Chapter 1 Mushin's Flame

In the heart of Mushin, Lagos, Nigeria; a place where the air sizzled with the buzz of okadas and the thick scent of street-cooked akara, Aisha Toriola was born on a stormy Tuesday night. Her mother, Alhaja Morayo, was a fierce woman who ran a roadside textile stall by day and whispered deals with market union bosses by night. Her father, whom Aisha only knew through a tattered photograph and bits of neighborhood gossip, had disappeared before she could walk.

Mushin didn't forgive weakness, and Aisha learned to navigate its crowded alleys with eyes that missed nothing and hands that learned to hold secrets before they held pens.

School was a blur of half-days and hungry evenings. Aisha was bright-too bright for a place like Mushin-but poverty pulled at her uniform hem and hunger twisted her focus. By Junior Secondary 2, she had dropped out entirely, trading books for bolts of fabric and days in Balogun Market. She watched the older women haggle and hustle, and from her mother, she learned a lesson no school could teach: survival was the first education. And if you had charm, wit, and ruthlessness in equal measure, you could rewrite your fate-even if the ink was blood.

Every evening, Aisha sat by her mother's side as deals were made over steaming bowls of yam porridge and bottles of Star beer. There, she picked up whispers-of trucks that crossed borders at night, of goods that never saw customs, of women who were both respected and feared. She didn't know it yet, but Mushin wasn't just her birthplace. It was her crucible. And from its chaos, a queen would rise-wrapped not in royal robes but in the shadows of ambition and crime.