Chapter 30 Zainab
ZAINAB
Mehar was giving me a whole TED Talk and I didn’t remember buying a ticket.
She’d been pacing Prime’s living room for the past hour, barefoot, wearing a path into his expensive-ass rug like she was training for a marathon.
Her hands were moving like she was conducting an orchestra, and her eyes had that wild look that reminded me of those true crime documentaries where the neighbor says “she always seemed so quiet.”
“You should’ve SEEN me, Zainab.” She spun around, damn near knocking over a lamp.
“I was like…I was like a whole different person. The gun in my hands, the bullets flying, the glass shattering everywhere…” She made explosion sounds with her mouth like a five-year-old playing Call of Duty.
“I’ve never felt anything like that. NEVER.
My whole life I’ve been told to shut up, sit down, cover up, submit, submit, submit. And the other night I just—”
“Mehar.” I held up my hands in what I hoped was a calming gesture. “Girl. You need to breathe. Sit your ass down. Drink some water. Something.”
“I don’t WANT water.” She laughed, and okay, that laugh? That laugh was giving unhinged. Giving Harley Quinn origin story. Giving “I’d like to speak to the manager but make it violent.”
I’d wanted my sister to find her strength. To stop being Ahmad’s punching bag. To channel her inner Khaleesi and burn that whole situation to the ground.
But this? This was giving… a lot.
“I want to feel like that AGAIN,” she continued, still pacing. “Powerful. In control. For ONCE in my miserable life, I was the one calling the shots. Do you understand what that’s like? After everything Ahmad did to me? After years of being his maid, his cook, his punching bag, his—”
She stopped. Her jaw tightened. Something dark flickered across her face.
“His what?” I asked quietly.
She didn’t answer. Just started pacing again, but the energy had shifted. Gone was the manic excitement. In its place was something colder. Harder.
Something that made my stomach clench.
I’d wished for this so much. For her to find strength. To help her fight back. To turn her from a victim into a survivor. For her to escape.
But the thing about wishes is, sometimes they come true in ways you didn’t expect. And sometimes what rises from the ashes isn’t a phoenix—it’s something else entirely.
The elevator chimed.
Prime walked in looking like he’d been through something. His shoulders were tight, his jaw was set, and he had that look in his eyes that said “don’t ask questions you don’t want answers to.”
“It’s time,” he said. No hello. No how y’all doing. Just straight to business.
Mehar stopped pacing. “Time for what?”
“Ahmad.” He looked at me, then at her. “If y’all want to handle that situation, it has to happen today. We got bigger problems coming, and I need this wrapped up before I move on Rashid.”
Mehar went still. And then—Lord help me—she smiled. Not a normal smile. Not a “oh good news” smile. This was the smile of a woman who’d been waiting her whole life to get off the leash.
“Today,” she repeated, tasting the word. “Today is perfect.”
“How do we know he’ll be home?” I asked, trying to be the practical one since clearly nobody else was going to.
“Because I know that man’s schedule better than he knows himself.
” Mehar’s voice had gone flat. Cold. “Thursday is his day off from the factory. He stays home. Prays. Reads his little hotep books. Does his exercises.” Her lip curled.
“He’ll be alone. He’s ALWAYS alone on Thursdays.
Didn’t trust me to leave the house without permission, but he never wanted me around when he was ‘communing with Allah.’”
The way she said that last part—the venom dripping off every syllable—made me realize I’d only scratched the surface of what my sister had been through.
Prime nodded once. “Then let’s move.”
The drive to Baltimore took about an hour, and it was the quietest hour of my life.
Mehar sat in the backseat, still as a statue, staring out the window.
But she wasn’t seeing the highway. She wasn’t seeing anything in the present.
She was somewhere else—somewhere in the past, reliving every slap, every punch, every night she’d spent crying into her pillow while her husband snored beside her, satisfied with whatever he’d taken from her.
I wanted to reach back and grab her hand. Tell her it was gonna be okay. But honestly? I wasn’t sure it was. Wasn’t sure any of this was gonna be okay.
Prime drove in silence, jaw tight, eyes on the road. He’d given me a gun before we left—smaller than the Glock Mehar had turned into her new best friend—and it sat in my purse like a brick. Heavy. Waiting.
I didn’t know if I’d need to use it. Didn’t know if I COULD use it.
But I was about to find out.
Ahmad’s house was one of those boring two-story joints in a boring neighborhood where everybody minded their business. The kind of street where you could scream and nobody would call the cops because “we don’t get involved in domestic disputes.”
Perfect for a man who liked to keep his sins behind closed doors.
Prime parked down the block. We walked up like we belonged there—three people on a casual afternoon visit, nothing to see here, definitely not about to commit multiple felonies.
Mehar had the key. Ahmad’s arrogant ass had never changed the locks. Probably thought she’d come crawling back eventually, begging for forgiveness, ready to resume her position as his personal property.
He thought wrong.
The door swung open without a sound. The house was dim, curtains pulled tight against the afternoon sun. And I could hear… sounds. Coming from the living room. Rhythmic sounds. Grunting sounds.
Oh no.
Oh NO.
Please, Lord, don’t let this be what I think it is.
Mehar walked toward the noise. Prime and I followed. And there, in all his pathetic glory, was Ahmad.
Sitting on his leather couch.
Pants around his ankles.
Hand wrapped around his… okay, I’m being generous calling it a hand’s worth.
Eyes closed. Mouth open. Making sounds that would haunt my nightmares for years to come.
This man was sitting in his living room at 2pm on a Thursday, beating his meat like it owed him money.
“Wow.” Mehar’s voice sliced through the silence like a machete. “And here I thought you couldn’t possibly be more disgusting. But you just keep finding new ways to disappoint me.”
Ahmad’s eyes flew open.
For a solid three seconds, his brain just… buffered. You could practically see the loading wheel spinning behind his eyes. His wife. In his living room. With two strangers. While he was mid-stroke on his sad little situation.
Then the rage kicked in.
“WHAT THE FUCK—” He scrambled to pull up his pants, his face twisting with fury. “MEHAR! HOW DARE YOU brING PEOPLE INTO MY—”
“Shut up.” She pulled the gun from her waistband and aimed it at his chest.
Ahmad froze. Pants still half-down. Dick still half-out. Looking like the world’s most pathetic screensaver.
“What—what are you—”
“I said shut UP.” Mehar’s voice was ice. Antarctica ice. “You don’t get to talk right now. You don’t get to yell. You don’t get to tell me what to do EVER again.” She gestured with the gun. “Pull your pants up. You look pathetic.”
He didn’t move. Just stood there, trembling, eyes bouncing between Mehar and Prime and me like a pinball machine of panic.
Prime didn’t even look at him. Just leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed.
“You heard her.”
Ahmad fumbled with his pants, trying to yank them up from around his ankles like he’d forgotten how legs worked. His hands were shaking so bad he couldn’t get the zipper. Couldn’t work the belt. Just stood there half-dressed, pathetic, trembling.
“Mehar, my wife, you need to listen to me—”
“I’m not your wife anymore.” She stepped closer, gun steady as a surgeon’s hand. “I stopped being your wife the second I walked out that door. The only reason I’m back is to make sure you understand EXACTLY what happens to men like you.”
“Men like me?” His voice cracked. “I am your HUSBAND. I have provided for you. Protected you. Given you a home, a life, everything a woman could—”
“You gave me NOTHING.” Mehar’s composure cracked, just for a second, and I saw the wounded girl underneath. The girl who’d been broken and rebuilt wrong. “You took everything FROM me. My freedom. My dignity. My family. My BODY.”
She said those last two words with so much venom that my stomach dropped.
My body.
I knew Ahmad was abusive. Knew he beat her. Controlled her. But the way she said that…
“Mehar.” My voice came out quiet. “What did he do to you?”
She didn’t look at me. Kept her eyes locked on Ahmad, who had gone gray.
“Tell her.” Mehar’s voice was deadly calm.
“Tell my sister what you did to me every night. Whether I wanted it or not. Tell her how you’d pin me down and take what you wanted because you thought it was your RIGHT.
Tell her how you’d quote Quran afterward, tell me I should be grateful, tell me it was my DUTY as a wife to submit. ”
Submit.
The word hung in the air like smoke.
Rape. He’d raped her. My little sister. For YEARS.
Something cold and sharp crystallized in my chest. Something that felt a whole lot like murder.
“That’s not—” Ahmad held up his hands, his voice going soft and reasonable like he was about to give a lecture. “Sister, please, you must understand. In Islam, a wife is obligated to—”
“Don’t you DARE.”
Mehar lunged forward and cracked the butt of the gun across his face so hard I felt it in MY teeth.
Blood sprayed. Teeth clattered. Ahmad spun like a top and crumpled to his knees, hands flying up to his face, crying out like the little bitch he was.
“Don’t you DARE speak to me about Islam.” Mehar stood over him, breathing hard. “Don’t you DARE use the Quran to justify what you did to me. You’re not a Muslim. You’re not a man. You’re a monster wearing a kufi and a fake smile.”