Faye sat at the piano in her father’s house, running scales she had learned when she was nine. The same piano. The same room with the tall windows that looked out on the garden her mother had planted before she died. The same house she had sworn never to return to after the argument — the one about music, about wasting her life, about the ultimatum he gave her to quit or leave.

But she had come back. Not because she missed it. Because her EP dropped in six hours, and something in her needed to be here when it happened. Not to prove him wrong. Just to remind herself that this house was real, that the argument was real, and that the song she wrote about it was the truest thing she had ever made.

Her phone sat on the piano bench beside her. Frosh: 31 million. KZ: 19 million. The bar kept rising, each number heavier than the last. She wasn’t competing with them. She knew that. But her body didn’t. Her hands were sweating on the keys.

The scales stopped sounding like scales and started sounding like *Father’s Daughter* — the melody she had written herself, not Dayo, her own chords about the piano and the ultimatum and the door she walked out of. She played the opening bars and heard her father’s footsteps pause in the hallway behind her.

She didn’t turn around. She just kept playing.

He stood there for a long moment. She could feel him in the doorway — the weight of his presence, the same weight that had pressed down on her for twenty-one years. Then he walked in and sat in the chair across from the piano, the one her mother used to sit in.

"You wrote that ?" he asked trying to mask the surprise on his face.

"I wrote it."

He was quiet. She kept playing, her fingers finding the bridge, the part where the song turned from anger into something softer. Gratitude, maybe. Or just the truth that he had loved her in his own broken way.

"I heard the other songs too," he said. "The ones that man wrote for you. They’re good. Professional. But this one..." He paused. "This one made me understand what I was afraid of."

Faye’s fingers stopped. She looked at him for the first time. His face was older than she remembered from six months ago. More lines around the eyes. More gray in the hair. He looked like a man who had spent months sitting in this room, listening to the piano nobody played.

"I wasn’t trying to crush your dream," he said. "I was trying to protect you from failing. Because I failed once. I wanted to be a musician. Before you were born. Before the shipping business. I had a guitar and three songs and I was going to be great." He smiled, but it was sad. "I failed. And I spent my life making sure you never had to feel that."

Faye turned back to the keys. She played the last four bars of *Father’s Daughter*, the resolution, the part where the daughter stops asking for permission and just sings.

"You didn’t fail," she said quietly. "You just sang in the wrong room."

Her father’s eyes were wet when she looked up. He didn’t cry. He just nodded, once, and stood up. He walked to the door and paused with his hand on the frame.

"Sing loud enough so that the world hear you," he said. "This time, I’ll listen and by your side."

Then he was gone. Faye sat at the piano with her hands in her lap, feeling something loosen in her chest that had been tight for as long as she could remember.

At 9 PM, she drove to Admiralty Way. The studio was already alive Amara stretching in the corner, KZ bouncing his knee, Frosh scrolling through numbers on his phone, Tunde reading the newspaper that had KZ’s face on page three. They looked up when she walked in, and something in their expressions told her that the energy had shifted. This wasn’t the first drop anymore, or the second. This was the third, and the machine was proven.

"Your father’s house," Amara said, reading her face. "How was it?"

"He heard the song," Faye said. "Track four. He understood."

Amara didn’t ask what that meant. She just nodded and handed Faye a cup of tea after all they were girls and she told her all about her inspiration.

Akin dimmed the lights at 10:30 PM. They sat in the circle he five of them, plus Zara, who had shown up unannounced and was sitting in the back with her arms crossed like a bodyguard. The producers were behind the board. The red recording light was off. This was just listening.

Akin hit play.

*Free Mind* filled the room. Faye’s voice first, introspective and quiet, singing about the thoughts that wouldn’t stop. Then the second verse, where Sarah’s harmony entered underneath her two female voices weaving together, not competing, completing. The bridge where they traded lines like a conversation between two women who understood each other’s silences. By the time the song ended, Zara was crying in the back and Faye’s own eyes were burning.

*Saturday Nights* played next. Guitar-driven, diary-entry honest. A song about being alone in a room full of people.

*Best Part* followed. Soulful. Humid. The kind of song that made you think about the one person who saw you when nobody else did.

Then *Father’s Daughter*.

The piano started. The same chords Faye had played in her father’s living room six hours ago. Her voice entered, and this time it wasn’t Dayo’s polished writing. It was hers. About the argument. About the ultimatum. About the door she walked out of. About the piano her mother left behind. About the father who loved her by trying to control her, and the daughter who finally stopped asking for permission to sing.

The room went completely still. KZ was staring at the floor. Frosh had his hand over his mouth. Amara was blinking fast, holding something back. Tunde’s newspaper was folded in his lap, forgotten. And Zara ....Zara was sobbing openly in the back, her arms no longer crossed, her hands covering her face.

Faye didn’t look at them. She stared at the mixing board and listened to herself sing the bridge the part where the anger dissolved into something like forgiveness. Not for him. For herself. For finally understanding that she could love her father and still choose her own voice.

The song ended. Nobody moved. Nobody breathed. Then Zara sniffed loudly from the back, and everyone laughed. It broke the tension like glass.

"Track four," KZ said quietly. "Again."

Akin played it again. This time, Faye looked at her friends her real family, the one she had built in this studio and saw them listening to her truth. Her words. Her story. Not Dayo’s. Hers.

*Need U* closed the EP. A quiet confession about wanting something she was afraid to name.

When it ended, the lights came up. Faye felt lighter than she had in months. Years, maybe. The song was out of her now. It existed in the world, and she didn’t have to carry it alone anymore.

"Midnight," Akin said. "You’re live."

They posted. Amara put up a story of Faye at the piano, captioned: *"My sister @faye just dropped BLOOM. Listen to track four. Then call your father."* KZ shared the link with a one-word caption: *"Real."* Frosh posted a video of himself listening to *Father’s Daughter* with his eyes closed, captioned: *"Faye wrote this herself. and believe i learnt a lot ."* Even Tunde posted — a photograph of the EP cover with the words: *"She stopped asking for permission. Listen to what that sounds like."*

Faye posted last. Just the cover art and five words: *BLOOM. Out now. Track four.*

The first hour was different from Frosh’s explosion and KZ’s emotional climb. It was quieter but deeper. The save rate was immediate people adding *Father’s Daughter* to personal playlists within minutes of hearing it. Not viral in the explosive sense. Viral in the whispered sense. The way secrets spread between women who recognized themselves in the lyrics.

By hour three, *Father’s Daughter* had appeared on a dozen "healing" playlists. By hour five, it was on "breakup" and "independent women" and "songs for daughters" compilations across three continents. The female audience claimed her not as a pop star, but as a voice that understood.

By morning, the numbers had multiplied in a way that made Akin frown at his screen.

"The save-to-share ratio is higher than anything I’ve seen," he said. "People aren’t just listening. They’re keeping it. They’re returning."

Faye stood on the balcony of her father’s house at dawn. The garden below was beginning to bloom her mother’s flowers, the ones that came back every year without permission. She looked at her phone. The numbers were climbing. A text from Zara: *"Dad hasn’t left his study. He’s been listening to track four on repeat. I can hear it through the door."*

Faye didn’t reply. She just saved the message and watched the sun come up over the gate.

Her phone rang.

She answered. "Hello?"

"Track four," Dayo said. Same voice. Same calm. Same weight. "That’s why they stayed. You wrote that. Not me. Remember that."

Faye felt the tears come. Not dramatically. Just two of them, sliding down her cheeks while she smiled. "I remember," she whispered.

"Keep writing," Dayo said. "You don’t need me for your truth. You just needed a microphone."

Click. The line went dead.

Faye lowered the phone. Amara, who had been recording from the doorway, lowered hers too. She didn’t ask permission. She just posted the clip Faye on the balcony, tears on her face, the garden behind her, Dayo’s voice still echoing in the air.

By the end of week two, *BLOOM* had cleared 24 million streams. Higher than KZ, driven by women who saved *Father’s Daughter* and played it for their mothers, their sisters, their fathers. Faye was no longer the girl who argued with her father at a piano. She was the artist who sang about it and made him listen.

She went back to Admiralty Way on day six. The others were there, working on their own projects. She sat at the piano in the lounge a different piano, in a different room and played the opening bars of *Father’s Daughter* just to remind herself where it came from.

Frosh walked in and stopped when he heard it. He didn’t say anything. He just leaned against the door and listened until she finished.

"Your father heard that?" he asked.

"He heard it," Faye said.

"What did he do?"

Faye looked at her hands on the keys. "He listened," she said. "For the first time in my life, he really listened."

Frosh nodded. He understood. Not because he had the same father. But because he had the same prayer. The same waiting. The same miracle of finally being heard. Heard by the world since he had no parent.

Faye closed the piano and stood up. She walked to the window and looked out at Lagos the same city where she had once felt small enough to disappear. She didn’t feel small anymore. She felt like a garden that had finally, after years of waiting, decided to bloom.

(A/N: Shameless author asking for Golden Ticket 🎟 it doubles during this period so if I get up to ten one extra Chapter )