The Boss Lady Who Never Lost

By seven in the morning, three people had cried in Ebele Anyanwu's office, and she had not yet finished her coffee.

She sat behind a desk of black glass on the fourteenth floor of the Anyanwu Logistics tower, with a view of the Apapa port stretching away below like a toy city of cranes and container stacks. Her phone rang. Her assistant, a trembling young man named Kelechi, hovered at the door.

"Ma, it's the Customs Comptroller. He says the shipment is held."

"Held for what?"

"Documentation."

"Whose?"

"He didn't say."

"Then he doesn't have a reason." Ebele took a sip of coffee. "Tell him I will see him at nine. In his office. With the original bill of lading and a lawyer."

"Yes, ma."

"And Kelechi."

"Ma?"

"Stop crying. It is unproductive."

He fled. She turned to the screen. A column of figures glared up at her. She was thirty-four, five foot ten in her heels, with a face the business magazines called "severely beautiful." She wore a charcoal suit, a single gold earring, and the expression of a woman who had been underestimated her whole life and had decided to make it expensive.