"You have told me that. I have defended you to people who laughed at me. But every time I ask how it happened, you say the same three words and stop."
Tobi moved toward the table, where an old laptop lay beneath a stack of unpaid utility notices. He told her the files on it were damaged, that the records he needed were locked inside a company system he could no longer access. Nkiru had heard variations of that explanation for months. Earlier that afternoon, while he was out, she had found a folder copied to a removable drive inside the laptop case and opened it only after seeing her husband's name in the file title. She placed a printed page between them, then stepped back so he could look at it without her speaking first.
The document showed a payment authorization in Tobi's name for forty-two million naira. It carried a familiar signature, the one she had seen on birthday cards and bank forms, but the authorization date did not match his earlier account of the transaction. Nkiru watched his face as he recognized it. The exhaustion she had mistaken for defeat sharpened into alarm. "Where did you get that?" he asked.
"Inside the old laptop you said wasn't working."
"You went through my files?"
"Your signature is on the payment authorization. You told me you never stole company money."
"I didn't."
"Then why did you sign it?"
He sat without being asked, his shoulders sinking as though the page had more weight than paper should. "Because the payment I authorized was not forty-two million," he said. "It was four million, two hundred thousand."
Nkiru felt the distinction strike her before the implications did. Forty-two million was ten times the amount he claimed to have approved, and the alleged discrepancy was not a small rounding error or a missing invoice. Tobi explained that procurement had not completed its verification when an executive director told him an urgent vendor payment could not wait. He had objected, then accepted her assurance that the amount was four point two million and that she would take responsibility. He signed because he trusted the person giving the instruction.
"Who?" Nkiru asked. "Tell me her name."
"Temilade Akinwale."
The name belonged to a woman Nkiru had seen in business photographs, often standing beside Tunde and Chairman Folarin, smiling with the confidence of a family member who knew the company's doors would always open. Tobi explained that Temi oversaw some of the group's investments and had recommended him for the finance role. He spoke carefully, as though every word might break a delicate arrangement he had spent years keeping intact. Nkiru noticed he said Temi with a familiarity he never used for other executives. She asked how well he had known her before joining the company.
"We knew each other before," he answered.
"How well?"
"Nkiru, please. The important thing is that I didn't authorize forty-two million."
"The important thing is that my husband signed a payment because a woman he trusted told him to, and he has not told me why he trusted her. How well did you know her?"