Chapter 40 Rashid
RASHID
I was in my study, reviewing financial documents, trying to focus on anything other than the war I was losing. My phone buzzed. I glanced at the screen.
It was Prentice.
I opened the message.
And the world stopped.
An ear. Severed. Bloody. Still wearing the diamond earring I had given Farah for her twenty-first birthday.
Her mother’s earring. The only piece of jewelry I had kept after Amira died bringing our daughter into this world. I had saved it for twenty-one years, waiting for Farah to be old enough to appreciate its significance.
“This belonged to your mother,” I had told her when I presented it. “She would have wanted you to have it.”
Farah had cried. Had hugged me tighter than she ever had before. Had worn those earrings every single day since.
And now it was covered in her blood. Attached to a piece of flesh that had been sawed from her body.
Four words accompanied the image.
Your move, old man.
I stared at the screen. At my daughter’s ear. At the diamond catching the light, glinting red with blood.
Something cracked inside me.
A sound escaped my throat. Inhuman. Guttural. The sound of a man watching everything he loved being destroyed.
I swept my arm across the desk. Papers flew. The lamp shattered against the wall. The computer monitor crashed to the floor.
Not enough.
I grabbed the bookshelf and pulled. It toppled forward, spilling decades of carefully collected texts across the hardwood. First editions. Religious manuscripts. Philosophical treatises. All of it meaningless now.
I put my fist through the window. Glass shattered. Blood ran down my knuckles. I didn’t feel it.
My cane connected with the antique globe I had purchased in Morocco. It exploded into splinters. I swung again, destroying the chess set, the crystal decanter, the framed photograph of Farah at her college graduation.
“PRENTICE!” The name tore from my throat like a curse. “YOU DARE—”
The cough seized me mid-sentence.
I doubled over, the cane clattering to the floor, both hands flying to my mouth as my body convulsed. The fit was violent. Relentless. Each hack felt like it was tearing my lungs apart from the inside.
When it finally passed, I looked at my palms.
Blood. So much blood. Mixed with the blood from my cut knuckles, streaming down my wrists, dripping onto the destroyed remains of my study.
I collapsed into my chair. The only piece of furniture still standing.
My body was failing. My empire was crumbling. My daughter was being mutilated.
And there was nothing I could do.
I looked at the photograph again. At the ear. At the earring.
At what Prentice had done to my child.
Something wet slid down my cheek.
I touched it. Looked at my fingers.
A tear.
I had not cried since I was seven years old. Since I watched my father beat my mother unconscious on that kitchen floor in Detroit. I had made a vow that day—no more tears. Tears were weakness. Tears were surrender. Tears were for men who had given up.
But now, sitting in the wreckage of my study, staring at my daughter’s severed ear, I felt another tear fall. And another. And another.
I did not wipe them away.
What was the point? There was no one here to see. No one to judge. No one to witness the great Rashid Muhammad finally breaking.
I was dying. My daughter was being tortured. My protégé had become my enemy.
And I had no one to blame but myself.
I had created Prentice. Molded him. Shaped him into the perfect weapon. And now that weapon had been turned against me with a precision I had instilled in him myself.
The student had surpassed the master.
I sat there for a long time. Minutes. Maybe hours. The blood dried on my hands. The tears dried on my face. The coughing fits came and went, each one leaving me weaker than the last.
Finally, I pulled myself to my feet.
There was one more thing I needed to see.
Yusef’s room was silent when I unlocked the door.
The boy was not on his prayer rug. Not at his desk studying Arabic. Not sleeping on the thin mattress I had provided.
He was sitting on the floor. Back against the bed. Knees pulled to his chest. Eyes fixed on the wall across from him.
Staring at nothing.
“Yusef.”
No response.
“Yusef, look at me.”
Nothing. Not even a flicker of acknowledgment. His eyes remained fixed on some point in the distance, seeing something that wasn’t there.
I stepped closer. Knelt down in front of him, my knees protesting the movement.
“Boy. I am speaking to you.”
His eyes didn’t move. His expression didn’t change. He was breathing—I could see the slight rise and fall of his chest—but there was no life behind those eyes. No fear. No defiance. No hope.
Nothing.
He was gone. Retreated somewhere inside himself where I could not reach him. Where no one could reach him.
I had broken him.
Not molded him. Not strengthened him. Not forged him into something better.
Broken him.
The way my father had broken my mother. The way the streets had broken countless young men I had watched rise and fall over the decades. The way this life broke everyone eventually.
I had told myself I was saving him. Training him. Preparing him for a world that would show him no mercy.
But looking at this hollow shell of a child—this twelve-year-old boy who had been forced to kill his own father just hours ago—I saw the truth.
I had destroyed him. The same way I destroyed everything I touched.
I reached out to touch his shoulder.
He didn’t flinch. Didn’t react at all. Just kept staring at that wall like I wasn’t even there.
“Yusef…”
My voice cracked. Actually cracked, like I was the child and he was the elder.
What had I done?
I pulled my hand back. Stood slowly. Looked down at this boy—this broken, empty boy—and felt something I had not felt in fifty years.
Shame.
I left the room without another word. Locked the door behind me. Leaned against the wall in the hallway and closed my eyes.
This had to end.
All of it. The war. The posturing. The pride.
I was dying. Weeks, maybe. A month or two if I was fortunate. And I was spending my final days torturing children and waging war against the closest thing I had ever had to a son.
For what?
Legacy? My legacy was ashes. Kasim would inherit what remained when he was released from Panama, and he would rebuild in his own image.
He was disciplined. Patient. Strategic. He would wait until the time was right, and then he would take his vengeance on Prentice for what had been done to his father and sister.
But that was Kasim’s war to fight. Not mine. Not anymore.
I just wanted to see my daughter again. Hold her one more time before this disease finished what Prentice had started.
I pulled out my phone. Found Prentice’s contact. Hit call.
He answered on the second ring.
“Rashid.” His voice was flat. Cold. The voice of a man who had crossed a line and felt nothing about it.
“You made your point.” I kept my voice steady. Controlled. Even now, I would not let him hear weakness. “Let us end this.”
“End it?” A dry laugh. “We’re just getting started, old man. How’d you like the picture? I was thinking about sending the other ear next. Maybe a finger or two after that.”
“Prentice—”
“You came to my grandmother’s house.” All pretense of humor vanished. “My GRANDMOTHER. An eighty-three-year-old blind woman. You threatened her in her own home.”
“I was sending a message.”
“And I sent one back.” His voice was ice. “Difference is, mine came with proof of delivery.”
I closed my eyes. Breathed through the cough that was trying to rise.
“What do you want?”
“Yusef. Unharmed. Delivered to me personally.”
“And in exchange?”
“You get your daughter back. Minus an ear, but alive. I might throw it in though.”
“Where?”
“My warehouse. I’ll text you the address.”
A location I did not know. Somewhere he felt safe. Somewhere he had the advantage.
“I will come to you,” I said slowly. “But you must come alone as well. No soldiers. No brothers. Just you and me.”
“Nah.” Prentice’s voice was firm. “You come to me. You bring the boy. You come alone. Those are my terms.”
“And if I refuse?”
“Then I’ll send you Farah piece by piece until there’s nothing left to bury. Your choice.”
Silence stretched between us.
This was it. The moment I had to decide. Pride or family. Legacy or love. The war or my daughter.
It wasn’t even a choice.
“When?”
“Tomorrow. Noon. Come alone. Bring Yusef. Any sign of your people within a mile of that building, and Farah dies. Understand?”
“I understand.”
“Good.” A pause. “You know, Rashid… I never wanted this. You were the closest thing I ever had to a father. But you made your choice when you took that boy. When you came for my grandmother. When you decided your pride was worth more than the family we could have been.”
“Prentice—”
“See you tomorrow, old man.”
The line went dead.
I stood there in the hallway, phone still pressed to my ear, staring at nothing.
Tomorrow I would surrender. Would hand over Yusef and retrieve my daughter. Would end this war not with victory, but with capitulation.
Prentice thought he had won. Thought this was over.
He was wrong.
I was dying, yes. But Kasim was not. My son was disciplined.
Patient. Strategic. He would wait in that Panamanian prison, counting the days until his release.
And when he finally walked free—when the bribes cleared and the paperwork processed and the gates opened—he would come for everything Prentice loved.
Not with rage. Not with impulsiveness. But with the cold, calculated precision I had spent a lifetime perfecting.
This war would not end with me.
It would only pause.
But for now—for these final weeks or months I had left—I just wanted my daughter. Wanted to hold her. Tell her I was sorry for all of it. Watch her heal from what Prentice had done.
I would give Prentice his victory.
And I would die knowing my son would eventually take it back.