Chapter 28 Prime
PRIME
The Tahoe was ass-up in the drainage ditch, front end crumpled against an embankment, steam hissing from the busted radiator.
I pulled the Bentayga onto the shoulder and killed the engine. Checked my Glock. Full magazine. One in the chamber. More than enough for what needed to happen.
The night was quiet out here. No streetlights. No traffic. Just trees and darkness and the distant hum of the highway we’d left behind. The perfect place for this.
I walked toward the wreck, gravel crunching under my shoes, and saw movement through the shattered windshield.
Zoo was alive.
He was trying to crawl out of the driver’s side window, blood streaming from a wound in his shoulder where one of Mehar’s bullets had found its mark. Glass crunched beneath him as he dragged himself onto the dirt, his right hand reaching for something on the ground.
His gun. It had been thrown from the car on impact. Lay about three feet away from his outstretched fingers.
I let him get close.
Let him think he had a chance.
His fingertips brushed the grip—
I fired.
The bullet tore through his hand, turning fingers into a red mess of bone and tissue. He screamed—a raw, animal sound—and collapsed onto his back, clutching the ruined hand to his chest.
“Fuck!” He was gasping, writhing in the dirt, blood pooling beneath him. “FUCK!”
I stood over him. Watched him struggle. Felt… something.
Not guilt. Not regret. But acknowledgment.
This was a father who’d lost his son. A man consumed by grief, driven to violence by the same love that made me willing to kill for Zainab and Yusef. In another life, under different circumstances, I might’ve understood him. Might’ve even respected the loyalty that pushed him this far.
But he’d threatened my family.
And that was unforgivable.
“You know why this is happening,” I said calmly.
Zoo glared up at me, teeth bared, his good hand still pressed against the destroyed one. “Fuck you. That little nigga killed my son. MY SON.”
“Your son was a bully. He put hands on a kid half his size for months. Took his money. Humiliated him. Made his life hell.” I crouched down, keeping the Glock trained on his chest. “Yusef did what he had to do to survive. Same thing I would’ve done.
None of this would’ve happened if you’d raised him better. ”
“Don’t you talk about how I raised my boy.” Zoo’s voice was pure venom, even through the pain. “You don’t know shit about—”
“I know he’s dead because he couldn’t leave a quiet kid alone. I know you’ve been hunting a woman and a child instead of looking in the mirror.” I tilted my head. “I know you should’ve taught him that actions have consequences. Maybe he’d still be alive.”
Zoo spat blood at my feet. “Brick City Crew is gonna know ’bout dis. They gon’ come for you.”
I smiled.
“Then I’ll send them to meet you.”
Zoo’s eyes widened slightly. The first crack in his defiance. He’d expected the threat to land. Expected me to hesitate.
He didn’t know who he was dealing with.
“At least you’ll get to see your son again.” I raised the Glock, aimed at the center of his forehead. “Tell Nigel I said hey.”
I pulled the trigger.
The shot echoed through the empty night. Zoo’s body jerked once, then went still. A dark pool spread beneath his head, black in the moonlight, soaking into the dirt.
I stood there for a moment. Listening to the silence. Feeling the weight of what I’d just done settle into my bones.
Another body. Another name on the list of men I’d put in the ground.
It didn’t keep me up at night anymore. Maybe it should have. Maybe that made me a monster. But monsters were useful when you had people worth protecting.
And I had people worth protecting.
I pulled out my phone and dialed Pharaoh.
He picked up on the second ring. “P. What you need?”
“I need a tow truck. Miller Road, about two miles past the Banks Reserve warehouse. Tahoe in a ditch. Needs to disappear.”
“Body?”
“One. I’ll handle it. Just need the vehicle gone.”
“Give me forty-five minutes. Damn nigga, I just moved a whip for you.”
“You know how it is.”
I hung up and got to work.
Zoo wasn’t a big man, but dead weight was dead weight. I dragged him to the Bentayga, popped the trunk, and folded him inside with the efficiency of someone who’d done this too many times to count. Grabbed a tarp from the emergency kit and wrapped him up. Didn’t want blood on the interior.
By the time I was done, my shirt was stained and my hands were slick. I wiped them on the tarp and closed the trunk.
Checked my phone. No messages from Zainab. Good. She was following instructions.
I drove the half mile to the warehouse, punched in the code, and pulled inside. The Acura was parked near the back, looking rough—shattered rear window, missing mirror, cracked windshield. But intact. Functional.
A door opened at the far end—the office that was used for late nights when shipments came in. Zainab stepped out first, then Mehar behind her. Both of them wide-eyed. Both of them alive.
The ladies were safe.
I barely made it three steps before Zainab was running toward me. I caught her in my arms, lifted her off her feet, crushed my mouth against hers like I’d been drowning and she was oxygen.
“You’re okay,” she breathed against my lips. “You’re okay.”
“I’m okay.” I set her down but didn’t let go. Couldn’t let go. “Are you hurt? Either of you?”
“Just shaken up.” She pulled back slightly, her eyes scanning my face, my shirt, the blood I knew was visible even in the dim light. “Is he…?”
“Handled.”
She didn’t ask for details. Didn’t need them. Just nodded and pressed her forehead against my chest.
“Um, hello? I’m still here.”
We both turned. Mehar was standing in the office doorway, arms crossed, a strange expression on her face. Not fear. Not horror. Something else entirely.
“Sorry,” Zainab said, pulling away from me slightly. “Mehar, are you—”
“That was INSANE.” Mehar’s eyes were bright. Almost feverish. “I just shot at a moving car. I emptied an entire clip at a man trying to kill us. And I HIT him. Multiple times.”
She was grinning. Actually grinning.
“I’ve never felt anything like that,” she continued, pushing off from the car and walking toward us. “My whole life, I’ve been told to be quiet. To be small. To submit. And tonight I just…” She mimed holding the gun, pulling the trigger. “I fought BACK. I protected us.”
Zainab looked at me with concern in her eyes. I understood why. This wasn’t the reaction of a traumatized woman. This was something else. Something awakening.
“You did good,” I told Mehar. “Kept your head. Hit your targets. That’s not easy, especially under pressure.”
“Can you teach me more?” She stepped closer, that manic energy still crackling around her. “I want to learn. Self-defense. Shooting. All of it. I never want to feel helpless again.”
“Mehar…” Zainab started.
“I’m serious.” Mehar turned to her sister, and beneath the excitement, I saw something harder.
Something forged in years of abuse and silence.
“Ahmad took everything from me. My freedom. My confidence. My sense of self. Tonight, for the first time in my life, I took something back.” She looked at me again. “I want more of that.”
I studied her for a long moment. Saw the hunger in her eyes. The anger that had been buried for so long it had turned into something else entirely.
Dangerous. That’s what she wanted to be. Maybe she already was.
“We’ll talk about it,” I said carefully. “But right now, we need to get out of here.”
Mehar nodded, seemingly satisfied with that answer for now. She climbed into the back of the Bentayga without another word.
Zainab lingered, her hand on my chest, her eyes searching mine.
“What?” I asked.
“Nothing. Just…” She shook her head. “Thank you. For coming. For handling it. For being you.”
“Always.” I kissed her forehead. “Now let’s get you home.”
We climbed into the Bentayga—Zainab in the passenger seat, Mehar in the back—and I pulled out of the warehouse into the dark night.
In the trunk, Zoo’s body cooled beneath the tarp.
Behind us, somewhere on Miller Road, Pharaoh was probably already hooking up the Tahoe.
That was one loose end, but now the real work would begin. I needed to start this war with Rashid. And that began with kidnapping that crazy bitch, Farah.