Chapter 49 Prime #2
Garlic. Butter. Something sweet in the oven—Rita had been baking. That woman stayed in somebody’s kitchen. TV on low in the living room, some cartoon playing to nobody. And from upstairs, that soft white noise machine humming through the baby monitor.
I took the stairs quiet. Skipped the creaky one—third from the top, been meaning to fix that—and made my way down the hall.
Master bedroom door was cracked.
And there she was.
Zainab. In the rocking chair by the window. Kheris against her chest, nursing. The sunset was coming through the curtains all golden and warm, catching her headscarf, the line of her jaw, that spot on her shoulder where her robe had slipped.
I swear to God this woman looked like a whole Renaissance painting and didn’t even know it. Idris was knocked out in his bassinet. Fists balled up by his ears, mouth slightly open.
Zainab looked up and there it was. That smile. The one that started slow at the corners and spread across her whole face like daybreak.
Made my chest hurt every time. The good kind of hurt.
“Hey, stranger,” she whispered.
“Hey, Goddess.”
Three steps across the room. Kissed her forehead. Her nose. Her mouth, slow, soft, she tasted like that ginger tea she’d been drinking. She made this little sound against my lips. Mmm. Like I was something she’d been craving.
“How’d it go?” she asked. Eyes doing that thing where they searched my face. Looking for damage. For darkness. For whatever pieces of the old me I might’ve brought home with me.
“It’s done,” I said. “All of it.”
“All of it?”
“All of it.”
She went still. Reading me. Then I watched it happen in real time—the tension she’d been carrying for weeks, maybe months, just… left her body. Her jaw unclenched. Her shoulders dropped two inches. The grip she had on Kheris loosened into something gentle instead of desperate.
“It’s really over?” Barely a whisper.
“Really over.” I knelt beside the chair.
One hand on her thigh, the other resting on Idris’s chest in the bassinet.
His little heartbeat fluttering under my palm like a hummingbird.
“No more enemies. No more looking over our shoulders. No more me leaving and you not knowing if I’m coming back. It’s just us now, Goddess. Just us.”
Her eyes filled up. Not sad. Not scared. Just… release. Like a dam breaking after holding back a river for too long.
“I been so scared, Prime.” Voice cracked right down the middle.
“Every time you walked out that door, I’d just sit here and pray.
Every time the phone rang my heart would stop.
And I never told you because you had enough on your plate and I didn’t want to add to it, but I was terrified.
Every single day. Terrified that one day you wouldn’t come home. ”
“I know, baby.” Wiped her tears with my thumb. “I know. But that’s done now. You hear me? On my life. On these babies. The war is over, and I’m home. For good.”
Kheris unlatched and pulled back, making that little satisfied grunt babies make when they’re milk-drunk. Zainab shifted her to her shoulder, patting her back real gentle, and our daughter’s eyes fluttered shut against her mama’s neck.
“You wanna hold her?”
I took my baby girl. Careful. Head supported. Settled her against my chest where she fit perfectly, this warm little weight right over my heart.
Six pounds of everything I’d ever done right.
She had no idea who her daddy was. What I’d done.
The bodies. The blood. The things I’d probably have to answer for when I met God.
And she’d never know. That was the whole point of all of it.
Every threat I made, every enemy I buried, every hole I dug—it was so this little girl and her brother could grow up thinking the world was safe. Because for them, it would be.
“Camille called,” Zainab said, watching me with the baby. “Once Dubz’s confession goes through—and she said it will—the DA’s dropping everything. She’s filing the motion this week.”
“Good.” Pressed my lips to Kheris’s head. She smelled like baby lotion and formula and brand new life. “It’s gonna work. I made sure of it.”
“I don’t wanna know how.”
“You ain’t gotta.”
She reached over and laced her fingers through mine. “Thank you. For everything. For never giving up. For never letting me go even when I pushed.”
“Girl, go ’head. You ain’t never give me a reason to let go. You gave me a reason to go harder. Every single time.”
“I love you, Prentice Banks.”
“I love you more, Zainab Ali.” I paused. “Soon to be Zainab Banks.”
She leaned her head against my shoulder. I pressed my lips to her hair. Kheris slept on my chest. Idris slept in his bassinet. And from downstairs, Yusef started playing. Clair de Lune. Every note clean.
The melody floated up through the floorboards and filled the room like a prayer.
Nobody spoke. Nobody needed to.
I held my daughter. I held my woman. I listened to my nephew play Debussy in a house that smelled like Rita’s cooking and baby lotion and everything I almost lost.
This was it. The thing I burned the world down for.
This family. This moment. This life.
I didn’t deserve it.
But God gave it to me anyway.