Barnaby's office occupied the top floor of a building on Wilshire that had been specifically designed, Dalia had always suspected, to make everyone who entered feel smaller than the man behind the desk.
Glass walls.
A view that stretched all the way to the ocean on clear days. Awards lining one wall in curated abundance-none arranged by year, all arranged by how good they looked from the doorway. A slim folder sat squared at the corner of his desk, half-buried beneath a stack of contract drafts. As she moved toward her chair, a few words on the exposed header caught her eye: REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT PARTNERSHIP. Beneath it was a logo she didn't recognize and, in smaller type, EAST AFRICA. She slowed for half a step. Then kept moving. She thought nothing of it at the time. There was, that morning, considerably more pressing grief demanding her attention than her manager's unrelated paperwork.
Lucy was waiting by the elevator, tablet already lit in her hand. "He's in his office," she said, falling into step beside Dalia across the lobby. Without looking up, Lucy tapped through the dashboard that tracked Dalia's cars, flights, and security detail in real time. Barnaby called the system "a single point of truth." Dalia used to think that meant safety.
"I'm so sorry about your friend, Ms. Njeri." Lucy hesitated, holding out a paper cup. "I saw the news this morning. I didn't know what to say, so I just... made sure your coffee was right. Not the way the office usually orders it." Dalia took the cup, the warmth pressing into her palm. "Thank you, Lucy," she said softly. "Really."
She hadn't slept. She'd flown straight from the arena, raw and exhausted, carrying a grief. Barnaby met her in his corner office with a sympathetic nod.
"You look tired," he said, pouring two glasses of water. "I heard about your friend. I'm sorry, Dalia. Truly."
"His name was Juma."
"Juma. Right." Barnaby set a glass in front of her and took the chair opposite, leaning forward just far enough to look present. "I know this is hard. I really do." He let the space sit between them for a second before continuing.
"I need you present today, and I need to be straight with you about the landscape. It doesn't stop moving just because we're grieving."
"The landscape," she repeated, flat.
"The Vogue cover is Thursday," Barnaby said, sliding his tablet across the glass. The screen was choked with colored blocks—call times, interviews, wardrobe fittings. "The label is already nervous about the rollout. If you get photographed looking unravelled this week, it becomes a story we don't control."
He leaned back, resting his hands on the arms of his chair.
"I'm not saying don't feel what you're feeling, Dalia. I'm saying feel it efficiently."
"Compartmentalize."
His eyes stayed on hers. "You've always been good at that." Dalia set her water glass down very carefully, the way you set something down when you don't trust your own hand not to throw it. "Compartmentalize," she repeated.
"Barnaby, a man who spent his life fighting for people my government ignores was murdered outside a courthouse last night." Dalia leaned over the desk, her voice dropping.
"This isn't a head cold I can just perform through."
"I understand it feels that way right now," Barnaby said, his voice maddeningly reasonable. He didn't even blink. "But Dalia—be honest with yourself. What does this actually have to do with you?"
"You left Kenya over a decade ago," Barnaby said. "You built an empire here. I'd hate to see grief drag you into a mess that isn't yours to carry anymore."
"I grew up three streets from where they shot him," Dalia said, her voice dropping. "It was mine before it was anyone else's."
"I'm not disputing your past. I'm asking whether wading into foreign politics from a stage in Los Angeles actually helps anyone—or if it just makes you a target." Barnaby leaned forward, his face full of concern. "You have a platform activists would kill for. Use it smartly. Make a donation. Say something tasteful at the Grammys."
"Don't torch ten years of brand-building over something you can't control from thousands of miles away."
"You keep saying that," Dalia said. "As if distance makes it irrelevant."
"Doesn't it?" Barnaby spread his hands on the desk. "What actually happens if you speak out, Dalia? Best case, you feel better for one news cycle, and not a single thing changes on the ground in Nairobi."
"Worst case, you become a target for a government that's already proved it kills its critics, and you drag your career down with you." He picked up his pen. "I'm not describing a hypothetical. I'm describing the likely outcome."
His phone buzzed against the glass three times in quick succession. Barnaby glanced at the screen, then picked it up without excusing himself.
"Tell them the endorsement numbers haven't moved," he said into the receiver, his voice dropping into his brisk, conference-call cadence. "The sponsor's reading noise into a normal fluctuation... No, I'm not flying to Atlanta today. Tell them Thursday."
"Layer Entertainment has a stake in infrastructure over there," Barnaby said, reaching for his tablet. "Nothing that concerns you directly. I just know the region's politics better than you think."
"In ten years, you've never once asked me what I believe," Dalia said, her voice completely level. "You've told me what's smart. What's safe. What sells."
"That's not fair. I've always had your best—"
"Your interests," Dalia said. "You've just gotten very good at making them sound like mine."
Barnaby's jaw tightened. "I built your career from nothing, Dalia. That ought to earn a little grace."
"It does," she said. "I haven't forgotten you standing up to the label when they told me to lose weight before my first tour. I haven't forgotten you flying to Atlanta at two in the morning when that producer wouldn't let me leave the studio. I know the difference between protecting me and controlling me, Barnaby. You've done both."
She stood up, smoothing down her jacket.
"You built the brand. I built the voice when I was singing six hours a night in Nairobi clubs without reliable power. You just found a profitable way to package it."
She reached the door and turned. "I need to think. Without a calendar invite attached." She walked out before he could answer. Lucy caught her eye briefly on the way out—a quick, unspoken look before she looked back down at her tablet. The forty-minute drive back across Los Angeles went by in a blur of brake lights and heat.
Dalia dropped her keys on the counter the moment she got inside and clicked on the television. She flipped through two channels before a flash of familiar text across the bottom of the screen stopped her cold.
Nairobi.
Live footage—shaky, handheld, lit by streetlights. Thousands of people filled an avenue Dalia knew by heart, chanting a name she hadn't heard spoken out loud in years.
"Juma."
Banners cut through the smoke, bearing his name alongside slogans her grandmother used to whisper under a different regime. On the screen, a news anchor spoke over the noise, captions scrolling too fast—the tax bill from eighteen months ago, the protests spreading, a movement with no single head to cut off. The camera cut to a young woman standing on the hood of an abandoned car, bullhorn pressed to her lips.
"They think killing one man kills an idea!" The crowd roared back—a wall of noise pushing through the speaker.
"Juma is gone! His voice is not!"
The chyron flashed beneath her: Zuri, 24, organizer. Dalia sat alone on the sofa, the phone screen glowing against her face in the dark living room. She replayed the clip four times before she turned off the TV.