Chapter 6 Prime
PRIME
The drive to the penthouse was quiet as hell.
Nobody said shit. Yusef was in the backseat staring out the window, probably replaying every traumatic thing he’d witnessed today on a loop in his head. Zainab sat in the passenger seat clutching that duffel bag against her chest like it was gonna protect her from something, eyes fixed on nothing.
And me? I was thinking about murder.
Not the kind I’d already committed. Nah. The kind I was planning.
Shamir Ali.
That nigga’s name had been running through my head on repeat ever since Zainab finished telling me everything.
Every red light. Every mile marker. Every silent minute in this car.
I kept seeing it—those two sixteen-year-old girls, beaten bloody by their own father.
Thrown out into the streets like they wasn’t his flesh and blood.
Their hymens checked like they was cattle at an auction while that sick muhfucka stood there and watched.
What kind of man does that to his own daughters?
I thought about my own fucked up childhood.
About Vivica and all her manipulative bullshit.
About the beatings I caught from niggas in the neighborhood who thought I was soft because I was fat and stuttered.
About crushing Tre’s skull with that padlock when I was thirteen because I didn’t know no other way to make the pain stop.
My mother was a terrible person. Cold. Calculating. Self-serving to her core. That woman would sell her own kids out for a political advantage and not lose a minute of sleep.
But she never did no shit like what Shamir did.
Nah. That nigga was a different breed of monster. The kind that hid behind religion and tradition to justify his evil. The kind that broke his own children and called it discipline. The kind that needed to be put down like the rabid dog he was.
I wasn’t gonna tell Zainab. She’d try to stop me. Try to talk me out of it with some speech about how revenge wasn’t worth it, how we needed to focus on the future, how her father wasn’t worth the trouble.
But that’s where she was wrong.
He was worth exactly the amount of trouble it would take for me to find his ass and make him pay for what he did. To her. To Zahara, who was dead now because of the chain of events he set in motion when he threw them out that night.
I’d handle it quietly. Efficiently. The way I handled everything else.
She didn’t need to know. And she damn sure couldn’t stop me even if she wanted to.
I pulled into my parking spot and killed the engine.
“We’re here.”
Wasn’t shit else to say.
The penthouse was too quiet when we walked in.
Yusef shuffled in behind me, his bag hanging off one shoulder, looking around like he wasn’t sure if he was allowed to be here. Even though he’d stayed here before. Even though I’d told him a dozen times this was his space too.
Zainab came in last. Still wouldn’t look at me. Just kept her eyes on the floor, shoulders hunched, moving like she was waiting for me to explode on her.
Good. She should be waiting.
I was still mad as fuck. But my anger had a new target now, and it wasn’t the woman standing in my living room looking like a scared rabbit.
“Y’all hungry?” I asked, breaking the silence.
Yusef shrugged. “I could eat.”
Zainab shook her head, her voice barely above a whisper. “I’m gonna take a shower, if that’s okay. I just… I need a minute.”
“Go ahead. You know where everything is.”
She nodded, still avoiding my eyes, and disappeared down the hall. A few seconds later I heard the water turn on.
I looked at Yusef. Lil man was standing by the windows, staring out at the Potomac, his reflection ghostly against the glass. Shoulders slumped. Head down. Carrying weight no twelve-year-old should have to carry.
“Yo.” I walked over and stood next to him. “Come sit down. We need to chop it up.”
His whole body went stiff. I saw the fear flash across his face before he tried to mask it. This kid had been through too much. And I felt for him.
We sat on the sectional, him on one end, me on the other. Gave him enough space so he didn’t feel cornered.
“You’re safe here,” I said. “You know that, right?”
He nodded, but his eyes was wary. Guarded.
“Nah, I need you to really hear me, lil man.” I leaned forward, elbows on my knees, looking him dead in the face.
“Whatever happens between me and your aunt—however that plays out—it don’t change nothing between us.
You feel me? You’re safe. I ain’t gonna let shit happen to you.
Not ’Shid. Not Meech. Not nobody. You understand what I’m telling you? ”
His bottom lip trembled. Just for a second. Then he pulled it together, the way kids do when they’ve learned too young that showing weakness gets you hurt.
“I feel bad,” he said quietly. “About lying to you.”
“I know you do.”
“It wasn’t—” He stopped, swallowed hard. “I was doing it to protect her. My aunt. She was lying to protect me. And I was lying to protect her. It’s just…” He shrugged, looking down at his hands. “It’s been like that for so long. Since my mom died. It’s the only way we knew how to stay alive.”
My chest got tight. This fucking kid, talking about survival strategies like it was normal. Like every twelve-year-old had to learn how to keep secrets that could get people killed.
“I feel you,” I said. “More than you know.”
Yusef looked up at me. Really looked at me for the first time since we walked in. “You do?”
“Yeah.” I held his gaze, let him see I wasn’t bullshitting. “I’ve done things. Been places. Carried secrets that could bury me six feet deep if they ever came out. So I understand why y’all did what you did. I ain’t saying it was right. But I understand the why behind it.”
He nodded, some of the tension leaving his shoulders.
“But check it.” I kept my voice firm. Not harsh, but firm.
“The lies stop here. Whatever happens from now on, you don’t hide shit from me.
Either of you. Because I will find out. I always find out.
And it’s better for everybody if I hear it from your mouth than if I gotta discover it on my own. We clear?”
“Yeah.” His voice was small but steady. “I promise.”
“That’s what I’m talking about.” I reached over and squeezed his shoulder. “Now go figure out what you wanna eat. There’s food in the fridge, or we can order whatever. Your call.”
He actually cracked a little smile. “Can we get pizza?”
“We can get whatever you want, lil man.”
He headed toward the kitchen, already pulling out his phone to look up spots, and I sat back against the couch.
One conversation down.
One more to go.
The shower helped clear my head.
I stood under the hot water for a minute, letting it beat against my scalp, my shoulders, the tension I’d been carrying in my back all day. The steam filled up the bathroom, fogging the mirrors, and I just breathed.
My locs was heavy with water, hanging past my shoulders. I’d been slacking on the maintenance—too much other shit going on to sit down and handle them proper. They was starting to look rough.
When I finally got out and wrapped a towel around my waist, Zainab was waiting in the hallway.
She’d changed into one of my shirts—an old joint I’d had forever, soft from years of washing. It hung past her thighs, swallowing her thick frame. Hair wrapped up in a silk scarf. Face scrubbed clean, no makeup, and her eyes was red and puffy like she’d been crying in the shower.
Probably had been.
“I was wondering,” she said, her voice soft and uncertain, “if you’d let me retwist your locs.”
I raised an eyebrow. “You know how to do that?”
“I used to do my sister’s all the time. Before…” She trailed off, pain flickering across her face. “I’m good at it. And it looks like you could use it.”
“Aight,” I said. “Let me throw some clothes on.”
Twenty minutes later, I was sitting on the floor between her legs, my back against the couch, a jar of my loc gel open on the coffee table. Yusef was knocked out in the guest room, pizza demolished, dead to the world.
And Zainab’s fingers was in my hair.
She worked slow. Methodical. Starting at the base of my neck and moving forward, separating each loc, applying the gel, twisting with hands that knew exactly what they was doing. Her touch was gentle but confident. Like she’d done this a thousand times before.
“I’m sorry,” she said quietly, fingers never stopping. “I know I keep saying it. And I know words don’t mean much after everything. But I am. I’m so sorry, Prime.”
I didn’t say nothing. Just let her work. Let her fingers move through my hair. Let the intimacy of the moment settle over us.
“I know I got a lot of baggage,” she continued. “Drama that would make most niggas run for the hills. And I wouldn’t blame you if you decided I wasn’t worth all this trouble. That’s what I kept telling myself, actually. That’s why I couldn’t tell you the truth.”
Her voice got thick.
“Because I was so sure that once you knew everything—once you saw how fucked up my life really is, how broken I am—you’d bounce. And I couldn’t take that. I couldn’t watch you leave. So I figured if I kept you at a distance, kept hiding behind the lies, at least I could control when the end came.”
Her fingers paused in my hair. I felt her take a shaky breath.
“I was stonewalling because I thought if I pushed you away first, it wouldn’t hurt as bad when you finally realized I wasn’t worth the effort. But I was wrong.” Her voice cracked. “Pushing you away hurt worse than anything. And now…”
She didn’t finish. Didn’t need to.
I reached up and caught her hand. Brought it down where I could see it—her fingers still shiny with loc gel—and pressed my lips against her palm. Soft. Deliberate.
“You know why I call you Goddess?”
She sniffed. “No.”
I shifted around so I was facing her. Her legs was still on either side of me, and I rested my hands on her thighs, looking up into those brown eyes that had been fucking with my head since the first day I saw her.