And I never stopped looking over my shoulder.
Every day I expected him to find me. To realize his mistake. To show up at my door and finish what he started.
But weeks turned to months. Months turned to years.
And eventually, I let myself believe that maybe, just maybe, I’d actually gotten away with it.
I should have known better.
4
PRIME
Three hours.
That’s how long it took for Zainab to tell me everything. Her father. The beating. Getting kicked out at sixteen. Running to Meech’s trifling ass. The baby. The cheating. The STD. Getting that nigga locked up and bouncing to Cali. The struggle. The grind. The gambling club.
The murder she witnessed.
Her sister’s body on the kitchen floor.
Becoming someone else to survive.
Three hours of her voice cracking and breaking and rebuilding itself just to keep going. Three hours of revelations that rewrote everything I thought I knew about the woman sitting next to me.
And now she was crying. Silent tears streaming down her face, her hands twisted in her lap, her whole body curved toward the window like she was trying to make herself smaller. Like she was waiting for me to explode. To curse her out. To pull over and leave her on the side of the highway like she probably thought she deserved.
Part of me wanted to.
I’m not gonna lie—part of me was so fucking furious I could barely see straight. This woman had been lying to me since day one. Every conversation. Every kiss. Every time I was inside her, calling her Zahara, she was holding this secret behind her teeth. I’d kill for her. Already disposed of a body for her. Given her my whole heart on a silver platter, and she’d been living a lie the entire time.
But the other part of me—the part that had been listening for the past three hours—understood.
She was sixteen when her father beat her bloody and threw her out like trash. Sixteen when she had to watch her pregnant sister get degraded by a man who was supposed to love her. Sixteen when she started making impossible choices just to survive.
And she was only twenty-six when she walked into her apartment and found her twin sister murdered on the kitchen floor. When she had to look at her own face—dead and empty—and make a split-second decision that would define the rest of her life.
She didn’t steal her sister’s identity for fun. She did it to protect Yusef. To keep him out of the system. To keep them both alive.
I couldn’t hate her for that.
But I was still mad as fuck.
Because she should have told me. After everything we’d been through—after I proved over and over again that I would do anything for her—she should have trusted me with the truth.
I glanced in the rearview mirror.
Yusef was pressed against the back seat, his face turned toward the window, but I could see the tears glistening on his cheeks. He’d been quiet through most of it. Too quiet. This kid had seen his mother’s body at nine years old. Had spent the lastthree years calling his aunt “Mama” and keeping a secret that no child should ever have to carry.
My chest tightened.
I thought about how stern I’d been with Rashid back at that prison. The look on his face when I pushed back—like he couldn’t believe what he was hearing. In all the years I’d known that man, I’d never stood up to him like that. Never challenged his authority. Never put anyone above my loyalty to him.
But somethingelse was bothering me too. Something I couldn’t shake. Rashid had looked… different. Thinner than usual. And that cough—deep and wet, the kind he’d tried to hide but couldn’t. I’d never seen him show weakness like that. The man was a fortress. Impenetrable. But today, standing in that prison hallway, he’d looked almost fragile. Tired around the eyes in a way that had nothing to do with jet lag or a long day.
I pushed the thought away. Rashid’s health wasn’t my concern right now. Zainab and Yusef were.
And something else had shifted.
