“I don’t WANT water.” She laughed, and okay, that laugh? That laugh was giving unhinged. Giving Harley Quinn originstory. Giving “I’d like to speak to the manager but make it violent.”
I’d wanted my sister to find her strength. To stop being Ahmad’s punching bag. To channel her inner Khaleesi and burn that whole situation to the ground.
But this? This was giving… a lot.
“I want to feel like that AGAIN,” she continued, still pacing. “Powerful. In control. For ONCE in my miserable life, I was the one calling the shots. Do you understand what that’s like? After everything Ahmad did to me? After years of being his maid, his cook, his punching bag, his?—”
She stopped. Her jaw tightened. Something dark flickered across her face.
“His what?” I asked quietly.
She didn’t answer. Just started pacing again, but the energy had shifted. Gone was the manic excitement. In its place was something colder. Harder.
Something that mademy stomach clench.
I’d wished for this so much. For her to find strength. To help her fight back. To turn her from a victim into a survivor. For her to escape.
But the thing about wishes is, sometimes they come true in ways you didn’t expect. And sometimes what rises from the ashes isn’t a phoenix—it’s something else entirely.
The elevator chimed.
Prime walked in looking like he’d been through something. His shoulders were tight, his jaw was set, and he had that look in his eyes that said “don’t ask questions you don’t want answers to.”
“It’s time,” he said. No hello. No how y’all doing. Just straight to business.
Mehar stopped pacing. “Time for what?”
“Ahmad.” He looked at me, then at her. “If y’all want to handle that situation, it has to happen today. We got bigger problems coming, and I need this wrapped up before I move on Rashid.”
Mehar went still. And then—Lord help me—she smiled. Not a normal smile. Not a “oh good news” smile. This was the smile of a woman who’d been waiting her whole life to get off the leash.
“Today,” she repeated, tasting the word. “Today is perfect.”
“How do we know he’ll be home?” I asked, trying to be the practical one since clearly nobody else was going to.
“Because I know that man’s schedule better than he knows himself.” Mehar’s voice had gone flat. Cold. “Thursday is his day off from the factory. He stays home. Prays. Reads his little hotep books. Does his exercises.” Her lip curled. “He’ll be alone. He’s ALWAYS alone on Thursdays. Didn’t trust me to leave the house without permission, but he never wanted me around when he was ‘communing with Allah.’”
The way she said that last part—the venom dripping off every syllable—made me realize I’d only scratched the surface of what my sister had been through.
Prime nodded once. “Then let’s move.”
The driveto Baltimore took about an hour, and it was the quietest hour of my life.
Mehar sat in the backseat, still as a statue, staring out the window. But she wasn’t seeing the highway. She wasn’t seeing anything in the present. She was somewhere else—somewhere in the past, reliving every slap, every punch, every night she’dspent crying into her pillow while her husband snored beside her, satisfied with whatever he’d taken from her.
I wanted to reach back and grab her hand. Tell her it was gonna be okay. But honestly? I wasn’t sure it was. Wasn’t sure any of this was gonna be okay.
Prime drove in silence, jaw tight, eyes on the road. He’d given me a gun before we left—smaller than the Glock Mehar had turned into her new best friend—and it sat in my purse like a brick. Heavy. Waiting.
I didn’t know if I’d need to use it. Didn’t know if I COULD use it.
But I was about to find out.
Ahmad’s house was one of those boring two-story joints in a boring neighborhood where everybody minded their business. The kind of street where you could scream and nobody would call the cops because “we don’t get involved in domestic disputes.”
Perfect for a man who liked to keep his sins behind closed doors.
Prime parked down the block. We walked up like we belonged there—three people on a casual afternoon visit, nothing to see here, definitely not about to commit multiple felonies.
