Chapter Five: The Price of Prestige

 After sending her desperate, pleading message to Balarabe, Rukayya entered a state of quiet dread. The three-week countdown set by her father, Alhaji Uba, was now ticking mercilessly. Every day was a minute hand moving across her life. She listened not for the usual sounds of the compound, but for the one sound that could save her: the specific, formal greeting of the Kawu Musa, Balarabe’s uncle, arriving with a delegation and a bowl of kola nuts.

But the sound never came.

Instead, the compound of Alhaji Uba hummed with a dizzying. . .