“I’m fine, Baba.”
“You’re not fine. But you will be.” He squeezed my hand. Weak but sure. “Kasim will be home soon. The money cleared. Paperwork’s moving. Your brother will be free within weeks.”
Kasim. My half-brother. Locked up in Panama for two years. Cold. Patient. Methodical. Everything I wasn’t.
“When he gets here,” Daddy said, “you tell him everything. He’ll help you plan. Help you execute. Together, you’ll make Prentice pay for what he took from this family. We will take out everyone. Quest, Justice, the nieces, the siblings. No one will be left behind.”
I nodded. Didn’t trust my voice.
Tell him everything.But not everything everything. The Thad part was my secret. My weapon. I’d use it when the time was right.
“But until then—” Daddy’s grip tightened. “You wait. You watch. You don’t move without Kasim. Understand?”
“I understand.”
“Good girl.”
His eyes started to close. Exhaustion pulling him under. These days he couldn’t stay awake more than thirty minutes at a time. The cancer was winning.
I was about to stand, let him rest, when his phone buzzed on the nightstand.
We both looked at it.
The screen lit up. Incoming call.
The name made my blood run cold.
VIVICA BANKS
I stared at my father. He stared back.
“Baba.” My voice came out strangled. “Why is Prime’s mother calling you?”
He didn’t answer right away. Just looked at that buzzing phone with something I couldn’t read in his eyes.
6
ZAINAB
I saw him before my brain caught up to my eyes.
Prime. Standing in the middle of that visitation room, his presence overwhelming. Locs pulled back, jaw tight, looking like he hadn’t slept in days but still fine as hell.
My whole body exhaled.
Camille was there too, off to the side with her designer suit and her paperwork, but I barely noticed her. All I could see was him.
“You got fifteen minutes,” the guard said behind me. “No funny business.”
Prime didn’t even look at him. Just crossed the room and pulled me into his arms like ain’t nobody else exist.
I broke.
All that holding it together I’d been doing? That “I’m fine” face I’d been wearing for a week? Gone. I buried my face in his chest and let the tears come, shaking so hard I probably looked crazy.
“I got you,” he said into my hair. “I’m here. I got you.”
He smelled like home. Like his cologne and shea butter and everything I’d been missing. I wanted to stay right there forever.
