Novels by Fatimat Lawal

Adrian kept his word about training, meeting her in the yard just past sunrise with two mats already laid out on the grass and a look on his face that told her he wasn't going to make this easy."Feet apart," he said, adjusting her stance with a light touch to her hip that made her breath catch for reasons that had nothing to do with technique. "If someone grabs you from behind, you don't fight the grip. You fight the balance.""That sounds like something out of a movie.""Movies get some things right." He stepped back, arms loose at his sides. "Come at me."She did, awkward at first, and he corrected her twice before letting her actually knock him half a step backward, something like pride flickering across his face for the effort. They worked through the basics for almost an hour, her muscles aching in places she didn't know could ache, Adrian patient in a way that surprised her every time given everything else she knew about him.The first sound didn't register as wrong right away.

Ivy spent the rest of the day avoiding him, not out of anger exactly, more because she didn't trust her own face not to give away how much his words had rearranged her. She walked the garden Marta had mentioned, traced the edge of the pool house, sat under a tree near the far wall until the sun started dropping low enough to turn everything gold.She found a bench near the wall with initials carved into the wood, old, weathered smooth by years of weather. A. V. and someone else's letters she couldn't quite make out anymore. She sat there a long time wondering who he'd been before any of this, before debts and guns and daughters handed over on bleeding study room floors.A gardener working nearby noticed her looking and offered, unprompted, that Mr. Voss used to sit out here as a boy with his mother before she passed. Ivy hadn't expected that, a mother somewhere in his history too, a version of him small enough to need someone the way she'd needed her own mother once. It didn't excuse

Ivy didn't sleep, not really, just drifted in and out of something close to it until the window went gray with morning light. She lay there a long time before she made herself get up, running yesterday over and over until it stopped feeling like something that had actually happened to her.She found Adrian in the kitchen, alone, a cup of coffee in front of him he hadn't touched. He looked up when she came in, and something in his face told her he'd been waiting."You said you'd answer whatever I asked." She stayed by the doorway, not ready to sit across from him yet. "I'm asking now.""Sit down, Ivy."She sat, arms crossed, bracing for whatever came next."What do you want to know first.""Why him." She said it fast, before she lost the nerve. "Out of everyone he could have owed money to, why did it end up being you? And why did you want me specifically, not just the money back some other way?"Adrian turned his cup slowly on the table, not drinking from it, just needing something to

Ivy sat in the back seat with her knees pulled tight against her chest, watching the city slide by through a window that wouldn't roll down. Adrian sat beside her, close enough that she could feel the warmth coming off him, saying nothing, checking his phone every few minutes like the last twenty minutes hadn't happened at all.His phone rang somewhere past the second bridge. He answered without looking at the screen first."It's done." A pause. "No, clean. Marlow's out of the city by morning, he won't be a problem." Another pause, longer this time, his eyes flicking once toward Ivy before sliding back to the window. "The girl's with me. Yes, the daughter." Whoever was on the other end said something that made Adrian's jaw tighten. "That's not your concern. I'll handle her the way I handle everything else."Ivy kept her eyes forward, pretending she hadn't caught every word, but her mind snagged on one piece of it and wouldn't let go. The way he handles everything else. Like she was a

The first gunshot came from downstairs, followed by a second one close enough behind it that Ivy couldn't tell if they'd come from two different guns or the same one fired twice.Richard grabbed her by the wrist before she'd even processed the sound, pulling her out of bed and down the hallway so fast her feet barely found the floor. Somewhere below them a man screamed, cut short, and then nothing."Dad, what's happening?""Quiet." His voice shook in a way she'd never heard from him. "Quiet, Ivy, please."He pulled her into his study room and shoved a bookcase against the door, hands trembling so badly it took him three tries to line it up right. Ivy pressed herself into the corner behind his desk, knees pulled to her chest, listening to the house fill up with sounds she didn't have names for. Boots on stairs. Furniture breaking. Somewhere close, a voice that wasn't shouting so much as giving instructions, calm in a way that made it worse than shouting would have been."Dad, who is th