The tears came before I could stop them.
Not for Kasim—I didn’t know him well enough to truly grieve him. But for what he represented. Hope. Justice. The promise that someone would make Prentice pay for what he’d done to our family.
Now that hope was dead. Murdered in a cell thousands of miles away.
“There’s no one left.” My father’s voice was hollow. Empty. “Demetrius is gone. Kasim is gone. The Brick City Crew is scattered. Everything I built…” He looked around the destroyed room like he was seeing his life’s work in the shattered lamp and scattered papers. “Everything is gone.”
“Baba, please. You need to rest. Let me help you back to bed?—”
“What’s the point?” He pushed my hands away weakly. “What’s the point of resting? Of fighting? I’m dying, Farah. The doctors gave me weeks. Maybe days.” He laughed—a horrible, broken sound. “I thought I could hold on long enough to seePrentice destroyed. To see Kasim come home and finish what I started. But now…”
He started coughing. Deep, wet coughs that shook his whole body. When he pulled his hand away from his mouth, it was covered in blood.
“Baba!”
“It doesn’t matter.” He slumped against me, his weight almost nothing. The cancer had eaten him down to bones and bitterness. “None of it matters anymore.”
“Don’t say that.” I was sobbing now, holding him, rocking him the way I’d been rocking myself upstairs just minutes ago. “Please don’t say that. We’ll figure something out. I’ll find a way. I’ll make him pay, I promise?—”
“You?” He looked at me. And even now, even dying, I saw the dismissal in his eyes. The doubt. “You’re a party planner, Farah. You don’t have the stomach for what needs to be done.”
The words hit like a slap.
“I have more stomach than you know,” I said quietly. “He took my EAR, Baba. Do you think I’m going to let that go? Do you think I’m going to let him live happily ever after with that bitch while I hide in this house like a broken doll?”
Something flickered in my father’s eyes. Interest. Maybe even respect.
“What would you do?” he asked. “If you had the resources. The connections. What would you do to him?”
“I’d take everything he loves. His woman. His baby. His family. I’d burn it all down and make him watch.” My voice was steady now. Cold. “And then, when he had nothing left, I’d put a bullet in his head myself.”
My father stared at me for a long moment.
Then he smiled. A real smile, bloody teeth and all.
“There she is,” he whispered. “There’s my daughter.”
His hand found mine. Squeezed with what little strength he had left.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “For doubting you. For treating you like you were weak. You’re not weak, Farah. You’re a Muhammad. And Muhammads don’t forgive. We don’t forget. We destroy.”
“Baba—”
“Promise me.” His grip tightened. “Promise me you’ll make him pay. For me. For Kasim. For everything he’s taken from this family.”
“I promise.”
He nodded. Closed his eyes. Let out a long, slow breath.
And then he was still.
“Baba?” I shook him gently. “Baba, wake up.”
Nothing.
“BABA!”
I pressed my fingers to his neck. Searched for a pulse. Waited for his chest to rise.
