Chapter 41 Prime
PRIME
The cameras showed him coming a mile out.
A black Lincoln Navigator, moving slow up the unmarked road that led to my warehouse. No tail. No convoy. Just one vehicle carrying a dying man and the boy he had stolen from me.
“That’s him,” I said, watching the feed on my phone. “Lookouts confirm?”
Quest’s voice came through my earpiece. “Confirmed. No backup. He’s alone.”
I pocketed the phone and scanned the warehouse. Thad stood near the back entrance, arms crossed, expression blank as always. Justice was by the side door. Quest would stay in position outside, watching the perimeter.
We were ready.
The Navigator pulled up to the loading dock. Engine cut. For a long moment, nothing happened. Just the distant hum of traffic and the winter wind rattling the metal walls.
Then the driver’s door opened.
Rashid stepped out.
I barely recognized him.
The man who had raised me—who had molded me from a scared, stuttering boy into something formidable—looked like a corpse wearing an expensive suit.
His cheeks were hollow. His skin had taken on a grayish pallor.
The bowtie he always wore with such precision hung slightly crooked, as if he no longer had the energy to straighten it.
He moved slowly around the vehicle, each step deliberate, conserving what little strength he had left. When he opened the rear passenger door, I saw Yusef.
The boy didn’t move at first. Just sat there, staring at nothing, his eyes fixed on some point in the middle distance. Rashid said something to him—too quiet for me to hear—and placed a hand on his shoulder.
Yusef flinched.
It was small. Almost imperceptible. But I saw it. And something cold settled in my chest.
Rashid guided Yusef out of the vehicle and toward the warehouse entrance. The boy walked like a puppet whose strings had been cut. Mechanical. Empty. The spark that used to animate him—the curiosity, the quiet intelligence, the stubborn defiance—was gone.
What the fuck had Rashid done to him?
They entered through the loading dock door. Rashid’s eyes swept the space, taking in Thad by the back entrance, Justice by the side door, the cameras mounted in every corner.
“You came prepared,” Rashid said. His voice was thinner than I remembered. Weaker.
“You taught me to.”
We stood ten feet apart. The boy between us.
Rashid looked down at Yusef. Something flickered across his face—guilt, maybe. Regret. He placed both hands on Yusef’s shoulders and turned him gently toward me.
“Go,” Rashid said quietly. “Go to him.”
Yusef didn’t move. Didn’t respond. Just stood there, staring at nothing.
“Yusef.” Rashid’s voice cracked slightly. “Go.”
The boy took a step. Then another. Moving like he was walking through water, each motion requiring tremendous effort. When he reached me, he stopped. Looked up.
For a split second—just a flash—I saw something behind his eyes. Relief. Recognition. A tiny flicker of the boy I knew.
Then it was gone. Replaced by that terrible emptiness.
“Hey, lil man.” I kept my voice soft. Gentle. The way I used to talk to him when we played chess. “You’re safe now. Go sit in the back, alright? I’ll be there in a minute.”
He didn’t respond. Just turned and walked toward the rear of the warehouse where I’d set up a chair and some blankets. His footsteps echoed in the cavernous space.
I watched him go. Felt something inside me crack.
Then I turned back to Rashid.
“Your daughter,” I said flatly.
I nodded at Thad. He disappeared through a side door and returned a moment later with Farah.
She looked worse than her father.
The bandage wrapped around her head was stained with dried blood. Her face was pale, her eyes swollen from crying. But it was something else that caught my attention. Something in the way she moved.
She wouldn’t look at anyone. Kept her eyes fixed on the floor. Her arms were wrapped around herself, protective, defensive. And when Thad’s hand brushed her arm as he released her, she flinched so violently she nearly fell.
I frowned. That wasn’t just pain from the ear. That was something else.
“Farah.” Rashid’s voice broke. He crossed the space between them and pulled her into his arms. “My baby. My baby girl.”
She collapsed against him, sobbing. Her whole body shook with the force of it. Rashid held her tight, one hand cradling her bandaged head, murmuring something in Arabic that I couldn’t hear.
I watched them. Father and daughter. Monster and victim.
I had done that. Cut off her ear. Made her scream. Reduced her to this trembling, broken thing.
I felt nothing.
Rashid finally pulled back, cupping Farah’s face in his hands, examining her. His jaw tightened when he saw the bandage. The missing ear. The evidence of what I had done.
“You’re dying,” I said.
He looked at me. The mask slipped back into place—the composure, the control—but it was thinner now. Fragile.
“I am.”
“That’s why you’re ending this?”
“I want to spend my last days with my daughter.” He pulled Farah closer, tucking her against his side. “Not waging war against a man I raised.”
“You should’ve thought about that before you kidnapped a twelve-year-old boy.”
“I was protecting my family. My legacy.”
“By torturing a child?”
Rashid’s eyes flickered. That guilt again. There and gone.
“I’m disappointed in you, Prentice.” His voice hardened. “Everything I taught you. Everything I gave you. And you threw it all away for a woman. A woman who lied to you. Who used you. Who isn’t even who she says she is.”
“Her name is Zainab. And she’s worth more than anything you ever gave me.”
“She’s made you weak.”
“No.” I stepped closer. “She made me realize what I was missing. What you carved out of me when you turned me into your weapon.”
Rashid shook his head slowly. “You were nothing when I found you. A fat, stuttering boy who couldn’t control his rage. I made you powerful. Made you feared. Made you wealthy beyond your wildest dreams. And this is how you repay me?”
“You made me a killer. You used me. And when I finally found something real—something worth protecting—you tried to destroy it.”
A cough seized Rashid’s chest. He turned away, pressing a handkerchief to his lips. When the fit passed, he looked at the cloth. Red against white. Then he spat the blood onto the concrete floor. Disrespectful. Defiant to the end.
“Out of the graciousness of my heart,” I said slowly, “I’m allowing you to live out your final days. Spend them with your daughter. Make your peace with Allah. Do whatever dying men do.”
I paused. Let the silence stretch.
“But if you send any of your goons after me. After Zainab. After anyone I love…”
I pulled out my phone. Opened the notes app where I’d saved everything Creed had sent me.
“Your mother. Margaret. Room 412 at Sunrise Senior Living in Detroit. Your aunt Patricia in Baltimore—3847 Greenmount Avenue. Your aunt Dorothy—she lives two blocks over at 3912 Erdman. Your sister Denise in Philadelphia—1847 North 25th Street. Nice brownstone. I hear she has grandkids now.”
Rashid’s face went rigid.
“I will visit each and every one of them. And you know exactly what I’m capable of.” I held his gaze. “Because you trained me.”
“You wouldn’t.”
I swiped to a photograph. Held up the phone so he could see.
Kasim. His son. Sitting on a thin mattress in a Panamanian prison cell, staring at the camera with confusion and fear in his eyes.
Farah gasped. “Kasim? How did you—”
“I can reach anyone, Rashid. Anywhere. At any time.” I pocketed the phone. “If you touch anyone I love—if you even THINK about coming after me or mine—I will kill every single person you’ve ever cared about. And it won’t be quick.”
Farah was crying again. Clutching her father’s arm. Looking at me like I was a stranger. A monster.
Maybe I was.
Rashid stared at me for a long moment. The mask was gone now. In its place was something I had never seen on his face before.
Defeat.
“We’re done,” he said quietly. “You hear me? We’re done.”
“Good.”
“You’re dead to me, boy. Everything I did for you. Everything I sacrificed. You’re nothing to me now.”
I smiled. Cold. Empty.
“You’ll be dead soon. So I guess we’re even.”
He held my gaze for one more second. Then he turned, guiding Farah toward the door. She went willingly, clinging to him, her sobs echoing off the metal walls.
At the threshold, Rashid paused. Didn’t turn around.
I waited for more. A final threat. A last curse. Something.
But he just stood there. Shoulders slumped. Head bowed. A dying man holding his broken daughter, with nothing left to say.
Then he walked out.
The door closed behind him. The Navigator’s engine roared to life. And the man who had raised me drove away to die.
I stood there for a long moment. Staring at the blood he’d left on my floor.
Then I turned and walked to the back of the warehouse.
Yusef was exactly where I’d left him. Sitting in the chair, wrapped in a blanket, staring at the wall. He hadn’t moved. Hadn’t spoken. Hadn’t done anything at all.
I knelt down in front of him. Put my hands on his shoulders. Felt him tense beneath my touch.
“Hey.” My voice came out rougher than I intended. “Yusef. You’re safe now. He’s gone. He can’t hurt you anymore.”
Nothing.
“Yusef, look at me.”
Slowly—so slowly—his eyes shifted. Found mine. But there was nothing behind them. No recognition. No relief. No emotion at all.
“What happened?” I asked. “What did he do to you?”
Silence.
“Yusef. Talk to me. Please.”
His lips parted. For a moment, I thought he was going to say something. Thought I was going to get some answer, some explanation, some clue about what had been done to him in that basement.
But no words came. Just a long, shaky breath. And then his eyes slid away from mine, back to that empty spot on the wall.
I pulled him into my arms.
He didn’t hug me back. Didn’t cry. Didn’t make a sound. Just hung there in my embrace like a ragdoll, limp and lifeless.
I held him anyway.
I had won. Beaten Rashid. Got Yusef back. Protected everyone I loved.
So why did it feel like I had lost everything?