Two days to Nairobi Fashion Week.
And Leila Peters' world was collapsing in silence.
The atelier felt wrong.
Too quiet.
Too still.
The mannequins stood draped in half-finished fire-hued gowns like abandoned soldiers. Needles lay where they'd been dropped. Fabric rolls leaned against the wall, untouched since morning.
Mwajuma stood near the cutting table, phone clutched tightly.
"Leila…" Her voice was low. Careful. "I need to tell you something."
Leila didn't look up from the beadwork she'd been forcing herself to finish.
"Hmm?"
Mwajuma swallowed. "Nadia approached me."
The needle stopped mid-air.
Leila's head lifted slowly. "About what?"
Mwajuma's jaw tightened. "She wanted me to leave you."
Silence detonated in the room.
Leila blinked once. "Leave… me?"
"She offered me a contract," Mwajuma said. "Head seamstress. Triple salary. Private studio. International exposure." Her mouth twisted. "And ownership percentage in her label."
Leila's stomach dropped.
That wasn't poaching.
That was acquisition.
"Nadia didn't want my models first," Leila said faintly.
Mwajuma shook her head.
"No. She wanted your hands."
Leila looked down at Mwajuma's fingers — scarred, precise, legendary in Nairobi fashion circles. The woman who could translate Leila's imagination into reality.
Without Mwajuma…
Leila Peters wasn't Leila Peters.
"What did you tell her?" Leila asked quietly.
Mwajuma's eyes hardened. "I told her I don't betray family."
Something fragile cracked inside Leila's chest.
Relief. Fierce and painful.
But Mwajuma wasn't finished.
"She smiled," Mwajuma continued. "And said: 'Everyone has a price. If not you… then the people around you.'"
Cold spread through Leila's spine.
"And then?" Leila whispered.
Mwajuma inhaled slowly.
"And then your models started cancelling."
The words landed like falling glass.
Leila stared at her.
"Nadia couldn't buy you," Mwajuma said. "So she decided to break you."
The room tilted.
"How many?" Leila asked.
"Three confirmed gone," Mwajuma said. "Six considering."
Leila sank onto the stool beside the worktable, pulse roaring in her ears.
It wasn't business competition.
It was targeted destruction.
"You should have told me," Leila whispered.
Mwajuma's voice softened. "I thought refusing her would end it."
Leila shook her head slowly.
"No," she said hoarsely. "Refusing Nadia never ends anything."
She looked around the atelier — suddenly fragile, suddenly threatened.
Her empire rested on trust.
On loyalty.
On Mwajuma.
And Nadia had aimed directly at the foundation.
Leila pressed her palms into her eyes.
For the first time in years, doubt seeped in.
Maybe Nadia was right.
Maybe Leila's world could collapse if one person left.
Maybe she wasn't as untouchable as Nairobi believed.
"I need air," she murmured.
Mwajuma stepped back immediately. "Go. I'll hold things here."
Leila nodded and walked out into the Nairobi heat, her chest tight with something new.
Fear.
Not of failure.
But of losing the people who made her possible.