Chapter 5: The Lie

The kitchen, which five minutes ago had been filled with the soft morning light and the small, warm sound of Lila giggling against Jasmine's knees, suddenly felt like a courtroom, and Jasmine was standing in the dock with her giant grey NYU hoodie as her only defense attorney, a defense attorney who was clearly losing the case because the hoodie was not designed to hide a twenty-two weeks old American-Nigerian baby that was currently doing what felt like a full Afrobeats concert inside her womb.

Damian Cole did not move.

He stood by the private elevator with his briefcase in one hand and that crumpled, traitorous CVS receipt in the other hand, and his blue-gray American eyes — which yesterday had looked at her like she was a questionable business proposal — were now looking at her like she was a math problem he could not solve, and Damian Cole was a man who solved billion-dollar math problems before breakfast, so this was a very serious situation.

"Jasmine," he said again, his voice low, that low American CEO voice that made the air conditioner hum sound shy in comparison, "I asked you what this is."

Jasmine's brain, which had been functioning perfectly fine when she was making Mickey Mouse pancakes, suddenly decided to go on strike and move back to Lagos without informing her.

In her head, she heard three different voices arguing at once: her mother saying "Jasmine, fear God and tell the truth," Chioma saying "Girl, lie! Lie like your rent depends on it, because it DOES," and her unborn baby saying "Mummy, please don't let this fine man throw us back to Flatbush where the heater sounds like a dying okada."

She swallowed, clutched Lila — who was still hanging on her leg like a small, confused koala — tighter, and forced the biggest, most innocent smile she could muster, the kind of smile Nigerian girls use when they have been caught by their African mother eating the last piece of meat in the pot.

"Sir, it's... it's nothing, sir," she said, her voice doing that embarrassing squeak again. "It's just —"

"It says twenty-two weeks pregnant, Jasmine," Damian interrupted, and he said the word pregnant like it was a foreign language he had just learned but didn't know how to pronounce properly, his American accent making it sound heavier than it needed to be. "You told me at the interview you had no boyfriend, no man living with you, no drama. Was that a lie?"

Lila, sensing the tension that had suddenly turned the expensive air in the kitchen from warm to ice-cold, looked up at Jasmine with wide, worried eyes.

Jasmine looked down at Lila, then at Damian, and in that split second she made a decision that would either save her job or ruin her entire life, which in her current financial situation were basically the same thing.

She did what any broke, pregnant, terrified but very smart Nigerian girl living in Tribeca on twelve dollars and fifty cents would do.

She lied with confidence.

"It's my ex, sir," she blurted out, her hands flying in the air like she was conducting an invisible orchestra of lies. "Yes, my ex-boyfriend back in Lagos, his name is Femi, and he left me, he left us, as in he left me and the baby when he found out I got my US work visa, he said he cannot do long distance and he cannot do baby, so he packed his load and went to marry a girl from Port Harcourt who sells lace fabric, so now it's just me and baby, no drama, I swear, no man will come here, no traffic, just me!"

The lie came out in one giant, run-on sentence that lasted about fifteen seconds, and by the end of it Jasmine was out of breath, Lila was staring at her like she had just heard the most interesting story in the world, and Damian's eyebrows had climbed so high up his handsome American forehead they were practically hiding in his dark, messy hair.

"Femi," Damian repeated, tasting the name like it was spoiled milk.

"Yes, sir, Femi, very stupid boy, very local boy, not like you at all, sir," Jasmine added quickly, then immediately regretted adding that last part because why was she comparing her imaginary Lagos ex to her billionaire American boss who was currently holding evidence of her pregnancy in his hand like a lawyer in a divorce case.

Damian stared at her for a long time, so long that Jasmine could hear the expensive fridge humming and her own heart doing gbim-gbim-gbim like a talking drum.

He looked at her hoodie. He looked at her face, which was now sweating despite the central AC that smelled like expensive lemons. He looked at Lila, who had now decided to hug Jasmine even tighter, as if to say "don't shout at my Jazzy."

And then, something in his shoulders dropped.

It was not softening, exactly, because American billionaires do not soften, they just... recalibrate, like their stock portfolio had just dipped but they know it will go back up.

"You're five months pregnant and you took a live-in job that requires you to be on call at three AM for night terrors?" he asked, and his voice was no longer cold, it was... incredulous, with a hint of that strange, protective anger that American men get when they see a woman carrying heavy load alone.

Jasmine nodded, tears suddenly stinging her eyes, real tears this time, because she was tired, she was pregnant, her back was hurting, and she had just lied about a boy named Femi who did not exist.

"I need the job, sir," she whispered, her Nigerian accent getting thicker because when Nigerian girls are about to cry, the accent always comes out to do backup vocals. "I have to pay rent, I have to buy baby things, I have to... I have to survive. I'm sorry I didn't tell you at interview, I was scared you would say no. But I can still do the work, I swear, I'm strong, Nigerian women are very strong, we carry baby, we carry market, we carry husband's family wahala, all at once!"

Lila, hearing the crack in Jasmine's voice, reached up and patted Jasmine's cheek with her tiny, sticky hand that still had blueberry syrup from yesterday.

Damian watched that small gesture, and his jaw clenched, that sharp American jawline that could cut glass and also cut through any woman's resolve.

He folded the CVS receipt very slowly, very deliberately, and slipped it into the inner pocket of his suit jacket instead of throwing it away, which made Jasmine's stomach do another violent flip because why was he KEEPING it, why was he keeping evidence like he was FBI.

"Does Femi send money?" he asked suddenly.

Jasmine blinked. "Sir?"

"Your ex. Femi from Lagos who sells lace fabric. Does he send money for the baby?" Damian's eyes were burning now, not with suspicion, but with something else that looked suspiciously like good old-fashioned American billionaire possessiveness that had absolutely no business being directed at his nanny.

"No, sir, he does not," Jasmine said, playing along with Femi, who at this point was becoming a real person in her mind.

"Useless," Damian muttered under his breath, so low Jasmine almost didn't hear it, but she did, and she almost laughed because imagine a white American billionaire from Tribeca calling an imaginary Yoruba boy from Lagos useless.

He tapped his earpiece, which was flashing, and for a second Jasmine thought he was going to fire her right there, tell her to pack her Ghana-Must-Go bags and go back to Flatbush.

Instead, he said, "Rule number four."

Jasmine's head snapped up. "There is rule number four, sir?"

"Yes," Damian said, grabbing his briefcase, his eyes locked on her hoodie-covered stomach with an intensity that made Jasmine want to hide behind Lila, who was only three feet tall and therefore not a very good hiding spot. "If you are going to work in my house pregnant, you will go to a real hospital, not a free clinic in Brooklyn. You will eat proper food, not whatever twelve-dollar food you have been eating. And you will tell me if you feel sick, dizzy, or if... if the baby does that flipping thing that makes you press your chest like you did in the elevator on Friday."

Jasmine's mouth fell open.

He had noticed. He had noticed everything, from the first day, the way she pressed her chest in the elevator, the way she got tired, the way her shoes squeaked.

"My private doctor will come on Thursday, eight AM, to check you and Lila," he continued, as if he was just ordering more oat milk for the kitchen, not completely upending her entire plan to hide her pregnancy for four more months. "Don't argue. It's non-negotiable. I don't want a lawsuit because my nanny fainted on my imported marble floor."

He turned to leave, then stopped at the elevator, looking back over his shoulder at Jasmine holding Lila, both of them staring at him like he was a confusing, handsome, half-naked puzzle.

"And Jasmine," he said, his voice dropping again, dangerous and soft, "if this Femi ever shows up at my building looking for you or the baby, you tell me first. Understood?"

It was not a request from a boss to an employee.

It was a promise from an American man who had just decided, for reasons he did not understand himself, that no imaginary Nigerian ex-boyfriend named Femi was allowed to come near the woman who sang his daughter to sleep.

The elevator doors slid shut, taking him away, leaving Jasmine standing in the middle of the massive, silent kitchen, holding Lila, holding her giant hoodie, holding a lie that was now officially bigger than her baby bump.

Lila tugged on her hoodie.

"Jazzy, who is Femi?" the little girl whispered.

Jasmine looked down at Lila, then at the elevator where Damian had just disappeared with her prenatal receipt still in his pocket, then down at her own stomach which was now under the official medical supervision of a Tribeca billionaire who thought she was heartbroken by a lace-selling boy from Port Harcourt.

"Omo," Jasmine whispered to Lila, sinking slowly to the floor because her legs had finally given up, "Femi na big, big wahala wey we just enter."

And just as she said that, her phone buzzed violently in the pocket of her hoodie.

It was not Mr. G the landlord this time.

It was a new email notification, with a subject line that made her blood freeze.

*From: Cole Family Private Medical Practice*

*Subject: Confirmation - Full Prenatal Panel + Paternity Blood Screening for J. Alvarez - Thursday 8 AM - Dr. Chen*

Paternity blood screening.

He had not just booked a normal checkup.

He had booked a test that could tell who the father was.

Jasmine stared at the phone screen, her hand shaking so hard Lila had to hold it steady for her, and she realized with a jolt of pure, unfiltered terror that her lie about Femi from Lagos was about to expire in exactly seventy-two hours.