Chapter 4 Prime
PRIME
All we got was five months of peace before the universe said “nah, nigga—you thought.”
Five months of waking up with my Goddess pressed against me, her belly getting rounder every day with my seed growing inside.
Five months of watching her frost cinnamon rolls with that little smile on her face, flour on her nose, looking like everything I never knew I needed.
Five months of me putting shea butter on her skin every night, talking to my baby girl through her mama’s stomach like she could hear me.
She could hear me. I know she could.
Five months of almost believing a nigga like me could have this.
I sat in my Bentayga outside Rashid’s compound, gripping the steering wheel so hard my knuckles hurt. Gates were already open—cameras caught me coming up the drive. Old man might be dying but his security was still tight.
My mind kept going back to how we got here.
Sweet Zin was supposed to be our forever.
The flagship opened six weeks ago, and Cannon already had her cinnamon rolls in three of his hotels.
Three. Not some corner bodega bullshit—major resorts.
Bougie spots where rich folks paid fifteen dollars for pastries like it wasn’t nothing.
We had investors hitting us up about franchising.
Mehar was trained up and ready to hold it down while Zainab went on maternity leave.
Everything was falling into place.
And me? I was out. Done. No more contracts. No more bodies. No more 3 AM calls from Rashid talking about “I need you to handle something.” I buried that nigga—the killer, the weapon, the monster Rashid created—so deep I thought he was gone for good.
I was about to be a father.
A whole girl dad.
Every night after Zainab got out the shower, I’d lay her down on her side and warm the shea butter between my palms. Work it into her belly, her hips, her thighs. Everywhere my daughter was stretching her mama out.
“Aye, princess,” I’d say against her stomach, my lips brushing her skin. “It’s Daddy. You hear me in there?”
Zainab would laugh, fingers in my locs. “You so damn silly.”
“I’m dead serious. They say babies hear voices in the womb. I want her to know mine before she even get here.”
“She will.”
“I want her to know she safe. That Daddy got her. That ain’t nothing and nobody in this world gon’ touch her ’cause I’ll set this whole bitch on fire first.”
“Prime…”
“I mean that.” I’d look up at her, palm still pressed to her belly, feeling my daughter move under my hand. “Both of y’all. You everything to me. Everything.”
And I meant that shit. On my life.
Now my baby girl was in a jail cell. Growing inside a woman who was scared, alone, and locked up for some shit she ain’t even do. My daughter’s first sounds was gon’ be metal doors slamming and CO boots on concrete.
Nah.
Not if I could help it.
I killed the engine and stepped out.
The compound looked the same—big ass colonial mansion, landscaping done up like something out of a magazine.
Old money vibes that Rashid always kept up even though his money was new and dirty as hell.
But something was off. The energy. Usually this place was moving—soldiers in and out, whips in the driveway, that quiet hum of business being handled.
Today it felt like a funeral home.
Two of his people met me at the door. Young.
I ain’t recognize either of them, which told me everything about how shit had changed since our last conversation.
The old guard was gone. Scattered. BCC dispersed like roaches when you flip the light on, everybody scrambling to find new positions now that Shadow was fading.
“East wing,” one of them said. “He been asking about you.”
Asking about me. Interesting.
I walked through the foyer, past the study where Rashid used to hold court like some kind of don, past the dining room where I’d eaten more meals with him than I ever did with Vivica. The house smelled wrong. Like a hospital. Like chemicals trying to cover up something worse.
Death. That’s what it smelled like.
The east wing was unrecognizable. Where there used to be leather furniture and bookshelves, now there was a whole hospice setup. Monitors beeping. IV drips. Oxygen tanks. A hospital bed in the middle of the room surrounded by equipment that said “this nigga ain’t got long.”
And in that bed, propped up on a mountain of pillows, was the man who made me.
I stopped in the doorway.
Rashid Muhammad—Brother X, Shadow, the most dangerous nigga I ever knew—looked like death was already collecting on him.
His skin had that gray undertone, stretched too tight over bones that stuck out more than I remembered.
No bowtie. No tailored suit. Just a hospital gown and tubes running out his arm into bags of shit I couldn’t identify.
He’d dropped at least forty pounds. Maybe more.
Damn.
“Prentice.” His voice was thin. Weak. Ain’t sound nothing like the man who used to command rooms without raising it. “Wondered when you’d come.”
I made myself walk closer even though part of me wanted to turn around and leave.
This wasn’t the man who saved me from Big Sauce in that prison shower.
Wasn’t the man who trained me, disciplined me, made me pray five times a day until I learned to control all that rage I was carrying.
Wasn’t the man who took a fat, stuttering thirteen-year-old and turned him into something lethal.
This was what was left.
“You know why I’m here,” I said.
“Your woman.” He coughed—wet, rattling, the kind of cough that comes from lungs that gave up a while ago. “Saw it on the news. Murder. Identity theft.” Another cough. “Dramatic.”
“You did this.”
His eyes—still sharp, still calculating even now—found mine. “Did I?”
“Don’t play with me, old man.” I stepped closer. Close enough to see the yellow in his eyes, the spots on his hands. “You couldn’t touch me or her directly. So you made a call. Fed the cops information. Had her arrested in front of her bakery. That’s some savage shit.”
“That’s what you believe?” He almost smiled. “That I would use the police—the pigs, the oppressors, the system that’s been hunting our people for centuries—as my weapon?”
“You done worse.”
“I have.” He paused to catch his breath, chest heaving. “I’ve killed. Ordered deaths. Destroyed families. Built an empire on blood.” Another pause. “But I have never—NEVER—worked with law enforcement. That’s a line I don’t cross. Not for revenge. Not for nothing.”
I searched his face. Looking for the lie. Looking for that tell that would confirm what I came here believing.
Ain’t find it.
“Then who?” I demanded. “Who else got the connections? The information? The motive—”
“I don’t know.” His eyes drifted closed. “And frankly, Prentice, I don’t care.”
“You don’t care.”
“I’m dying.” He said it flat. Simple. Like he was telling me what day it was.
“Doctors gave me weeks. Month at most if Allah show mercy. Already outlived they predictions by a month.” His eyes opened again.
“I’m tired. I’m ready. And I want to spend whatever time I got left with my daughter. Not at war with you.”
I thought about Farah. About the ear I sawed off her head. About the way she screamed and begged while I did it.
Charge it to the game.
“The BCC,” I said. “Your people. Could one of them—”
“BCC is finished.” Rashid laughed but it turned into a coughing fit that went on so long I thought he might die right there.
When he stopped, there was blood on his lips.
“Lieutenants scattered. Mega trying to hold it together but he ain’t got the vision.
The discipline. Without me, the organization gon’ collapse within the year. ”
He wiped his mouth with a tissue. It came away red.
“Listen, young blood, I ain’t touch your woman.
” Rashid’s voice was fading. Sleep pulling him under.
“Ain’t make that call. Don’t know who did.
But Prentice…” His hand moved, reaching for something that wasn’t there.
“You want answers, look closer to home. Look at who benefits from her destruction. Who gains power when she falls.”
“The fuck that mean?”
But his eyes were closing. His breathing evening out into something that sounded more like death than sleep.
I stood there for a minute. Watching his chest rise and fall. Counting seconds between breaths like I used to count seconds between kills.
Part of me wanted to feel satisfied. This man caused so much pain. Took Yusef. Threatened Zainab. Tried to mold my nephew into a weapon the same way he molded me.
But standing here watching him disappear into them pillows, all I felt was… grief.
He was the closest thing to a father I ever had.
And soon he’d be gone.
I turned and walked out.
The Virginia air hit my face, cool and clean, washing away that death smell. I was almost to the Bentayga when that feeling hit me—the one that tells you somebody watching.
I looked up to the second floor window and saw Farah.
She stood there staring down at me, arms crossed, face twisted into something I ain’t never seen on her before.
Hatred.
Pure, undiluted hatred.
This was the same woman who used to look at me like I hung the moon.
Who sent me texts at 2 AM begging me to come over.
Who showed up at family events in dresses that ain’t leave nothing to the imagination, trying to get my attention.
Who told me she loved me while I had her tied to a chair in a warehouse.
That Farah was gone.
The woman in that window looked like she wanted to watch me burn. Her hair was swept to one side, hiding the hole where her ear used to be—the scar healed but the damage permanent. She’d lost weight. Face gaunt. Eyes hollow but sharp.
She wasn’t crazy Farah no more. She wasn’t obsessed Farah.
She was something worse.
I held her gaze for a second, waiting for something. A crack in the mask. A flash of that desperate need she used to have for me. Anything familiar.
Nothing.
Just that scowl. That cold, burning scowl that said everything between us had changed.
I climbed in the Bentayga and sat there, engine off, staring at the mansion.
Rashid ain’t do this.
I believed him. Hated that I believed him, but I did. The man had many sins, but lying to me wasn’t one of them. Not about shit that mattered. And working with cops? That would violate everything he ever stood for. Everything he taught me.
So if not Rashid, then who?
Look closer to home. Look at who benefits from her destruction. Who gains power when she falls.
His words echoed in my head as I started the engine and pulled off.
Somebody made that call. Somebody with access to information about Zainab’s past. Somebody who knew about Zahara’s murder, the identity theft, everything she buried years ago.
Somebody who wanted her gone.
I thought about Vivica. How she was standing in the back of the bakery when the cops came. That smirk on her face. Like she knew exactly what was about to happen.
Would she really go that far again? That bitch knew who I was now? Would she risk me going off on her. I would destroy that bitch.
Then I thought about Farah. That scowl. The way she looked at me like I was already dead and she was just waiting for my body to catch up.
She was Rashid’s daughter. Grew up in his world, around his people. Knew how to make calls, pull strings, move pieces on a board.
And she had every reason to want me to suffer.
I pulled onto the highway, mind racing.
Somebody snitched.
And when I found out who, wasn’t gon’ be enough left of them to identify.