Novels by Oyerinde laacim

One year later, the FS Phoenix building stood as the sharpest needle in the city’s skyline, a monument of glass and steel that seemed to pierce the clouds. To the world, it was a beacon of hope—the headquarters of the most successful humanitarian foundation in history. To those inside, it was a fortress of absolute silence.Nora sat in the back of a black car, watching the city blur past. She was wealthier than she had ever dreamed, more powerful than any man they had once feared in the streets. But as she looked at her reflection in the window, she looked tired. The secrets didn't just weigh on her; they had carved deep lines into her soul.When the car reached the tower, she stepped out and walked toward the private elevator. Nora took it to the top floor; she didn't need to check the schedule to know where Robbin would be.Robbin stood at the floor-to-ceiling windows, staring out at the grid of lights below. She hadn’t moved in an hour. She wore a suit of sharp, midnight blue, her

The black sedan glided into the underground parking garage of the FS Phoenix tower. As it sat idling, the engine’s low hum was the only thing keeping the silence from becoming deafening. Robbin sat motionless in the driver’s seat, her hands gripped tightly around the steering wheel, staring at her own reflection in the rearview mirror.The image of Liam’s face was already fading, replaced by the memory of the dark mark that had ended his life. She had walked away, and seconds later, he was gone. She waited for the wave of nausea or the crushing guilt she had felt for Kade, but it didn't come. Instead, a cold, familiar fog began to roll into the back of her mind.As she stared into the mirror, she didn’t see the CEO. She didn't see the woman who had just walked away from a shipyard while a man died in the dirt. Instead, she saw a girl.A girl standing in the middle of a living room that smelled of cedar and gunpowder, watching the two people she loved most—her aunt and uncle—become not

The grief had not disappeared over the last month; it had simply been paved over. The FS Phoenix machine continued to grind, its gears kept moving Robbin and Nora had retreated into a ritual of high-level meetings and silent dinners, a partnership held together by the heavy weight of what they had buried.Then, a message appeared on their private system. It was an encrypted file.Nora’s fingers hovered over the keyboard in the dark study. When she opened the file, Liam’s face flickered onto the screen. He looked healthy—too healthy. He was sitting in a sun-drenched room somewhere far from the city, a smug, relaxed smile playing on his lips."It’s been a while, girls," Liam’s voice drawled through the speakers. "I saw the news about Kade. Tragic. Truly. But it got me thinking about the things she said, about some cover up and her connection to you. I happen to have a few pieces of information I picked up before her... accident. Information that mentions a name two names. Shelley and Je

The news reached the penthouse before the sirens had even finished echoing through the streets. Vincent’s name lit up Robbin’s phone. She stared at it for a long moment, the vibration rattling against the mahogany desk, before finally answering.“Miss Forest,” Vincent began, his breath tight but his voice professionally composed. “I’m… deeply sorry. She escaped during transport. There was an incident at an intersection. We tried to regain control, but she ran into traffic. The police are on site.”A pause followed, heavy and sterile.“I know you truly cared about her and wanted to take care of her,” he added.Robbin’s fingers tightened around the glass in her hand. Ice shifted softly against the crystal. “Thank you, Vincent,” she said evenly. “You did what you could.”She ended the call before he could offer condolences that sounded like paperwork.The study was too quiet. Nora stood at the bank of monitors, city lights reflecting faintly across her face. The basement feed was still l

The basement of the New Dawn Foundation had stopped being a tomb; it was becoming a cage with a wild animal inside.For the first few weeks, Kade had been the "perfect" project. She was quiet, efficient, and invisible. But as the weight of the leverage—those positive drug test results sitting in Director Vincent’s drawer—began to crush her, the chemical "cushion" she used to survive started to fail. The high-functioning addict was rapidly becoming a liability.It started with small things. Kade would forget to clock out, or she’d be found staring at a blank monitor for forty minutes, her eyes moving in a rapid, jagged scan of a screen that contained no data. Then came the noise."Kade? Is everything alright in there?"The junior archivist, a boy named Sam who was too young to know anything, stood at the entrance of the scanning room. The sound of rhythmic, violent thudding echoed off the concrete walls.Kade didn't answer. She was standing at the heavy industrial scanner, but she wasn

The climate-controlled basement of the New Dawn Foundation felt less like an office and more like a high-end tomb. The silence was absolute, broken only by the rhythmic, mocking whir of the document scanners. Kade sat at her desk, her eyes fixed on the "Cognitive Stabilization" document. She wasn’t just an employee; she was a liability being ripened for harvest.She knew how this ended. Robbin’s "lifeline" was a timed fuse. Eventually, FS Phoenix would need a scandal to disappear or a scapegoat for a regulatory breach, and Kade—the "rehabilitated" addict with a history of tampering—would be served up on a silver platter. And if she ever tries to speak about anything, they can easily discredit her. She had to fix the first variable: the drug tests.Kade’s mind, sharpened by a decade of looking for the exit in every windowless room, went to work. She couldn’t quit—the pills were the only thing keeping the crushing paranoia at bay—so she had to cheat. For three days, she lived on a knif