Tunde read the correspondence alone. In one message, Kunle reminded Dapo that he was "still protecting the Adeniran arrangement." In another, Dapo begged him not to circulate a report that would hurt Korede. A later exchange showed Kunle pressing for approval of unusual vendor arrangements, hinting that cooperation would keep certain family matters quiet. Tunde realized that the absence of honest procedures had allowed blackmail to become part of ordinary corporate management. His father had hidden an unauthorized investment years earlier. Dapo had hidden a child's paternity. Kunle had collected both secrets and turned them into power.
Then Tunde came upon an email from eight months before, dated two days after Tobi's suspension. It contained an access log showing the payment alteration. The recipient was Tunde himself. He remembered it now: a rushed message in an overwhelmed inbox, followed the same day by a visit from Kunle carrying what he called a serious family concern. Tunde opened the attachment and felt his stomach drop. He had known enough to question the case. He had chosen not to question it.
Tunde did not sleep that night. He sat in his office beneath the light of a single desk lamp, reading messages he'd once decided were too dangerous to investigate. Eight months earlier, Kunle had arrived with an envelope containing the paternity report and told him that Temi's son might become the center of a scandal if the company pressed certain issues. Tunde had been appalled by the possibility of Korede's private life becoming public. He had also been worried about protecting the group before an important financing round. When Kunle said the payment investigation would likely collapse from lack of reliable evidence, Tunde had allowed him to continue controlling it.
The investigation had not collapsed. Kunle had curated it. He had presented the altered transaction as though Tobi personally approved the larger amount, withheld the session logs implicating his own access, and encouraged the view that a junior analyst had abused his privileges. Tunde had signed the dismissal. Afterward, he had received updates about Tobi's struggle to find work and Nkiru's move into a lower-paid hospitality role. He told himself the reports were an act of kindness, a way to ensure the couple did not fall entirely through the cracks. Now he could see how grotesque it was to monitor suffering he had helped sustain while keeping the truth locked away.
He summoned Nkiru and Tobi with Janet present. This time he began without an apology drafted by a lawyer. "I knew the investigation had problems," he said. "Not everything. Not enough to prove Kunle altered the payment, but enough that I should have ordered an independent review. Instead I let him persuade me that reopening the matter would expose a family secret and cause further harm." Tobi stared. "When did you know?" Tunde swallowed. "Two days after your suspension." The silence that followed was worse than shouting.