugh at her again.”
“So she laughs first.”
Rita nodded.
“She thinks soft life is protection.”
“And you?”
“I think peace is protection.”
Ethan watched her.
“What do you want from a man, Rita?”
She smiled sadly.
“Peace. Respect. Someone who won’t make me compete for his attention. Someone who won’t embarrass me. Someone who won’t use money as a leash.”
He looked away.
She saw.
“Ethan.”
“I heard you.”
“Did you?”
He nodded.
But he did not stop showing off completely.
The first major mistake was the phone.
He saw Rita struggling with her old screen during dinner. It froze twice while she tried to open a PDF for class. The third time, it went black and restarted. She laughed it off, but he saw embarrassment pass across her face.
So he bought the latest Samsung.
Wrapped it in brown paper.
Brought it to her apartment in a plain nylon bag with bread on top.
“What is this?” Isabella asked from the couch when he arrived.
“Bread,” Ethan said.
Joy laughed. “Bread? Romantic poverty.”
Isabella nearly fell off the sofa.
“Are you a bread seller or a boyfriend?”
Rita looked at Ethan sharply.
He gave her an innocent smile.
“Open it later,” he said.
“No,” Isabella said. “Open it now. Let’s see the love loaf.”
Rita hesitated.
Ethan should have stopped it.
He did not.
She opened the nylon.
Removed the bread.
Then the box beneath.
The room went silent.
Joy stood.
“Wait. Is that the latest Samsung?”
Isabella snatched the box before Rita could react.
“Where did he get money for this?”
Rita took it back gently.
“Thank you, Ethan.”
Her eyes were grateful but worried.
“How did you know?”
“You struggled with your phone when we went out.”
Isabella stared at him.
Ethan smiled.
“My broke heart noticed.”
Joy whispered, “Something is not adding up.”
After he left, Isabella’s suspicion turned sharp.
“That phone is not borrowed-money behavior,” she said.
Joy nodded slowly. “Maybe he has a rich brother.”
