Part 1
The widow sold her adopted daughter to a dusty stranger for a farm job, smiling as if she had just thrown away rotten food. In the crowded compound of Irewole town, where neighbors could hear a whisper through a cracked wall, Mama Bisi stood with her wrapper tied tight around her waist and pointed at the trembling girl beside the water drums. “Take her,” she said, her voice sharp enough to cut the afternoon heat. “Since I cannot pay you cash, take Amara as your wife.” Amara dropped the bundle of firewood in her arms. Her knees weakened, but she did not fall. For 9 years since Papa Jonah died, she had learned to swallow pain quietly, because crying only gave Mama Bisi and her 2 daughters another reason to laugh. But this was different. This was not hunger. This was not insult. This was being pushed out of the only home she had ever known like a goat sold at the market.
—Mama, please, you do not know him.
Mama Bisi turned on her with blazing eyes.
—And did anybody know you when my husband picked you from nowhere and brought you here?
Billionaire pretends to be a bricklayer to test the woman his father said he must marry
