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He was good. He was very good.

I opened his portfolio. "Tell me about your Nairobi operation."

The Omondi Group's portfolio was three generations of single-estate Kenyan tea and coffee, grown at altitude in the highlands around Kirinyaga, processed on-site with methods that predated colonial record-keeping and had been refined into something that the specialty food world was only beginning to understand the value of.

I turned to the third page of his documentation. "I see you're currently moving your product through a London broker who is taking twenty-two percent of your margin."

"Twenty-three, as of last quarter."

"Your purple tea is going through a separate channel entirely, which means your documentation costs are doubled and your brand identity is split across two different import licenses." I looked up. "You're leaving significant money on the table, and you're doing it in two different directions simultaneously."

Darius flashed me that smile from the bar. He wasn't hitting on me; I knew what that felt like. It went a step beyond impressed. He looked like a man who had moved his chess pieces on the board and found a queen. "That is a precise summary of a problem I have been trying to articulate to my board for eighteen months."

"The solution is a unified US distribution anchor," I said. "One import license, one brand identity, one partner with existing relationships in the premium food service sector." I pulled my legal pad toward me and began writing. "The Fang Dynasty alone would absorb a significant percentage of your AA grade at a price point that makes the London broker arrangement look embarrassing. Beyond that, there are fourteen premium restaurant groups in the tristate area that are currently sourcing inferior product because nobody has introduced them to yours."

"And Odhiambo and Associates can do this."

"Odhiambo, Blackwood and Associates," I said, without looking up from my notes.

"Of course." His tone signaled he didn't think he said the wrong thing.

I finished the preliminary framework and turned the pad toward him. It was rough — a first draft, the skeleton of something that would take a week to build properly — but it showed the structure clearly. The unified import license, the distribution channels, the brand positioning, the projected margin improvement over the London arrangement.

Darius studied it for a long moment. "You drafted this in twenty minutes"

"I'll have a full proposal to you by end of week. It will include a restructured pricing model, proposed distribution partners, and a three-year growth projection." I capped my pen. "Assuming your board is prepared to move on the London broker arrangement."

"The board will do what I tell them." He said it with the flat certainty of a man who was not boasting, just stating the operational reality of his position.

I recognized the register. I used it myself. "End of week then."

He closed his portfolio. The meeting was technically concluded. Neither of us moved.

"May I ask you something that has nothing to do with tea?" he said.

I raised an eyebrow. "You may ask."

"Your heritage. Where is your family from?"

I gave him the answer I gave everyone. "West Africa."

Darius made a sound that was not quite a scoff. "You know Africa is a continent, not a country."

He had said it with the exasperation of someone who had been watching Americans flatten an entire continent into a single vague category his whole life. I did it deliberately, had been doing it since college; the strategic vagueness of a woman who didn't want to explain her complicated, incomplete family history to people who would inevitably ask follow-up questions she couldn't answer. West Africa ended conversations. It was a door I could close. Standing in front of a man who was himself from the continent in question, I could not close it so easily when we were standing on the same side.

"My mother was Ghanaian. She came over when I was very small."

Darius nodded slowly. He was looking at my face with a focus that had shifted from professional to something more searching. "And your father?"

"I didn't know him."

His eyes moved over my features. Not the way men's eyes usually moved over my features. This was careful observation. Like a man looking for something lost and finding it.

"Your bone structure, your features." A pause. "They are very Kenyan."

Something moved in my chest, like a key turning in a lock. It was a memory. My mother's voice: Your father's people were from Kenya, baby. From the highlands. Mountain people. It was one of the few times she'd spoken of him.

"I don't know much about my father's family," I said carefully. I didn't tell him that my grandmother was Kenyan and had married a Ghanian man. Even though Darius Omonodi and I were on the same side of a closed door, I wasn't going to open a window into my soul for this stranger.