Chapter 5 Farah
FARAH
I used to be so in love with Prime Banks.
I remember the day my father brought him into my life. I was sixteen. Just got my license. Thought I knew everything about everything. Thought I was grown.
Then Daddy pulled up to the compound with HIM.
Prime was twenty. Fresh out of whatever hellhole my father had been training him in. Locs past his shoulders, body already cut like he’d been sculpted by God himself, and those EYES. Blue-gray like the ocean before a storm. Like something wild that couldn’t be tamed.
He walked into my father’s house and I swear my whole body caught fire.
“This is Prentice,” Daddy said. “He’ll be working closely with me from now on.”
Working closely. That meant he’d be around all the time. That meant I’d get to see him every day. That meant—
I was done for. From that very first moment.
I started finding excuses to be wherever he was. If he was in Daddy’s study, I needed a book from that room. If he was in the kitchen, I was suddenly hungry. If he was training in the gym, I had to work out too—in the tightest leggings I owned, sports bra barely containing what my mama gave me.
He never looked. Not once.
But I didn’t give up. I COULDN’T. Something about him made me crazy in a way I’d never felt before. Like an itch under my skin that I couldn’t scratch. Like a fever that wouldn’t break no matter what I did.
I started leaving him notes. Slipping them under the guest house door when nobody was watching.
You looked good today. I made you brownies—they’re in the kitchen. Do you want to watch a movie with me sometime? I think about you all the time.
He never responded.
So I got bolder.
By seventeen, I was timing my whole life around his schedule.
I knew what time he woke up (5 AM), what time he trained (5:30 to 7), what time he showered (7:15), what time he reported to Daddy (8 AM sharp).
I knew which cars he drove on which days.
Knew his coffee order (black, no sugar).
Knew the playlist he worked out to because I hacked into his Spotify account.
I kept a notebook. A whole notebook dedicated to him. Every interaction we ever had—even the ones where he barely looked at me—I wrote them all down. Analyzed every word. Every glance. Every time his arm accidentally brushed against mine.
He said “excuse me” when he passed me in the hallway, but he touched my shoulder. He could’ve just walked around me. He CHOSE to touch me. That means something.
I was fucking delusional. I know that now.
But back then? Back then I thought I was fighting for my destiny.
By eighteen, I was desperate enough to try anything.
I’d kiss his cheek at family dinners and he’d pull away like my lips burned him.
I’d text him at 2 AM—I can’t stop thinking about you.
Come to my room. I’ll do anything you want.
ANYTHING—and he’d leave me on read. I showed up at his apartment once in nothing but a trench coat and heels.
He closed the door in my face.
“You’re Rashid’s daughter,” he said through the wood. “That makes you off-limits. Forever.”
Forever.
I hated that fucking word.
But I didn’t stop. Couldn’t stop. When I heard he bought a penthouse, I offered to design it for free. Told myself it was about building my portfolio. Really I just wanted to be in his space. Touch his things. Pick out his sheets and imagine lying in them with him.
And the whole time I was loving him from a distance, I was also protecting him from other bitches.
There was this girl once. Some pretty little thing who worked at the same gym Prime used. I noticed her watching him. Noticed her timing her workouts to match his. Noticed how she’d find excuses to be on the machine next to him, bending over a little too long, laughing a little too loud.
I watched her for two weeks. Found out where else she worked—some boutique in Georgetown. Showed up one afternoon when she was alone behind the register.
“Hi.” I smiled real sweet. “You don’t know me, but I know you. And I need you to understand something.”
I leaned across the counter, close enough to smell her cheap perfume.
“If you ever look at Prime Banks again—if you talk to him at the gym, if you smile at him, if you even THINK about him—I will cut your face so bad your own mama won’t recognize you. We clear?”
She switched gyms by the end of the week.
See, I was PROTECTING what was mine. Running off every bitch who tried to get close. Keeping him available for me. For US. For the future I knew we were supposed to have together.
Twelve years. TWELVE YEARS I loved that man.
And then Zainab came along.
Some random bitch who made cinnamon rolls. CINNAMON ROLLS. And suddenly Prime was looking at HER the way I’d been waiting twelve years for him to look at me. Soft. Protective. Like she was precious.
Like she mattered more than me.
I planted that roach in her rolls at the mayor’s gala. Watched her whole little business almost crumble in one night. And when she slapped me—when that bitch actually put her hands on MY face in front of everybody—I knew the war had officially started.
But I wasn’t ready yet. Wasn’t prepared. So I fell back. Watched. Waited.
I started following her. Not in a crazy way at first. Just… keeping tabs. Checking her Instagram. Googling her business. Driving past the bakery sometimes to see if Prime’s car was there.
Okay. Maybe it was a little crazy.
I followed her to the grocery store once. Watched her squeeze avocados and smell cantaloupes like she was just some regular bitch living a regular life. Like she hadn’t stolen everything that was supposed to be mine.
I sat in my car and imagined all the ways I could end her. Car accident. Home invasion. Something slow and painful that would make Prime suffer the way I’d been suffering for twelve years.
But before I could make my move, Prime got to me first.
He kidnapped me. Tied me to a chair in some dirty ass warehouse like I was nobody. Like I wasn’t the daughter of the man who MADE him. Like twelve years of loving him meant nothing.
And then he cut off my ear.
I can still feel it. Still wake up in the middle of the night feeling that dull blade sawing through cartilage.
Back and forth. Back and forth. The knife wasn’t sharp enough for a clean cut so he had to SAW through it while I screamed and begged and promised him anything, everything, whatever he wanted—
The blood. So much blood. Warm and thick, running down my neck, pooling in my collarbone, soaking through my shirt.
My mother’s earring. The diamond Daddy gave me on my twenty-first birthday. The only piece of her I ever had.
Gone.
Taken by the man I loved.
But that wasn’t the worst part.
The worst part came after.
Prime left me alone with Thad. His cousin. The man with the dead eyes who watched Prime saw off my ear like it was a TV show he wasn’t really paying attention to.
“I’ll be back,” Prime said. “Thad’s gonna watch you.”
And then he was gone.
And it was just me and Thad in that warehouse. Me tied to a chair, blood still leaking down my face, ear still throbbing where it used to be. Him standing in the corner, watching me like I was something he was deciding whether or not to eat.
At first he just stared. Minutes. Hours. I couldn’t tell anymore. Time had stopped meaning anything.
Then he walked over.
I don’t want to talk about what happened next.
I don’t want to remember the sounds he made. Grunting. Panting. This sick little laugh every time I tried to fight back, like my struggling was entertainment.
My mind left my body.
That’s the only way I can explain it. I floated up to the ceiling and watched from somewhere far away. Watched it happen to a girl who used to be me. A girl who used to believe in love. A girl who thought if she just loved hard enough, long enough, Prime would finally see her.
That girl died in that warehouse.
Thad killed her.
He did it more than once. I stopped counting after three. Stopped feeling anything at all. Just went somewhere deep inside myself where he couldn’t reach me and waited for it to be over.
By the time Prime came back, I couldn’t look at anyone. Couldn’t speak. Couldn’t do nothing but curl into myself and pray for death.
And Prime? He ain’t notice shit. Ain’t ask what happened. Ain’t see nothing different about the woman he’d left versus the corpse he came back to.
Just traded me to my father like a broken toy he was done playing with.
That was five months ago.
Five months of rotting in this mansion while my body healed and my mind fell apart.
And then I found out about the baby.
I was scrolling through my phone one night—couldn’t sleep, never could anymore—when I saw it. Some society page posting photos from Sweet Zin before the grand opening. Prime standing behind Zainab, his hands wrapped around her stomach. Her stomach that was round. Swollen. PREGNANT.
I threw my phone so hard the screen shattered against the wall.
A baby. His baby. Growing inside HER.
While I was in that warehouse getting my ear sawed off and my body destroyed, she was out there getting pregnant with his child. While Thad was ripping me apart, Prime was putting a baby in the woman who stole him from me.
The life that should’ve been MINE.
I bought a new phone the next day. And I went back to watching.
But different now. Obsessed now. I tracked her everywhere. I followed her to Target a few weeks ago. Watched her waddle through the baby section with that big swollen belly, touching little onesies and smiling at tiny socks like she deserved to be happy.
She bought a yellow blanket. Gender neutral. So she don’t know if it’s a boy or girl either.
But I could tell by how she was carrying—low and round—that it was probably a girl. Prime’s daughter. Growing inside a woman who wasn’t me.
I sat in my car in that parking lot and screamed until my throat was raw.
I was gonna take that baby from her. One way or another.