Chapter 49 Prime
PRIME
“What’s that?” Farah asked.
I tossed the manila envelope in her lap. She flinched when it landed. Still jumpy. Good. She should be. Fear was the only language this girl ever respected.
She looked rough. Nah—she looked terrible. Hair matted to one side, dark circles so deep they looked like bruises, lips cracked and peeling. The scar where her ear used to be was out in the open now. She’d stopped trying to style her hair over it around day five. Stopped caring.
Two weeks I kept her chained to that radiator. Fed her twice a day. Water whenever she wanted it. Bathroom breaks morning and night. I wasn’t torturing her—I was waiting. Letting the silence strip away all the manipulation and the scheming and the theatrics until the only thing left was the truth.
“One-way ticket to Bali,” I said. “Bank account with a million dollars. Clean. Untraceable. New identity papers. Everything you need to start over somewhere nobody knows you or your daddy.”
Her fingers were shaking as she opened the envelope. I watched her scan the documents that Quest’s people put together. Thorough work. My brother didn’t miss.
“Take it,” I said. “Disappear. Don’t contact me, don’t contact my brothers, don’t contact Zainab, don’t even breathe in my family’s direction ever again. Far as you concerned, the Banks family don’t exist. And far as we concerned? Farah Muhammad died with the rest of her bloodline.”
She looked at the papers. Looked at me. And I could see it, that little flicker behind her eyes. The wheels trying to turn. The calculator trying to calculate. Rashid’s daughter through and through, always looking for the angle even when there wasn’t one.
It was annoying as fuck.
And it was exactly why I’d already dug the hole.
Wasn’t a metaphor. There was an actual hole. About three miles east of here, off a service road nobody used. Six feet deep, freshly turned earth. I’d dug it yesterday morning while Quest watched from the truck, eating a breakfast burrito like we were at a tailgate.
If she said no, that hole was hers. I’d already made peace with it. Already told Quest don’t wait up. Farah alive and in Bali was a risk I could manage. Farah alive and still in my orbit? Nah. That math didn’t work.
“Fine,” she said.
“I’m serious, Farah. Don’t come back to the States. I got eyes at every major port of entry. Airports. Border crossings. Shit, I got a nigga at the embassy in Jakarta who owes me a favor. You step foot on American soil and I’ll know before your luggage hits the carousel.”
“I said fine, Prime.” Her voice cracked on my name. She was staring at the plane ticket like she couldn’t decide if it was a gift or a death sentence.
It was both.
“I won’t come back,” she said. Swallowed hard. “Ain’t nothing left for me here anyway.”
That right there? That was the truest shit she ever said to me.
Rashid was in the ground. Cancer ate him alive and grief finished what was left.
Kasim got handled in Panama before he could ever set foot back on American soil—Creed’s people made sure of that.
The BCC compound was seized, RICO’d to death, feds crawling through her daddy’s legacy like roaches at a cookout.
Meech was probably decomposed in some basement nobody would ever find.
And every cousin, associate, and hanger-on who used to ride for the Muhammad name had conveniently lost her number the second the money dried up.
She was the last one standing. And she was standing on absolutely nothing.
“You sure?” I asked. “Because once Quest drives you to LAX, that’s it. Flight leaves in four hours. You board that plane and this chapter is closed. Permanently. There’s no coming back from Bali to talk it out. There’s no phone calls in six months saying you changed your mind. It’s done.”
She went quiet. Turning that envelope over in her hands like she was weighing the last two years of her life against whatever came next.
“Prime, I loved you. I know you don’t give a fuck. I know it don’t matter. But I need you to know that part was real. Everything else was bullshit, but that part? That was real.”
I didn’t say nothing. Just let her talk.
“And at least…” She wiped her face with the back of her hand, smearing tears across her cheekbone. “At least you handled Thad. For what he did to me. That… that meant something.”
I thought about what Thad did to her. The rape. All that sick shit he put her through because he could. Because she was convenient and vulnerable and he was a predator who saw opportunity.
I didn’t handle Thad for Farah. I handled him for Zahara. For Mehar. For Zainab. For every woman that nigga touched and damaged and discarded like she was nothing. But if Farah needed to believe a piece of that was for her? Cool. Let her have it. Didn’t cost me nothing and it got her on the plane.
“Don’t thank me,” I said. “Just don’t come back.”
She nodded slow. Set the envelope down and held up her wrists. Chains clinked against the radiator pipe.
I pulled the key from my pocket and unlocked the cuffs. Metal fell away and she rubbed her wrists where the skin was raw and red. Two weeks of friction will do that.
She stood up on shaky legs, grabbing the envelope and pressing it to her chest like it was the last thing keeping her alive. Maybe it was.
She stood there for a second. Just looking at me. Memorizing my face or some shit. Trying to find something in my expression that might change the ending of this story.
She wasn’t gonna find it.
“Goodbye, Prime.”
“Goodbye, Farah.”
She walked past me with her shoulders relaxed.
“You’re a better man than you think,” she said.
Then she was gone.
I heard Quest’s voice outside: “Let’s go,” and a car door closing.
I stood in that warehouse alone.
Just me and the silence and the ghost of every enemy I’d ever had.
Rashid—dead.
Kasim—dead.
Meech—gone.
Farah—gone.
Thad—handled.
Vivica—caged.
Dubz—singing like a bird.
Every single one. Every threat. Every snake. Every ghost. Handled.
I let out a breath. A real one. Felt like I’d been holding that shit since I met the Goddess.
I pulled my phone out and looked at the home screen. Zainab’s face staring back at me, that picture I snapped the other morning with the twins. She was exhausted, glowing, a baby in each arm, looking at the camera like she still couldn’t believe this was her life.
Makes two of us, Goddess.
I locked up the warehouse, got in the whip, and drove.
Forty minutes. No music. No calls. No nothing.
Just the road and the silence and this strange, unfamiliar feeling spreading through my chest that took me a minute to identify.
Peace.
I ain’t never had that before. Not really. Not since before Rashid. Not since I was that little boy who loved music and action figures and didn’t know yet that the world was full of people who’d take everything from you if you let them.
I thought about Vivica sitting in that cell. Probably still plotting. Still convinced she could politic her way out. That was the difference between her and Farah. Farah knew when she was beat. Vivica would scheme from the grave.
Let her. That cell was home now.
I thought about Thad. Mehar was holding that nigga hostage and I was footing the bill. But whatever. She deserved it after all she’s been through. Zainab was perfectly okay with her carrying out the revenge because she had enough hatred for all of them
I thought about Zahara. Woman I never met. Twin sister whose murder started this whole thing. Whose death went unsolved for years while her sister walked around wearing her name, raising her son, carrying guilt so heavy it bent her spine.
I got you, sis. I got every last one of them.
By the time I pulled into the driveway, the sun was doing that California thing. Golden hour. Everything washed in honey and amber—the stucco walls, the lawn, the two car seats I could see through the back window of the truck.
Car seats, man. I got car seats in my truck.
A little over a year ago, I was catching bodies as a hitman. Now I’m worried about which brand of car seat got the best safety rating. Life is wild.
I sat in the car for a minute. Engine off. Windows down. Just breathing.
This right here. This was what the war was for. Not the warehouse. Not the blood. Not the threats and the chains and the holes in the ground. This. A house with a woman who loved me in it. Kids who needed me. A boy and a girl who looked at me like I put the sun in the sky.
This was the finish line. And for the first time in my life, I actually crossed it.
Didn’t even get my key out before the front door flew open.
Yusef.
“Prime!” He hit me with that bear hug, arms wrapped around my waist, face buried in my chest. Kid was getting taller. Another few inches and he’d be looking me in the eye. “You’re back! Zainab said you had business, but you were gone forever.”
“Forever?” I ruffled his hair. Needed a cut bad. “It was like eight hours, Yu.”
“That’s forever when you’re bored.” He pulled back and looked up at me. Zahara’s eyes. Every time. Killed me every time. “Are you done now? Like, done done?”
I crouched down so we were eye level. “Yeah, lil man. I’m done done.”
He studied my face. Kids are like human lie detectors, they don’t know the science behind it, but they can feel when grown folks are bullshitting them. Whatever he saw in my eyes must’ve passed the test because he nodded.
“Good. Because I learned a new joint on the piano and you gotta hear it. It’s Clair de Lune. The whole thing. No mistakes.”
That’s my boy. Well, Zahara’s boy. But mine too. In every way that mattered.
“Play it for me after dinner?”
His whole face changed. Lit up from the inside like somebody flipped a switch. “Deal!”
He took off toward the kitchen hollering about whatever Rita was making, and I stood in the foyer letting the house absorb me.