My phone rang at 8:47 PM.
Grandma Rita. She rarely called me in the evening unless something was wrong. She liked to get settled in bed around 8.
I answered before the second ring.
“Grandma?”
“Prentice.” Her voice was calm. Too calm. “Rashid came to my house tonight.”
Everything stopped. The air in my lungs. The blood in my veins. The thoughts in my head. Everything just… stopped.
“What?”
“I handled it. But you need to get here. Now.”
She hung up.
I was already moving. Already grabbing my keys. Already heading for the door.
“Prime?” Zainab was behind me, pulling on a hoodie over her tank top. “What’s wrong? What happened?”
“Rashid went to my grandmother’s house.”
Her face went pale. “Oh my God. Is she?—”
“She said she handled it. I gotta go.”
“I’m coming with you.”
I didn’t argue. Didn’t have time. We were in the Bentayga and peeling out of the beach house driveway within sixty seconds.
The drive from the North Beach to DC could take close to an hour. I made it in thirty-seven minutes.
My hands gripped the steering wheel so tight my knuckles ached. Jaw clenched. Eyes fixed on the road. Breaking every speed limit, running every light, pushing the engine to its limits.
Rashid wentto my grandmother’s house.
My GRANDMOTHER. This nigga had lost his fuckin’ mind.
The woman who raised me when my own mother couldn’t be bothered. The woman who held me when I cried, who fed me when I was hungry, who loved me unconditionally even when I didn’t deserve it. The woman who was eighty-three years old and going blind.
And Rashid had gone to her home. To threaten her. To use her against me.
“Prime.” Zainab’s voice cut through the red haze in my mind. “Prime, you need to slow down. You’re going over 100.”
“I know.”
“If we crash?—”
“We won’t.”
She went quiet. Smart woman. She knew when to push and when to let me be.
I called Justice while I drove.
“Yo.”
“Rashid went to Grandma’s house.”
