The engineers clapped again, many with genuine admiration, but some with hidden, quiet envy.
Among them, one man stood silently, his eyes burning with a quiet, intense hatred. His name was Obinna Okoye, the former lead engineer whose throne Williams had just unknowingly taken.
The sound of the applause in the boardroom echoed long after the meeting had ended. Williams stood tall in his new suit, his shoulders squared, his head held high. For the first time in so, so long, he wasn’t invisible.
People looked at him with respect, even open admiration. Some reached out to shake his hand. Others smiled warmly, as if to formally welcome him back into the world he had lost.
But not everyone in the room shared the joy. At the very back, Obinna Okoye stood with his arms folded tightly across his chest. His jaw was clenched, his eyes narrowed to slits. Every single clap of appreciation for Williams felt like a hammer blow pounding into his own pride.
He had once been the company’s star. He was the man Johnson trusted most, the one who commanded the other engineers with absolute confidence. Now, in a matter of hours, a homeless beggar had swept in and taken his place.
This man doesn’t belong here, Obinna thought bitterly. He doesn’t deserve what I built. He forced himself to clap along with the rest, a painful, false smile on his face, but inside, his heart was burning with rage.
In the weeks that followed, Williams proved his worth time and time again. He brought fresh, innovative ideas to the table, simplifying incredibly complex systems with solutions that felt obvious, but only after he explained them.
Under his guidance, Aerospace solved not only the immediate crisis but also uncovered dangerous flaws in other flight systems that had gone completely unnoticed for years.
Aviation companies that had once threatened to pull their contracts were now rushing to renew them, praising Johnson for his brilliant “new” team. But everyone inside the company knew who the real genius was. It was the man who had come in from the street, carrying nothing but a dusty bag and a mind that was sharper than steel.
Williams quickly earned the deep respect of most of the engineers. They admired his humility. He never spoke down to them and never carried himself with arrogance. Instead, he listened, he guided, and he taught with a patience that none of them were used to. Many of the younger engineers soon began to call him their mentor.
But as for Obinna? His hatred only deepened. He was forced to watch as Williams stood beside Johnson at press conferences. He had to read the newspaper headlines about the “mysterious engineer who saved Nigeria’s skies.”
He had to listen to his colleagues whisper with excitement about Williams’s brilliance, and every single word was like a dagger twisting in his pride. “Everything he is doing,” Obinna muttered one night, alone in his office, “that should have been me.”
While Williams was building success at work, something else was quietly blooming in his life: love. He had met Juliana, a soft-spoken but highly intelligent accountant who also worked at the company.
Their first conversation had been brief, nothing more than a polite “good morning” exchanged in the hallway. But Juliana had seen something in him that others overlooked. She saw the deep vulnerability that still lingered in his eyes, and the way he smiled, as though he didn’t quite believe he deserved to be happy.
It all began with small gestures. She started bringing him a cup of tea during his late nights at the office. He would help her carry heavy boxes of files. Soon, they were sharing quiet dinners at a small restaurant down by the marina, far away from the curious eyes of their colleagues.
For Williams, Juliana was like light after years of suffocating darkness. Her easy laughter pulled him out of the shadows of his past. Her unshakeable faith in him served as a constant reminder that he was not just a man who had been broken; he was a man who could rebuild.
Five months later, standing beneath the soft glow of the Lagos streetlights, Williams knelt down on one knee with a ring in his hand and whispered, “Juliana, will you marry me?”
Tears glistened in her eyes as she nodded, unable to speak. “Yes.”
The wedding was set. Williams soon moved into a new, stunning mansion on Banana Island. It was a personal gift from Johnson, who had insisted that a man of his brilliance deserved nothing less than the best. For Williams, it was more than just a house. It was proof that life could truly begin again.
But while Williams was dreaming of his new future, Obinna was plotting in the shadows. One evening, in a dimly lit bar tucked away on the mainland, he met with a group of rough-looking men…
