“And Thad?”
“I’m going to walk down that hallway right now and tell Prime everything you just told me.” She held my gaze. “He needs to know. Mehar needs to be protected. And we need to start building a case against the right person.”
“Camille.” I gripped her hand tighter. “Tell him he can’t kill Thad. Not yet. We need him alive. We need him to face what he did. Promise me.”
Something flickered across her face, doubt, maybe, about whether Prime Banks was capable of restraint when it came to the people he loved.
“I’ll tell him,” she said carefully. “Whether he listens is another conversation.”
She gathered her things, straightened her blouse, and squared her shoulders like she was preparing to walk into a courtroom instead of a hospital waiting room.
“Get some rest,” she said from the doorway. “Hold those babies. Let Elise take care of you. I’m going to go make some things happen.”
“Camille.”
She turned back.
“Thank you. For everything. For being here all night. For fighting for me even after…You didn’t have to do any of this.”
“Yes, I did.” Her voice was soft but certain. “Because it’s the right thing to do. And because you deserve better than what this system has given you.”
Then she walked out the door.
I watched her disappear down the hallway through the narrow window, her posture shifting with every step—from the woman who had just hugged me and wiped my tears to the attorney who was about to walk into a room with Prentice Banks and tell him that his cousin was the one who murdered my twin.
God help them all.
I looked down at the two lives cradled against my chest. My daughter was sleeping, her tiny mouth making sucking motions against my hospital gown. My son was awake, and I could see his blue eyes, unfocused but wandering, taking in a world he’d barely been in for a day.
“I’m going to fix this,” I whispered to them. “Mama’s going to fix all of this. I promise you.”
The monitor beeped. The babies breathed. And somewhere down the hall, the truth I’d been carrying for five years was finally about to reach the one person who could do something about it.
I just prayed he’d do it the right way.
40
PRIME
I listened to the words coming out of Camille’s mouth and I couldn’t believe my fuckin’ ears.
Thad. My cousin. The nigga I grew up with, brought around my family, trusted with business and blood. The same nigga who sat at my dinner table, shook my hand, smiled in my face like everything was everything.
He killed Zahara.
He raped Farah.
And now he was in Mehar’s bed.
We agreed to not hold secrets. Yet here Zainab was, holding another one from me. Why the fuck wouldn’t she tell me that my cousin was the one who murdered her sister? Without a doubt, I would’ve handled that nigga swiftly. I would’ve put him in the ground years ago if I’d known. And now Mehar was dating this monster, sleeping next to a killer every night, thinking she’d finally found a good man after everything Ahmad put her through.
I was furious with Zainab to the point I couldn’t see straight.
A part of me was still high on the news that she’d given birth to twins. A boy and a girl, both healthy despite being born on a prison bunk with no doctor in sight. I was grateful shewas alive—Camille told me about the hemorrhaging, the blood transfusion, how close we came to losing her. And I was without a doubt gonna handle those COs who left her to die in that cell without lifting a finger.
But this shit with Thad? This was not okay.
I had proven time and time again that I would do anything for her. Kill for her. Die for her. Burn down everything I’d built just to keep her safe. Yet she kept this from me. And now Mehar was in danger because of it.
