Chapter 32 Farah
FARAH
Day six in this shitty rental house and I was starting to lose my mind.
It was a far cry from my penthouse and the estate my father lived in.
It was so small and cramped. And then everything smelled like artificial lavender from those cheap plug-in air fresheners the owner had placed in here.
I’d unplugged them all on day two, but the smell lingered, sickeningly sweet, coating the back of my throat every time I breathed.
I hadn’t slept more than a few hours at a time since I got here. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw Daddy’s face. Kasmi’s face. The compound in flames, federal agents swarming like roaches, everything we’d built being dismantled piece by piece.
Gone. All of it gone.
And for what? For Zainab fucking Ali. The woman who destroyed my family and somehow convinced the world she was the victim.
I sat in the living room with the curtains drawn, news playing low on the TV. Same routine as every other day, watching, waiting, looking for my moment. My phone buzzed with a news alert. Ever since things went down, I placed Google Alerts on Vivica, and the whole Banks family.
brEAKING: DC Mayor Vivica Banks arrested in connection with murder of assistant India Coleman.
I grabbed the remote and turned up the volume.
I saw THE Vivica Banks in handcuffs. The Mayor of DC doing the perp walk for the whole world to see. They were shoving her into the back of a squad car like she was some street criminal, not the woman who’d been running the nation’s capital for years.
My jaw hing so low, I could trip over it. I swear I drooled a bit because I was so dumbfounded. What in the entire fuck?!
They were talking about blood at the scene. A secret affair. Freaky text messages splashed across the screen for the whole world to see. No body recovered, but enough evidence to deny bail.
Vivica Banks was my last ally, my only source of funding, my backup plan, and she was done.
I laughed because what else could I do? There was no one left in the world to work with me.
No one left who probably even cared about me.
Sure, I had cousins and a few friends but we had all been estranged the last year.
After Prime and Thad did what they did to me, I isolated myself.
And when you pull back from people, they pull back from you.
No one wants to be around the girl with such chronic bad luck that her father is dying of cancer, her ear was cut off and now she’s a paranoid mess. So fuck it, I had nothing left to lose.
“Well,” I said to the empty room. “Looks like I’m on my own.”
I should’ve been scared. Should’ve been panicking about money, about resources, about how the hell I was supposed to pull this off without Vivica’s connections.
But I wasn’t scared. I was relieved.
Vivica had been holding me back. Telling me to be patient. To wait for the right moment. To think strategically instead of emotionally.
Fuck strategy. Fuck patience. Fuck waiting.
Daddy never waited. When someone crossed him, he moved. Swift and brutal and final. He didn’t sit in rental houses for days, watching and planning and second-guessing. He acted.
I needed to be more like him.
I touched the side of my head without thinking. The scar tissue where my ear used to be. The constant reminder of what Prentice Banks had taken from me.
He thought cutting off my ear would break me. Would send a message. Would make me crawl into a hole and disappear.
He was wrong.
I pulled up the surveillance feed on my laptop—the camera I’d hidden in the bushes across the street from Zainab’s house. The picture was grainy but clear enough. I could see the front door, the driveway, the cars parked out front.
Prime’s car was still gone. Had been for days.
Good.
I settled in to watch, the way I’d been watching for almost a week now. Learning their patterns. Their routines. The delivery drivers who came and went. I would see the boy go out and pick up mail or packages.
Yusef.
He was more my family than he was Prime. I was his cousin. His father Meech was my father’s sister’s son. He should’ve been home with me. But fuck him. He’s a traitor. My father told me he killed his own father.
Movement on the screen caught my eye.
The front door opened and Yusef stepped out. He was dressed casual—jeans, hoodie, sneakers. Backpack slung over one shoulder. He walked to the end of the driveway and stood there, looking at his phone.
Alone.
No Prime. No Zainab. No escort.
Just a teenage boy, standing on the sidewalk, waiting for something.
A minute later, a car pulled up. White Toyota. Uber sticker in the window.
Yusef got in.
I was off the couch before I even made the conscious decision to move. Grabbed my keys, my phone, my jacket. Out the door and into my rental car in under thirty seconds.
The Uber was just turning the corner when I pulled onto the street. I hung back, keeping two cars between us, following at a distance. My heart was pounding, but my hands were steady on the wheel.
This was it. The opportunity I’d been waiting for.
They merged onto the highway heading toward Culver City. I followed, weaving through traffic, never letting them get too far ahead. Twenty minutes later, we were pulling into the parking structure of the Westfield mall.
I found a spot on the opposite end from where the Uber dropped him off and watched Yusef walk toward the entrance. He looked so normal. So unbothered. Just a kid going to the mall on a random afternoon.
He had no idea I was watching.
I waited a few minutes before getting out. Grabbed a baseball cap from the backseat and pulled it low over my face, tucking my hair underneath. Sunglasses. Plain jacket. Nothing memorable.
The mall was crowded since it was a weekday afternoon, full of teenagers skipping school and moms with strollers and old people doing their walking laps. Easy to blend in. Easy to disappear.
I spotted Yusef near the directory, studying the map like he was looking for something specific. He headed toward the baby stores: Carter’s, Buy Buy Baby, one of those places that sold overpriced onesies and tiny shoes.
He was shopping for Zainab’s baby.
Something twisted in my gut. This boy—this traumatized, broken boy who’d spent months in captivity at my father’s compound—was out here buying gifts for the woman who’d ruined my family. Playing the doting nephew. Moving on with his life like nothing had happened.
Like Daddy was nothing. Like Kasim was nothing. Like everything we’d lost was just collateral damage in someone else’s love story.
I followed him into the store, keeping my distance. Pretended to browse through a rack of tiny dresses while I watched him out of the corner of my eye.
He was looking at stuffed animals. Picking them up one by one, examining them, putting them back. He finally settled on a soft gray elephant with floppy ears and a little bow around its neck. He smiled when he looked at it—actually smiled, like a normal kid having a normal day.
I wondered if he’d smiled like that at the compound. Probably not.
He took the elephant to the register and paid with cash. I hung back near the entrance, watching him leave with a small shopping bag in his hand. He looked happy. Proud of himself.
Enjoy it, I thought. Enjoy this moment.
He wandered through the mall for a while after that. Got a smoothie from one of those kiosks. Sat on a bench and scrolled through his phone. Walked past the sneaker stores and the electronics stores and the food court, just existing in the world like he had every right to be there.
And I followed. Always a few steps behind. Always watching.
What would Rashid do?
The question echoed in my head, the same way it had been echoing since I got on that plane to LA.
Rashid wouldn’t hesitate. Rashid would see an opportunity and seize it. Rashid would make them pay, all of them, for what they’d taken from us.
But Rashid was also strategic. Calculated. He never made a move without thinking three steps ahead.
Yusef wasn’t my target. He was just a kid. Collateral damage in a war he didn’t start.
But Zainab…
Zainab was trapped in that house. Ankle monitor. Can’t run. Can’t hide. Completely dependent on the people around her to keep her safe.
And right now, the only person around her was nobody.
I watched Yusef check his phone and start heading toward the exit. Probably texting Zainab to let her know he was on his way home. Being a good boy. Following the rules.
I let him get ahead of me. Didn’t need to follow him anymore. I knew where he was going.
What mattered was what came next.
I found a bench near the parking structure entrance and sat down. Pulled out my phone. Opened the camera roll and scrolled through the pictures I’d taken over the past hour. Yusef at the directory. Yusef in the baby store. Yusef with his smoothie. Yusef on the bench, alone.
So many pictures. So many angles. So many ways to prove I’d been close enough to touch him.
Close enough to take him, if I wanted to.
But I didn’t want him.
I wanted her.
I wanted Zainab to feel what I felt—that sickening helplessness when someone you love is in danger and there’s nothing you can do about it. I wanted her to know what it was like to lose everything. To watch her perfect little life crumble while she stood there, powerless, unable to stop it.
I wanted her to suffer.
My thumb hovered over the screen. The photo of Yusef sitting alone on that bench, completely unaware he was being watched.
Rashid’s voice echoed in my head. The lessons he’d taught me. The things he’d shown me about power and leverage and how to break someone without ever laying a hand on them.
You don’t have to hurt them physically, he used to say. You just have to make them believe you can. The fear does the rest.
I smiled.
For the first time in days, I knew exactly what I was going to do.