“I said fine, Prime.” Her voice cracked on my name. She was staring at the plane ticket like she couldn’t decide if it was a gift or a death sentence.
It was both.
“I won’t come back,” she said. Swallowed hard. “Ain’t nothing left for me here anyway.”
That right there? That was the truest shit she ever said to me.
Rashid was in the ground. Cancer ate him alive and grief finished what was left. Kasim got handled in Panama before he could ever set foot back on American soil—Creed’s people made sure of that. The BCC compound was seized, RICO’d to death, feds crawling through her daddy’s legacy like roaches at a cookout. Meech was probably decomposed in some basement nobody would ever find. And every cousin, associate, and hanger-on who used to ride for the Muhammad name had conveniently lost her number the second the money dried up.
She was the last one standing. And she was standing on absolutely nothing.
“You sure?” I asked. “Because once Quest drives you to LAX, that’s it. Flight leaves in four hours. You board that plane and this chapter is closed. Permanently. There’s no coming back from Bali to talk it out. There’s no phone calls in six months saying you changed your mind. It’s done.”
She went quiet. Turning that envelope over in her hands like she was weighing the last two years of her life against whatever came next.
“Prime, I loved you. I know you don’t give a fuck. I know it don’t matter. But I need you to know that part was real. Everything else was bullshit, but that part? That was real.”
I didn’t say nothing. Just let her talk.
“And at least…” She wiped her face with the back of her hand, smearing tears across her cheekbone. “At least you handled Thad. For what he did to me. That… that meant something.”
I thought about what Thad did to her. The rape. All that sick shit he put her through because he could. Because she was convenient and vulnerable and he was a predator who saw opportunity.
I didn’t handle Thad for Farah. I handled him for Zahara. For Mehar. For Zainab. For every woman that nigga touchedand damaged and discarded like she was nothing. But if Farah needed to believe a piece of that was for her? Cool. Let her have it. Didn’t cost me nothing and it got her on the plane.
“Don’t thank me,” I said. “Just don’t come back.”
She nodded slow. Set the envelope down and held up her wrists. Chains clinked against the radiator pipe.
I pulled the key from my pocket and unlocked the cuffs. Metal fell away and she rubbed her wrists where the skin was raw and red. Two weeks of friction will do that.
She stood up on shaky legs, grabbing the envelope and pressing it to her chest like it was the last thing keeping her alive. Maybe it was.
She stood there for a second. Just looking at me. Memorizing my face or some shit. Trying to find something in my expression that might change the ending of this story.
She wasn’t gonna find it.
“Goodbye, Prime.”
“Goodbye, Farah.”
She walked past me with her shoulders relaxed.
“You’re a better man than you think,” she said.
Then she was gone.
I heard Quest’s voice outside: “Let’s go,” and a car door closing.
I stood in that warehouse alone.
Just me and the silence and the ghost of every enemy I’d ever had.
Rashid—dead.
Kasim—dead.
Meech—gone.
