Yusef’s face crumpled. “Auntie Zai is a good person. She takes care of me. She?—”
“She has filled your head with foolishness.” I began to pace, my polished shoes silent on the marble floor of my study. “Single mothers breed weakness in boys. They cannot teach you how to be a man because they do not know what manhood requires. They nurture when they should discipline. They comfort when they should challenge. They create soft, emotional creatures who crumble at the first sign of adversity.”
I stopped pacing and looked down at him.
“Look at you. Twelve years old and weeping like a woman. Is this what she has made of you? Is this the legacy of my bloodline?”
“I want to go HOME!” Yusef was screaming now, his small body trembling with a rage that almost impressed me. Almost. “You can’t keep me here! Prime will come for me! He’ll?—”
“Prime.” I let the name sit on my tongue like something bitter. “You speak of him as though he is some great protector. Some hero who will rescue you from your own family.” I leaned down, bringing my face close to his. “Let me tell you somethingabout your precious Prime. When I found him, he was a fat, stuttering, pathetic excuse for a boy. Couldn’t string two words together without tripping over his own tongue. Couldn’t throw a punch without crying afterward. He was weak. Soft. A target for anyone who wanted easy prey.”
Yusef’s eyes went wide.
“I made him into what he is today. Every skill he possesses, I taught him. Every instinct he relies on, I honed. The man you admire so much? He is my creation. My weapon. And he has forgotten his place.” I straightened up. “But I will remind him. In time.”
Something shifted in the boy’s face. The fear was still there, but underneath it, something harder was forming. Something defiant.
“Prime is a good man,” Yusef said quietly. “He’s better than you.”
I almost smiled. There was fire in this one. Buried deep beneath the tears and the weakness, but present nonetheless.
Perhaps he could be salvaged after all.
“Prime is a soldier who has lost his way,” I said calmly. “Distracted by a woman who has filled his head with nonsense and his bed with lies. But that is not your concern. Your concern is?—”
“I WANT TO GO HOME!”
Yusef launched himself off the couch with a speed I hadn’t anticipated. His small hands connected with my chest, shoving me backward with all the strength his skinny frame could muster.
It wasn’t much. I barely moved. But the audacity of it—the sheer disrespect—ignited something cold and sharp in my chest.
“Boy.” My voice dropped to a register that had made grown men reconsider their life choices. “Have you lost your mind?”
He was breathing hard, fists clenched at his sides, tears still streaming but his jaw set with defiance. For a moment, he almost looked like someone worth molding.
Then my hand connected with his face.
The slap sent him spinning. His glasses flew off, skittering across the marble floor, and he crumpled to his knees with a cry that echoed through the high ceilings of my home.
“You do not put your hands on me.” I stood over him, watching him clutch his face, watching the defiance crumble back into fear. “Ever. Do you understand?”
He didn’t answer. Just knelt there, feeling around blindly for his glasses.
I picked them up. Examined them for damage. Then grabbed him by the back of his neck and hauled him to his feet.
A cough seized my chest—sudden, violent—and I released him to turn away. I pressed my handkerchief to my lips, fighting to suppress it, but the fit had its way with me. When it finally passed, I folded the cloth quickly before the boy could see the flecks of red staining the white fabric.
Weakness. My body was betraying me at the worst possible time.
I straightened my posture. Adjusted my bowtie. Refused to acknowledge what I’d just seen.
“Come with me.”
My kitchen was larger than most apartments.
Italian marble countertops. Professional-grade appliances. A wine cellar visible through glass doors. I had built this mansion with the proceeds of decades of careful work—investments, partnerships, an underground legacy, the occasional necessary elimination of obstacles. Every inch of it reflected the discipline and precision that had carried me from the streets of Detroit to the upper echelons of power in Washington DC.
And now my grandson was going to learn what discipline truly meant.
