Mehar had already been through so much. Ahmad’s abuse. The years of captivity disguised as marriage. She was just starting to find herself again, just starting to believe she could be happy. And this was going to break her heart into a thousand pieces.
“Prime, where are you going?” Camille called out as I abruptly marched past her.
“Get out of my way, Cam,” I spat.
“You can’t go in that room. There’s a guard?—”
Her words went in one ear and out the other. I needed to talk to my woman. And wasn’t no muhfuckin’ rent-a-cop gonna stop me.
Camille’s voice faded behind my footsteps. She followed but stopped as I approached the guard sitting outside Zainab’s door, pretending to be a barrier.
“Move out the way.”
“Sir—”
“Let’s not do this.” I stepped closer, letting him feel every inch of the difference between us. “I ain’t gonna kidnap her or kill her. I just need to speak to her. We can do this the easy way or the hard way. And yes, that’s a threat—to you, yo’ mama, and any other muhfucka you love. Underestimate me and live to regret it.”
I watched him swallow hard, his eyes moving over me like he was calculating his odds. I could see the recognition dawn on his face. Whatever he was getting paid wasn’t worth what I was promising to do to him.
“Fi… five… mi… minutes,” he stuttered.
“I’ll be in there however long I need to be. Fuck you talkin’ to, lil nigga?” I stared him down until he scrambled out of the chair and moved aside. Just because I wasn’t completely an asshole and didn’t need him calling backup, I pulled five hundred-dollar bills from my pocket and shoved them into his chest.
“Thanks?” He looked at the money like he wasn’t sure if this was a bribe or a trap.
I didn’t answer. Just pushed through the door.
And stopped.
Zainab was sitting up in the hospital bed, still handcuffed to the railing, still wearing that thin hospital gown, still looking like she’d been through hell and barely made it back. Her face was pale, her eyes red-rimmed, her body deflated in a way that reminded me how close I’d come to losing her.
But that wasn’t what stopped me.
It was the two babies in her arms.
My daughter was cradled against her left side, swaddled in a pink-and-white hospital blanket, her tiny face scrunched up in sleep. She was so small. So impossibly small. And even from across the room, I could see it—she had my lips. That same shape I saw every morning in the mirror.
And my son.
My SON.
He was tucked against Zainab’s right side, smaller than his sister, with features that were unmistakably mine. I’d spent months talking to “princess” through Zainab’s belly, planning a nursery in pink and purple, imagining teaching my daughter how to throw a punch and scare off boys.
Nobody told me there was a boy in there too.
Nobody told me I was gonna have a son.
Something cracked open in my chest. Something I didn’t have words for. I stood there in the doorway, six-foot-three of fury and violence and plans for revenge, and I felt my eyes burn in a way they hadn’t since I was a kid.
“I know you’re mad…” Zainab started, her pretty bottom lip quivering.
I crossed the room slowly. Not toward her—toward them. My babies.
“Can I hold him?”
She blinked, thrown off by the question. She’d been expecting yelling. Accusations. The explosion she knew was coming.
“Of course.”
