At the threshold, Rashid paused. Didn’t turn around.
I waited for more. A final threat. A last curse. Something.
But he just stood there. Shoulders slumped. Head bowed. A dying man holding his broken daughter, with nothing left to say.
Then he walked out.
The door closed behind him. The Navigator’s engine roared to life. And the man who had raised me drove away to die.
I stood there for a long moment. Staring at the blood he’d left on my floor.
Then I turned and walked to the back of the warehouse.
Yusef was exactly where I’d left him. Sitting in the chair, wrapped in a blanket, staring at the wall. He hadn’t moved. Hadn’t spoken. Hadn’t done anything at all.
I knelt down in front of him. Put my hands on his shoulders. Felt him tense beneath my touch.
“Hey.” My voice came out rougher than I intended. “Yusef. You’re safe now. He’s gone. He can’t hurt you anymore.”
Nothing.
“Yusef, look at me.”
Slowly—so slowly—his eyes shifted. Found mine. But there was nothing behind them. No recognition. No relief. No emotion at all.
“What happened?” I asked. “What did he do to you?”
Silence.
“Yusef. Talk to me. Please.”
His lips parted. For a moment, I thought he was going to say something. Thought I was going to get some answer, some explanation, some clue about what had been done to him in that basement.
But no words came. Just a long, shaky breath. And then his eyes slid away from mine, back to that empty spot on the wall.
I pulled him into my arms.
He didn’t hug me back. Didn’t cry. Didn’t make a sound. Just hung there in my embrace like a ragdoll, limp and lifeless.
I held him anyway.
I had won. Beaten Rashid. Got Yusef back. Protected everyone I loved.
So why did it feel like I had lost everything?
42
ZAINAB
A day and a half.
Thirty-six hours of waiting. Of checking my phone every five minutes. Of jumping at every notification, every buzz, every sound that might be Prime telling me it was over.
Serenity and Mehar did their best to keep me distracted. We cooked. Made enough food to feed an army—rice and peas, fried plantains, chicken curry, all the comfort foods I’d grown up eating. Mehar moved around the kitchen with surprising ease, chopping vegetables, stirring pots, humming songs I hadn’t heard since we were children.
She looked good. Happy, almost. In her fitted jeans and oversized sweater, gold hoops catching the light every time she moved.
“You need to sit down,”Serenity said, guiding me toward a stool at the kitchen island. “Pregnant women shouldn’t be on their feet all day.”
