“Stop talking.”
“But I?—”
Justice reached into his pocket and pulled out a pair of AirPods. Slid them into his ears. Tapped something on his phone.
“JUSTICE.” I yanked at the chains, the metal screaming against the ceiling hook. “JUSTICE, YOU CAN’T JUST LEAVE ME HERE. WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS ABOUT? WE’RE FAMILY, BRO. WE’RE BLOOD. JUSTICE!”
He didn’t even look at me.
Just stood there against the wall, eating his pear, nodding slightly to whatever music was playing in his ears, like I wasn’t even in the room.
Like I was already dead.
And that’s when the fear hit. Real fear. The kind I hadn’t felt since I was a kid watching my pops get dragged out of our house by dangerous people.
This wasn’t a misunderstanding.
This wasn’t a joke.
Something had happened. Something they knew about. Something bad enough that Justice—easy-going, mind-his-business Justice—was willing to chain me to a ceiling and wait for his brother to arrive.
Prime was coming.
And whatever he was coming to do, I had a feeling I wasn’t gonna enjoy it.
I stopped struggling. Stopped screaming. Just hung there in the cold, watching Justice ignore me, feeling the weight of those chains pulling at my shoulders, and tried to figure out what the fuck they knew.
The list was long.
And none of it was good.
42
MEHAR
The pregnancy test sat on the bathroom counter like a grenade with the pin pulled. I’d bought it on the way home from Thad’s place, stopping at a CVS three neighborhoods over so nobody would recognize me. Shoved it in my purse like contraband. Carried it around all night while I cried about Zainab and threw up twice and let Thad rub my back and tell me everything would be okay.
I was going to take it with him. That was the plan. We’d find out together, and if it was positive, we’d figure out what to do. Together. Like a real couple.
But then Justice called with some emergency, and Thad was out the door before I could even tell him what I’d been carrying in my purse all night.
So now it was just me. Alone in the bathroom. Staring at a box that was about to change my life one way or another.
My stomach lurched again—that same nausea that had been haunting me for days—and I grabbed the edge of the sink until it passed.
“Just do it,” I whispered to my reflection. “Just take the damn test.”
The front door opened.
“Mehar? You here?”
Serenity. I’d forgotten she was stopping by to grab more clothes. She’d been staying at Mega’s place most nights lately, only coming back to our apartment when she needed a fresh outfit or a break from whatever chaos was happening over there.
“Bathroom,” I called out, my voice shakier than I wanted it to be.
Her footsteps approached. A knock on the door. “You okay in there? You sound weird.”
I looked at the test. Looked at the door. Made a decision.
