“Um, hello? I’m still here.”
We both turned. Mehar was standing in the office doorway, arms crossed, a strange expression on her face. Not fear. Not horror. Something else entirely.
“Sorry,” Zainab said, pulling away from me slightly. “Mehar, are you?—”
“That was INSANE.” Mehar’s eyes were bright. Almost feverish. “I just shot at a moving car. I emptied an entire clip at a man trying to kill us. And I HIT him. Multiple times.”
She was grinning. Actually grinning.
“I’ve never felt anything like that,” she continued, pushing off from the car and walking toward us. “My whole life, I’ve been told to be quiet. To be small. To submit. And tonight I just…” She mimed holding the gun, pulling the trigger. “I fought BACK. I protected us.”
Zainab looked at me with concern in her eyes. I understood why. This wasn’t the reaction of a traumatized woman. This was something else. Something awakening.
“You did good,” I told Mehar. “Kept your head. Hit your targets. That’s not easy, especially under pressure.”
“Can you teach me more?” She stepped closer, that manic energy still crackling around her. “I want to learn. Self-defense. Shooting. All of it. I never want to feel helpless again.”
“Mehar…” Zainab started.
“I’m serious.” Mehar turned to her sister, and beneath the excitement, I saw something harder. Something forged in years of abuse and silence. “Ahmad took everything from me. My freedom. My confidence. My sense of self. Tonight, for the first time in my life, I took something back.” She looked at me again. “I want more of that.”
I studied her for a long moment. Saw the hunger in her eyes. The anger that had been buried for so long it had turned into something else entirely.
Dangerous. That’s what she wanted to be. Maybe she already was.
“We’ll talk about it,” I said carefully. “But right now, we need to get out of here.”
Mehar nodded, seemingly satisfied with that answer for now. She climbed into the back of the Bentayga without another word.
Zainab lingered, her hand on my chest, her eyes searching mine.
“What?” I asked.
“Nothing. Just…” She shook her head. “Thank you. For coming. For handling it. For being you.”
“Always.” I kissed her forehead. “Now let’s get you home.”
We climbed into the Bentayga—Zainab in the passenger seat, Mehar in the back—and I pulled out of the warehouse into the dark night.
In the trunk, Zoo’s body cooled beneath the tarp.
Behind us, somewhere on Miller Road, Pharaoh was probably already hooking up the Tahoe.
That was one loose end, but now the real work would begin. I needed to start this war with Rashid. And that began with kidnapping that crazy bitch, Farah.
29
PRIME
Mehar was asleep before we hit the highway.
I glanced in the rearview and saw her curled up in the backseat, her face slack with exhaustion, the adrenaline finally wearing off. She’d been through hell tonight. They both had.
“She’s out,” Zainab said softly, looking back at her sister.
“Good. She needs it.”
We drove in silence for a while. The city lights flickered past, the late-night traffic thin enough that I could let my mind wander. Which was dangerous. Because every time I stopped focusing on the road, I started thinking about what came next.
