And in that bed, propped up on a mountain of pillows, was the man who made me.
I stopped in the doorway.
Rashid Muhammad—Brother X, Shadow, the most dangerous nigga I ever knew—looked like death was already collecting on him. His skin had that gray undertone, stretched too tight over bones that stuck out more than I remembered. No bowtie. No tailored suit. Just a hospital gown and tubes running out his arm into bags of shit I couldn’t identify.
He’d dropped at least forty pounds. Maybe more.
Damn.
“Prentice.” His voice was thin. Weak. Ain’t sound nothing like the man who used to command rooms without raising it. “Wondered when you’d come.”
I made myself walk closer even though part of me wanted to turn around and leave. This wasn’t the man who saved me from Big Sauce in that prison shower. Wasn’t the man who trained me, disciplined me, made me pray five times a day until I learned to control all that rage I was carrying. Wasn’t the man who took a fat, stuttering thirteen-year-old and turned him into something lethal.
This was what was left.
“You know why I’m here,” I said.
“Your woman.” He coughed—wet, rattling, the kind of cough that comes from lungs that gave up a while ago. “Saw it on the news. Murder. Identity theft.” Another cough. “Dramatic.”
“You did this.”
His eyes—still sharp, still calculating even now—found mine. “Did I?”
“Don’t play with me, old man.” I stepped closer. Close enough to see the yellow in his eyes, the spots on his hands. “You couldn’t touch me or her directly. So you made a call. Fed the cops information. Had her arrested in front of her bakery. That’s some savage shit.”
“That’s what you believe?” He almost smiled. “That I would use the police—the pigs, the oppressors, the system that’s been hunting our people for centuries—as my weapon?”
“You done worse.”
“I have.” He paused to catch his breath, chest heaving. “I’ve killed. Ordered deaths. Destroyed families. Built an empire on blood.” Another pause. “But I have never—NEVER—worked with law enforcement. That’s a line I don’t cross. Not for revenge. Not for nothing.”
I searched his face. Looking for the lie. Looking for that tell that would confirm what I came here believing.
Ain’t find it.
“Then who?” I demanded. “Who else got the connections? The information? The motive?—”
“I don’t know.” His eyes drifted closed. “And frankly, Prentice, I don’t care.”
“You don’t care.”
“I’m dying.” He said it flat. Simple. Like he was telling me what day it was. “Doctors gave me weeks. Month at most if Allah show mercy. Already outlived they predictions by a month.” His eyes opened again. “I’m tired. I’m ready. And I want to spend whatever time I got left with my daughter. Not at war with you.”
I thought about Farah. About the ear I sawed off her head. About the way she screamed and begged while I did it.
Charge it to the game.
“The BCC,” I said. “Your people. Could one of them?—”
“BCC is finished.” Rashid laughed but it turned into a coughing fit that went on so long I thought he might die right there. When he stopped, there was blood on his lips. “Lieutenants scattered. Mega trying to hold it together but he ain’t got the vision. The discipline. Without me, the organization gon’ collapse within the year.”
He wiped his mouth with a tissue. It came away red.
“Listen, young blood, I ain’t touch your woman.” Rashid’s voice was fading. Sleep pulling him under. “Ain’t make that call. Don’t know who did. But Prentice…” His hand moved, reaching for something that wasn’t there. “You want answers, look closer to home. Look at who benefits from her destruction. Who gains power when she falls.”
“The fuck that mean?”
But his eyes were closing. His breathing evening out into something that sounded more like death than sleep.
