Six pounds of everything I’d ever done right.
She had no idea who her daddy was. What I’d done. The bodies. The blood. The things I’d probably have to answer for when I met God. And she’d never know. That was the whole point of all of it. Every threat I made, every enemy I buried, every hole I dug—it was so this little girl and her brother could grow up thinking the world was safe. Because for them, it would be.
“Camille called,” Zainab said, watching me with the baby. “Once Dubz’s confession goes through—and she said it will—the DA’s dropping everything. She’s filing the motion this week.”
“Good.” Pressed my lips to Kheris’s head. She smelled like baby lotion and formula and brand new life. “It’s gonna work. I made sure of it.”
“I don’t wanna know how.”
“You ain’t gotta.”
She reached over and laced her fingers through mine. “Thank you. For everything. For never giving up. For never letting me go even when I pushed.”
“Girl, go ’head. You ain’t never give me a reason to let go. You gave me a reason to go harder. Every single time.”
“I love you, Prentice Banks.”
“I love you more, Zainab Ali.” I paused. “Soon to be Zainab Banks.”
She leaned her head against my shoulder. I pressed my lips to her hair. Kheris slept on my chest. Idris slept in his bassinet. And from downstairs, Yusef started playing. Clair de Lune. Every note clean.
The melody floated up through the floorboards and filled the room like a prayer.
Nobody spoke. Nobody needed to.
I held my daughter. I held my woman. I listened to my nephew play Debussy in a house that smelled like Rita’s cooking and baby lotion and everything I almost lost.
This was it. The thing I burned the world down for.
This family. This moment. This life.
I didn’t deserve it.
But God gave it to me anyway.
50
MEHAR
My brief pregnancy with Thad’s seed was an ectopic pregnancy. And I couldn’t have been more grateful to have lost that child. God or the universe or whatever was out there decided that nothing from that man deserved to live inside me, and honestly? Same.
I’m sad that I lost a fallopian tube though. It ruptured the night Justice rushed me to the hospital. One minute I was walking out of that warehouse on a high from breaking both of Thad’s kneecaps. Next minute I was on the ground bleeding, and Justice was carrying me to his truck like a ragdoll.
They cut me open. Took the tube. Told me I was lucky to be alive.
Lucky. That’s cute.
But I wasn’t about to sit around mourning what that man took from me. He already took enough. My sister. My trust. My ability to sleep without checking twice that the door was locked. He wasn’t getting my future too.
So I found new hobbies.
The shooting range in Virginia became my second home. Three times a week, sometimes four. The owner, Ray, stopped charging me after the first month because I was good forbusiness. Other members would stop their sessions just to watch me shoot.
And I was good. Not just good. Scary good.
Turned out all that rage I’d been carrying since Ahmad, since my father, since every man who ever thought I was something to be used, it made my hands steady. Made my focus sharp. Made my breath slow and even when I lined up the shot.
Fifteen rounds. Center mass. Every single time.
