Victoria Adebayo waited for the second line until the silence in the bathroom became unbearable.
It did not appear.
The pregnancy test lay across her palm, white and small and cruelly ordinary. One line. Negative. Again.
For several seconds she did not move. The exhaust fan hummed above her. Water tapped slowly from the showerhead. Somewhere beyond the bathroom door, her husband was opening drawers and closing them again as he dressed for dinner at his father's house.
"Victoria?"
She closed her fingers around the test. "I'm coming."
Her voice sounded normal. That had become one of her more useful skills.
She wrapped the test in tissue, pushed it beneath the other rubbish in the bin, then stood before the mirror. Six years of marriage had taught her how to smile when relatives asked when the baby was coming, how to laugh when friends said she was lucky to have time to enjoy her husband first, how to sit in fertility clinics beneath fluorescent lights while women with round bellies passed her in the corridor.
Four specialists. Two failed procedures. Months of injections. Enough vitamins, herbal mixtures, prayer oils and unsolicited advice to stock a small pharmacy.
Still, nothing.
The bedroom door opened.
"Victoria?"
"I said I'm coming."
David appeared behind her in the mirror, cufflinks still in one hand. He had the kind of face age seemed to negotiate with rather than defeat: broad shoulders, close-cut hair, calm eyes that had once made her suspicious because handsome men, in her experience, were rarely patient.
His gaze dropped briefly toward the bin.
Victoria stepped sideways.
"Your father will complain if we're late."
"My father complains when we're early."
That almost made her smile.
Almost.
"Did you test again?" he asked.
She picked up her earrings. "It doesn't matter."
"That means yes."
"David."
He was quiet. There were days she loved him most for knowing when not to continue. Tonight she resented him for the same thing. He stepped closer and fastened one of her earrings because her fingers had begun to shake.
"Come," he said. "Let's survive dinner."
The Adebayo mansion in Ikoyi glowed behind high walls and trimmed hedges, every window lit as though darkness itself had been refused entry. Dinner there was never simply dinner. It was an examination conducted over crystal glasses and expensive food.
Chief Bamidele Adebayo sat at the head of the table. Seventy-two, silver-haired and still broad through the chest, he occupied chairs the way other men occupied offices. Margaret, his second wife, sat beside him in emerald silk. David took his usual place to his father's right. Victoria sat beneath an enormous family portrait.
Conversation began with business: a delayed government payment, a property development in Lekki, a dispute between directors at Adebayo Holdings. David spoke carefully. Chief listened like a king evaluating an heir. Then he set down his glass.
"I spoke with Femi today."
David's fork paused. "The lawyer?"
"My lawyer, yes."
"Is something wrong?"
"At seventy-two, something is always wrong." Chief's brief smile vanished. "This is about continuity."
Victoria felt the word before she understood why.
"I have spent forty years building this company," Chief said. "I did not build it so everybody can fight over pieces when I die. Femi has revised the will."
David put down his fork. "Why are we discussing this over dinner?"
"Because there is a condition."
Margaret shifted. "Chief, perhaps not tonight."
"It is exactly tonight."
He looked at David, then finally at Victoria.
"The controlling shares pass to you on one condition. You must have a male heir."
The room went still.
David stared at him. "You cannot be serious."
"I am."
"You want to make my inheritance depend on the sex of a child?"
"I want continuity."
"A daughter would be my child."
"A daughter marries."
David laughed once, without humour. "What century are you living in?"
"The one in which this company belongs to me."
Victoria looked down at her plate.
"And if I never have a son?" David asked.
"The controlling interest passes to Kunle."
The name changed something in David's face. Only for a second, but Victoria saw it: years of work, weekends beside his father, board meetings, the future everyone had always described as his. Then David pushed back his chair.
"My wife is not an incubator."
Chief hardened. "I did not call her one."
"You didn't need to. We're leaving."
Outside, rain had begun falling over Ikoyi. David drove too fast.
"He had no right," he said.
Victoria watched water stream across her window. "It's his company."
"I don't care."
She turned toward him. "You do." His jaw tightened. "Not enough to let him humiliate you."
Behind them was a house built around inheritance. Beside her was a man insisting he could walk away from it. Victoria thought of the tissue-wrapped test beneath bathroom rubbish.
Her greatest fear, she realised, was not that David would leave her.
It was that he would stay.
And one day wish he had not.