“Hey.” He didn’t look up from his phone—typical—but I caught that little smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. He looked lighter somehow. More like the kid he was supposed to be instead of the traumatized mess we’d been dragging around for the past week.
Good. At least one of us was keeping it together.
I turned back to Prime as he pulled away from the curb, smooth and easy, merging into traffic like he owned every lane on this street. He was quiet. Calm. Wearing that sameunbothered energy he always carried, like the whole world could be on fire around him and he’d just shrug and ask if anybody wanted s’mores.
But something was different.
I studied his profile—that sharp jaw, the way his fingers wrapped around the steering wheel just a little too tight. Then my eyes dropped to his hands.
His knuckles was bruised. Swollen. The skin split open in a couple places, angry and red, like he’d been beating on something. Or more likely, someonewho didn’t get a chance to hit back.
“Prime.” I kept my voice light, but my pulse was already starting to race. “What happened to your hands?”
He didn’t even flinch. Just kept those eyes on the road, cool as a fan in December. “Had to handle something.”
“Handle something like what?”
The silence stretched out between us, filled only by the hum of the engine and the tinny sound of whatever Yusef was listening to through his AirPods in the back.
Then, casual as anything: “I handled your father.”
I’m sorry, come again? Run that back? WHAT did he just say?
Every molecule of air evacuated from my lungs at the same damn time. I stared at him, jaw on the floor, brain doing backflips trying to process what this man had just said to me. Like he was telling me he’d stopped for gas. Like he was mentioning he’d picked up milk from the store.
Handled. My father. Shamir Ali. The boogeyman of my entire existence. The monster who’d lived rent-free in my nightmares for over a decade. The man I’d been running from since I was sixteen years old.
“You… WHAT?”
“Found him.” Prime’s voice was flat. “Drove up to Baltimore this morning. Paid him a visit at that lil health food store he runs.”
My heart was pounding so hard I could feel it in my teeth. “Prime. What did you DO?”
“What needed to be done.” He glanced over at me, just for a second, and his eyes?—
His eyes was cold.
Not cold toward me. Never toward me. But cold like he’d had to flip a switch inside himself. Turn off all the soft parts. Become something else entirely to do whatever he’d done.
“He’s alive,” Prime continued, and I realized I’d been holding my breath. “Barely. But he’s gonna spend the rest of his pathetic life remembering what happens when you hurt people that belong to me.”
I whipped around to check on Yusef—but he had his AirPods in, head nodding to some beat, completely zoned out from this conversation. Thank you, Lord.
“Prime…” I turned back around, and I could feel my hands trembling in my lap. “We literally JUST talked about this. No more secrets. And you went and?—”
“This ain’t a secret.” He cut me off, but his voice softened. Warmed back up. The cold was receding, the man I knew sliding back into place. “I’m telling you right now, ain’t I? I just didn’t tell you beforehand because you would’ve tried to stop me. And I wasn’t trying to hear all that.”
He wasn’t wrong. If he’d told me he was planning to drive to Baltimore and confront my father, I would’ve begged him not to go. Would’ve given him a thousand reasons why it wasn’t worth the risk, why Shamir wasn’t worth the energy, why we should just let the past stay in the past where it belonged.
But the past never stayed put. That was the whole problem. It always found a way to dig itself up and show up at your door.
“Is he gonna die?” I swallowed hard, my throat tight.
“One day, but not today.” Prime’s jaw flexed. “Death was too easy for him. Too quick. I wanted him to suffer. The way y’all suffered.”
The tears came before I could stop them. I didn’t even know what I was feeling anymore—fear and relief and shock and gratitude and horror all swirling together into something I couldn’t name if my life depended on it.
“What did you do to him?” I whispered.
