The new office space didn't smell like ambition yet.
It smelled like paint, sawdust, and uncertainty. The windows were too bare. The walls echoed when they laughed.
But it was theirs.
Studio Bold was more than a name now—it was an organism, alive with intention. A rebellion disguised as a business plan. The team was small, cobbled together from ex-colleagues, young interns, and people who had once messaged Amaka things like: "You gave me permission to believe in risk."
Tunde stood by the long drafting table, piecing together mock-ups for their first public installation.
"Will the city come?" he asked.
"They'll come," Amaka said, thumbing through her notes. "If not for the art, then for the controversy. Lagos is addicted to spectacle."
He grinned. "And what are we giving them?"
"Truth. Wrapped in movement. Colored in protest."
A pause.
Then: "Is it weird that I'm more nervous about this than I was about losing everything?"
"No," Amaka replied. "Because this time we're not hiding behind names, or investors, or market forecasts. This time… it's just us."
By midweek, the first interview request came in.
Not just any outlet—Vision Africa, the pan-continental media platform. The same one that once called Amaka "a cautionary example of ego-driven leadership."
She stared at the request.
Tunde raised an eyebrow. "We're taking it?"
Amaka exhaled. "We're owning it."
The interview wasn't held in a studio.
She asked them to film it in the new space. No edits. No filters. No PR script.
The journalist, an elegant woman with steel-gray braids, smiled when she arrived. "This is bold."
"That's the point," Amaka replied.
The questions came sharp but respectful:
"What did you lose when you stepped down?"
"What has loving publicly taught you?"
"Are you rebuilding… or becoming someone else entirely?"
Amaka didn't flinch.
"I lost fear," she said. "I gained freedom."
And then, quietly: "And I didn't become someone else. I became someone I stopped apologizing for."
After the crew left, Tunde walked over with a small box in his hands.
"What's this?"
He shrugged. "Something that's been waiting."
She opened it slowly.
Inside: a pendant. Handcrafted. Raw silver shaped like a horizon—flat at the base, jagged at the top, as if breaking open.
"It's… us," she said.
"It's where we're going."
Later that night, she stood alone on the balcony of their new flat, watching the city shimmer below.
The past hadn't left her. It would never quite leave.
But it no longer owned her.
Behind her, Tunde called, "Come inside."
She turned, smiling.
"I will," she said. "But just one more minute. I'm saying goodbye to the version of me who thought survival was the goal."
Because now, for the first time—
She was planning to live.