My brief moment of gratitude evaporated. Five hundred dollars. On top of everything else I was already struggling to pay.
“Are we gonna be okay?” Yusef asked.
I looked at him, bruised, scared, bullied for months while the system failed him. Too young to be carrying this much weight, and then at the groceries in my hands. Gifts from a man who’d threatened me, stalked me, invaded my home.
A man who apparently thought I couldn’t feed Yusef. He was right. And I hated him for it.
But I also needed those groceries. And maybe… maybe I needed someone who didn’t play by the rules. Someone who could do what the “proper channels” couldn’t.
“We’re gonna be fine, baby,” I said, unlocking the door. “Go take a shower and I’ll bring you some ice for your face. Then we’ll have a real dinner tonight.”
As I put the groceries away, my hands shook with a mixture of anger and relief and something else I couldn’t quite name. Prime was an asshole. A controlling, judgmental, dangerous asshole who’d broken into my home and threatened me.
But right now, he was an asshole who’d just made sure Yu would eat real food this week.
And I didn’t know whether to curse him or thank him.
Probably both.
7
PRIME
I’d done a lot of questionable shit in my life, but standing in the organic section of Whole Foods at 9 PM, comparing grass-fed beef to pasture-raised ground turkey, might’ve been the strangest.
I grabbed both. Added fresh salmon. Threw in bags of frozen vegetables, fresh ones too. Rice, potatoes, cooking oil, seasonings—the good kind, not that dollar store shit. Fruit that actually looked like it came from a farm instead of sitting in a warehouse for three weeks.
The total came to $287. It wasn’t shit to me. Just loaded everything into my trunk and drove to Southeast like I was making a regular delivery, not dropping off groceries at the apartment of a woman I’d threatened two days ago.
I told myself it was practical. The kid needed to eat. Yusef—twelve years old, skinny as hell, living off sugar cereal and Pop-Tarts. That wasn’t right. A growing boy needed protein, vegetables, real nutrition. It wasn’t abouther. It was about basic common sense.
But sitting here now in Rashid’s favorite cigar lounge, waiting for him to show up for our meeting, nursing a glassof Banks Reserve cognac, I couldn’t stop thinking about that apartment.
Her apartment.
It wasn’t what I expected. I’d gone in there prepared to see chaos—dirty dishes, clutter, the kind of mess that came from a woman who couldn’t get her life together. Single mother, dead-end job, baby daddy in prison. I’d built a whole picture in my head before I ever stepped foot inside.
But Zahara’s place wasn’t like that at all.
It was small, yeah. Cramped. The kind of two-bedroom you get in Southeast when you’re stretching every dollar just to keep a roof overhead. But it wasclean. Spotless, actually. And decorated, not with random shit from Target, but with intention. African textiles draped over the couch in rich browns and golds. Moroccan lanterns casting warm light in the corners. A small bookshelf stuffed with cookbooks and business guides. Plants on the windowsill that were actually alive, actually thriving.
It felt like a home. Like a sacred space someone had carved out against all odds.
And Yusef’s room, I’d glanced in there while I was casing the place, had been the real surprise. Chess trophies lined up on a shelf. Certificates for piano recitals. A keyboard in the corner, sheet music stacked neatly beside it. Books about music theory and strategy games.
The kid had hobbies. Real hobbies. Ones that would get him his ass kicked in most hoods. The kind that marked you as soft, as different, as a target.
I would know.
That’s what made me go to Whole Foods like some kind of simp. Not because I felt sorry for her—though maybe I did, a little. But because I saw those trophies and thought about a kid trying to be himself in a world that would punish him for it. A kidwho needed fuel for his brain, not just his stomach. A kid whose mother was clearly trying, even if she was failing at the basics.
Even if she’d made the dumbass decision to get knocked up by a lame like Meech.
That’s what I kept coming back to. Women and their terrible fucking taste in men. How did someone like Zahara—smart enough to be studying business plans at the library, together enough to create a home out of nothing—end up with Meech’s baby? What the hell had she been thinking?
Meech was a lame. Always had been. Even Rashid admitted that. So what had drawn her to him? The thrill? The danger? The same stupid shit that made women pick the worst possible men to build a life with, then act surprised when it all fell apart?
My mother had done the same thing. Picked my father—ambitious, charismatic Alexander Banks Jr.—and then spent the rest of her life resenting what that choice cost her. Resentingmefor being the reminder of it.
