Chapter 24 Zainab
ZAINAB
The smell of turkey bacon and pancakes filled the beach house kitchen.
I moved through the motions on autopilot—flipping, seasoning, plating—the same way I’d done a thousand times at Grits. Cooking was the only thing keeping me sane right now. The only thing stopping me from crawling out of my skin with worry.
Prime had left two hours ago. Didn’t say where. Just kissed my forehead, told me to stay with Mehar, and disappeared into the gray December morning.
I hated not knowing. But I trusted him. Had to.
“Something smells amazing.”
Mehar shuffled into the kitchen, wrapped in one of Prime’s oversized robes. The swelling in her face had gone down overnight, but the bruises were darker now. Purple and black spreading across her cheekbone like spilled ink.
“Sit.” I gestured toward the breakfast bar. “Food’s almost ready.”
She eased onto the stool with a wince, still moving like everything hurt. Which it probably did.
I slid a plate in front of her—pancakes, turkey bacon, scrambled eggs with cheese. Real food. The kind of meal she probably hadn’t had in years, living with a man who controlled every aspect of her existence.
“Eat,” I said. “You need your strength.”
She picked up her fork, took a tentative bite, and her eyes fluttered closed. “Oh my God.”
“Good?”
“I forgot food could taste like this.” She took another bite, then another, eating like someone who’d been starving. Which, in a way, she had been.
I poured us both coffee and settled onto the stool beside her. For a few minutes, we just sat there in comfortable silence. Two sisters who’d been through hell, finally in the same room, finally safe.
“So.” Mehar set down her fork and looked at me with curious eyes. “This man of yours. The one with the mansion and the beach house and the fancy cars.”
“What about him?”
“How did you meet?”
I sipped my coffee, buying time. How much could I tell her? How much should I tell her?
“He came into Grits,” I lied. There was no way I could tell her the truth. He popped up in my house with a threat.
“And?”
“And he kept coming back. He was… persistent.”
“Persistent can be dangerous.” Mehar’s voice had gone quiet and serious. “Ahmad was persistent too. He pressured our father for marriage and now look at me.”
I reached over and squeezed her hand. “Prime isn’t like that. He’s protective, not controlling. There’s a difference.”
“Is there?”
“Yes.” I met her eyes. “He doesn’t tell me what to wear. Doesn’t isolate me from people. Doesn’t need to know where I am every second.” I paused. “And when he found out what Baba did to me and Zahara… he’s the reason our father is in that hospital bed.”
Mehar’s eyebrows shot up. “He did that? Put Baba in the hospital?”
“Yes.”
A long silence. Then, slowly, a smile spread across Mehar’s battered face.
“Then he’s okay with me.”
I laughed—a real laugh, the first one in days. “Yeah. He’s okay.”
We moved to the living room after breakfast, curling up on opposite ends of the massive sectional with our coffee cups. The view through the floor-to-ceiling windows was stunning—gray water, gray sky, the occasional seagull cutting through the mist.
“Tell me about your life,” Mehar said. “The real version. Not the one Baba told us, about how you and Zahara were living in sin somewhere, corrupted by the West.”
The mention of Zahara’s name sent a familiar ache through my chest. But I pushed through it.
“I own a business now. Sweet Zin. Dessert catering.” I pulled out my phone and showed her the Instagram page—photos of cinnamon rolls, event setups, happy customers. “Started at farmers markets. Now I do corporate events, galas, private parties.”
“Zainab.” Mehar scrolled through the photos, her eyes wide. “This is incredible. You built this yourself?”
“With help.” I thought about Prime. The commercial kitchen he’d built for me.
The PR firm he’d hired after the gala incident—quietly, without fanfare, just handling it the way he handled everything.
Within forty-eight hours, the narrative had shifted from “roach in cinnamon roll” to “possible sabotage of Black-owned business.” The firm was worth every penny. “But yeah. It’s mine.”
“I’m so proud of you.” Mehar’s voice cracked. “You and Zahara—you got out. You made something of yourselves. While I just…” She trailed off, staring at her hands.
“Hey.” I scooted closer, tilting her chin up. “You survived. That’s not nothing. And now you’re out too. You get to start over.”
“Start over doing what? I don’t have any skills. Ahmad made sure of that. No education. No work experience. I don’t even know how to drive.”
“You know how to cook. Baba made sure all of us knew that much.” I squeezed her hand. “Work for me. At Sweet Zin. I’ll teach you everything else.”
Her eyes went wide. “Really? You’d do that?”
“You’re my sister. Of course I would.” I smiled. “Besides, I need someone I can trust. Someone who won’t—”
I stopped. The image of Farah’s smirking face flashed through my mind. The roach. The sabotage. The slap that had felt so satisfying and cost me so much.
“Won’t what?” Mehar asked.
“Nothing.” I shook it off. “Just… I need good people around me. And you’re good people.”
Mehar threw her arms around me, squeezing tight despite the pain it probably caused her bruised body. “Thank you, Zainab. Thank you.”
I held her close, breathing in the familiar scent of my sister. My family. The only family I had any connection to except—
Yusef.
The thought hit me like a punch to the gut.
While I sat here in this beautiful beach house, eating pancakes and making plans, my nephew was somewhere with Rashid. Being molded. Being broken. Being turned into something he was never meant to be.
Was he okay? Was he eating? Was he scared?
Of course he was scared. He was twelve years old, ripped from his bed in the middle of the night by men who thought brutality was the same as love.
I pulled back from Mehar’s embrace, blinking away the tears that had sprung up without warning.
“Zainab? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” I forced a smile. “Just thinking about someone.”
“The boy? Yusef?” Mehar had heard enough over the past twenty-four hours to piece things together. “Prime will get him back. You said so yourself.”
“I know.” I stared out at the gray water, wondering where Prime was right now. What he was doing. Whether he was any closer to bringing Yusef home. “I know he will.”
I just hoped it would be soon.
Before there was nothing left of my nephew to save.