Zoo’s eyes narrowed. “A trip? Right now?”
“That’s what she said. Her and the boy and some nigga. Had bags packed and everything. Moving real quick.”
“Hm.” He was quiet for a second, processing. I could almost see the wheels turning. “What about school? Teachers might know something. Other kids he hung with.”
“We can start there.” I was already grabbing my purse, my keys, my jacket. “Principal knows me. She’ll let us ask around.”
“Then let’s go.” Zoo was at the door, that restless energy back in his body. The hunter sniffing for blood.
I took one last look at the apartment before I left. At Nigel’s Jordans by the couch—the ones he’d just gotten, barely worn. At his jacket still hanging by the door. At the Xbox controller sitting on the coffee table like he’d be back any minute to pick it up.
“I’ma find them, baby,” I whispered. “Mama’s gonna find out who did this. And when I do…”
I didn’t finish the sentence. Didn’t have to.
Whoever killed my son was living on borrowed time. They just didn’t know it yet.
I slammed the door and followed Zoo into the night.
6
PRIME
The drive to the penthouse was quiet as hell.
Nobody said shit. Yusef was in the backseat staring out the window, probably replaying every traumatic thing he’d witnessed today on a loop in his head. Zainab sat in the passenger seat clutching that duffel bag against her chest like it was gonna protect her from something, eyes fixed on nothing.
And me? I was thinking about murder.
Not the kind I’d already committed. Nah. The kind I was planning.
Shamir Ali.
That nigga’s name had been running through my head on repeat ever since Zainab finished telling me everything. Every red light. Every mile marker. Every silent minute in this car. I kept seeing it—those two sixteen-year-old girls, beaten bloody by their own father. Thrown out into the streets like they wasn’t his flesh and blood. Their hymens checked like they was cattle at an auction while that sick muhfucka stood there and watched.
What kind of man does that to his own daughters?
I thought about my own fucked up childhood. About Vivica and all her manipulative bullshit. About the beatings I caught from niggas in the neighborhood who thought I was soft becauseI was fat and stuttered. About crushing Tre’s skull with that padlock when I was thirteen because I didn’t know no other way to make the pain stop.
My mother was a terrible person. Cold. Calculating. Self-serving to her core. That woman would sell her own kids out for a political advantage and not lose a minute of sleep.
But she never did no shit like what Shamir did.
Nah. That nigga was a different breed of monster. The kind that hid behind religion and tradition to justify his evil. The kind that broke his own children and called it discipline. The kind that needed to be put down like the rabid dog he was.
I wasn’t gonna tell Zainab. She’d try to stop me. Try to talk me out of it with some speech about how revenge wasn’t worth it, how we needed to focus on the future, how her father wasn’t worth the trouble.
But that’s where she was wrong.
He was worth exactly the amount of trouble it would take for me to find his ass and make him pay for what he did. To her. To Zahara, who was dead now because of the chain of events he set in motion when he threw them out that night.
I’d handle it quietly. Efficiently. The way I handled everything else.
She didn’t need to know. And she damn sure couldn’t stop me even if she wanted to.
I pulled into my parking spot and killed the engine.
“We’re here.”
