Not with rage. Not with impulsiveness. But with the cold, calculated precision I had spent a lifetime perfecting.
This war would not end with me.
It would only pause.
But for now—for these final weeks or months I had left—I just wanted my daughter. Wanted to hold her. Tell her I was sorry for all of it. Watch her heal from what Prentice had done.
I would give Prentice his victory.
And I would die knowing my son would eventually take it back.
41
PRIME
The cameras showed him coming a mile out.
A black Lincoln Navigator, moving slow up the unmarked road that led to my warehouse. No tail. No convoy. Just one vehicle carrying a dying man and the boy he had stolen from me.
“That’s him,” I said, watching the feed on my phone. “Lookouts confirm?”
Quest’s voice came through my earpiece. “Confirmed. No backup. He’s alone.”
I pocketed the phone and scanned the warehouse. Thad stood near the back entrance, arms crossed, expression blank as always. Justice was by the side door. Quest would stay in position outside, watching the perimeter.
We were ready.
The Navigator pulled up to the loading dock. Engine cut. For a long moment, nothing happened. Just the distant hum of traffic and the winter wind rattling the metal walls.
Then the driver’s door opened.
Rashid stepped out.
I barely recognized him.
The man who had raised me—who had molded me from a scared, stuttering boy into something formidable—looked like acorpse wearing an expensive suit. His cheeks were hollow. His skin had taken on a grayish pallor. The bowtie he always wore with such precision hung slightly crooked, as if he no longer had the energy to straighten it.
He moved slowly around the vehicle, each step deliberate, conserving what little strength he had left. When he opened the rear passenger door, I saw Yusef.
The boy didn’t move at first. Just sat there, staring at nothing, his eyes fixed on some point in the middle distance. Rashid said something to him—too quiet for me to hear—and placed a hand on his shoulder.
Yusef flinched.
It was small. Almost imperceptible. But I saw it. And something cold settled in my chest.
Rashid guided Yusef out of the vehicle and toward the warehouse entrance. The boy walked like a puppet whose strings had been cut. Mechanical. Empty. The spark that used to animate him—the curiosity, the quiet intelligence, the stubborn defiance—was gone.
What the fuck had Rashid done to him?
They entered through the loading dock door. Rashid’s eyes swept the space, taking in Thad by the back entrance, Justice by the side door, the cameras mounted in every corner.
“You came prepared,” Rashid said. His voice was thinner than I remembered. Weaker.
“You taught me to.”
We stood ten feet apart. The boy between us.
Rashid looked down at Yusef. Something flickered across his face—guilt, maybe. Regret. He placed both hands on Yusef’s shoulders and turned him gently toward me.
