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  Rhonnie looked to Ahli, who nodded. Rhonnie unzipped the duffle bag that she was holding just enough to reach in and grab one of the bricks.

  “Catch,” she said and threw it to Dot.

  Dot took a sharp knife from one of the drawers and made a small puncture in the kilo. He took a small amount from it and steadied it on the tip of the blade.

  “Yup,” he said, nodding after he snorted the cocaine. “This that good shit right here. I want all of them.”

  “I thought you would say that.” Quinton nodded, satisfied.

  “At first I was skeptical,” Dot admitted, setting the kilo on the island behind him. “But I should have known that Lance wouldn’t let me down.”

  “Never,” Quinton agreed. “Lance is a man of his word. Always has been.”

  Dot gave Quinton a look that wasn’t easily readable before he turned his head to the women sitting on the stools.

  “Bag up this man’s money,” he instructed. “I’m sure he has better things to do besides stare at you two hoes all day.”

  Ahli stood back and watched all of her surroundings like a hawk. There was not much talk between Quinton and Dot, and the deal went very smoothly. Once the swap had been made Dot and Quinton shook hands one more time.

  “If you stay you should come through this little party my people are throwing downtown tonight,” Dot offered. “Your bodyguards are welcome to come, too.”

  He winked at Ahli and she instantly turned her nose up at him.

  “A generous offer, but honestly we have no further business in your city after this,” Quinton graciously declined, holding up the suitcase of money in his hand.

  “Understood.” Dot smiled. He picked his beer back up and took another swig. “You know, any other man wouldn’t be able to walk out of here alive if they wouldn’t have taken their sunglasses off. If they wouldn’t have looked me in the eyes like a man.”

  Ahli felt Rhonnie tense up behind her. She too heard the bitterness in Dot’s voice and didn’t know what to make of it. Instinctively she put her hand around the butt of the gun behind her back. All she needed was for Quinton to say the word and she’d let all her rounds go. But Quinton didn’t flinch.

  “Any other man wouldn’t have even granted me entrance with these sunglasses still on my face.” Quinton’s voice was smooth. “So what is it that you are trying to say?”

  The vein on Dot’s temple pulsed slightly and Ahli thought for sure that Quinton struck a nerve. For a second he said nothing; his eyes just went from Quinton, then to Ahli, and they stopped on Rhonnie.

  “Nothing,” he finally responded. “Nothing at all.”

  Not waiting another second for him to say anything else out of pocket to her father, Rhonnie took the first steps to leave the way they had come. Ahli gave Dot one last look before she followed her dad and the suitcase of money. The tension in the air was so thick that you could cut it with a knife and Ahli’s only focus was making sure her family got out of that house with no issue. She didn’t even relax when they were all in the car and the money was in the back seat resting peacefully next to Rhonnie. She didn’t inhale an unbothered breath of air until they were a few blocks away from the neighborhood.

  “Daddy, something don’t feel right,” Ahli said, shaking her head. “You see how he was staring at us?”

  “I know.” Quinton was already making arrangements for an early checkout.

  To him the aura throughout the whole deal had been off. There was something in Dot’s eyes that didn’t sit right with him and it was enough to make him want to head home as soon as possible. He trusted Lance, but even he had said Dot was a man of many traits. Quinton just hoped that being a snake businessman wasn’t one of them.

  “I don’t even give a fuck about sleeping,” Rhonnie said. She too was feeling uneasy. “Something was off about all of them niggas; they weren’t right. How does Uncle Lance know these people?”

  “He didn’t say,” Quinton said, speeding toward the hotel. “And right now I don’t care. All I know is that we’re about to get the hell out of Miami.”

  Chapter 4

  “That nigga brought bitches here as protection?” the dread-head man, who went by the name Tank, said. He and four other men sat on the porch of the brick house watching the gold Camaro when it drove off. He took a long drag of the blunt in his hand and shook his head when the car was out of sight. He couldn’t believe that Dot had just let them drive off. That lick would have been too easy.

  “I don’t know, man,” Brayland said. “There was something about those three.”

  “Yeah, they both had big old booties!” Tank said and dapped the other men up. “Dot shoulda just kept the money and took the work. Bodied all three of them muhfuckas. They were asking to get peeled off. Who the fuck comes to a nigga like Dot only three deep?”

  “People who only need to be three deep,” Brayland said matter-of-factly. “Strength ain’t always in numbers, my nigga.”

  He thought back to the words the older of the two girls had said to him. She wasn’t in the block for more than two minutes and already mentally penetrated their whole defensive system. If they would have come in with more than three people and they were as calculated as her, he knew they would be fighting a losing battle if something popped off.

  “Fuck that,” Tank said, hitting the blunt in his hand. “We should have robbed them and kept the money. That would have been more money in our pockets.”

  “Come on, man.” Brayland chuckled at the thirst in his friend. “Ain’t no honor in that.”

  “I’m a dope boy. Ain’t no honor in a lot of the shit I do.”

  Brayland could tell that there was no getting through to Tank. Instead he took the blunt and hit it a couple of times, tuning out the men and their plots. He understood where Tank was coming from. Tank was a man who came from a long line of crackheads and hustlers. In his family you had no choice but to choose one of the sides, so the game was all he knew. For Tank, his loyalty would lie with whoever had the most money and manpower. He just wanted to be on the winning side.

  Brayland, on the other hand, was different. He was introduced to the game the same way Tank had been; the only difference was the streets didn’t raise Brayland. He, unlike so many other young black men in his neighborhood, had a father who taught him everything he needed to know about the hustle. When Brayland’s mother ran off with a white man his dad never once slacked on his parenting.

  Brayland’s father, Larry Michaels, was a college graduate with a degree in finance. He was the one a person called when they didn’t know how to balance their outlandish spending habits with real-life needs. Money was his forte. When he found the first ounce of weed in Brayland’s bedroom along with the scale and Baggies he wasn’t mad. Nor was he mad when he found the eight-balls of coke in his dresser next to the wad of cash. He did something Brayland didn’t expect. He sat him down and told Brayland how proud of him he was. “If it’s in your heart, do it.”

  Larry told Brayland that if he was going to hustle illegally then he had better be smart about it. The first lesson was to never shit where you eat. He told Brayland that by no means should his work be near the place he laid his head. The second lesson was money cleansing. In Brayland’s profession the money he received was tax free and dirty. The only way he’d be able to spend it comfortably would be to clean it with a legitimate business. Which was why Brayland himself graduated college with a degree in business management. The third lesson embedded in Brayland’s mind was loyalty. Only go against those who cross you. If they don’t do anything to hurt you never go out waging war. Never make unnecessary enemies, and keep good people around you. If their heart didn’t match his then there was no reason being in cahoots. Despite the job, Larry told his son nothing that he had would be blessed if he never put out goodness into the world.

  They were things that Brayland had lost sight of over the past few years. When Larry died from a blood clot in his heart Brayland submerged himself in his work. He wa
s always on the block making moves because he didn’t know how to handle losing the one parent he had left. He had even stopped the process of starting up his own business because he didn’t have anyone to make proud any longer. He was just another street mutt in the eyes of the law and he didn’t care. As long as he was a street mutt with a pocket full of hundreds.

  It wasn’t until he looked into the eyes of the beautiful woman with the bun on her head that he was reminded of who he used to be. He sat on the porch with the other fellas as long as he could, listening to them talk about the sick things they would have done to the two women if Dot made them stay. The way they were talking it made a person believe that they didn’t get any pussy on a regular.

  “Man, y’all wild,” Brayland said, hitting the blunt one last time. “Watch the block. I gotta piss.”

  He felt his high creeping up on him and taking him to the place in the clouds where he belonged. Inside of the house he went toward the bathroom on the first level. His bladder was so full that if he didn’t relieve it of all the liquid inside it was sure to explode.

  “Man, what the fuck?” he said to himself when he tried the bathroom doorknob and saw that the door was locked.

  “Yup, and I’m takin’ a shit, too!” a voice called from the bathroom. “Take ya ass on upstairs.”

  Brayland didn’t stand by the door long enough to hear that last part; he was already halfway to the staircase. Passing the entrance to the living room he heard a couple of the bitches who were bagging up the coke call his name. Brayland didn’t know it, but they all wanted a piece of him. The other men Dot had working for him jumped at every opportunity to run up in their juicy goodness, but when it came to Brayland all he saw was a bunch of coked-out females. He respected his manhood so there was no way he would stick his dick inside of a female who didn’t take care of her womanhood.

  He ignored their voices and bounded up the stairs, two at a time. The bathroom upstairs was smack dab in the middle of two bedrooms and he swore he heard the fat lady sing when he saw the door open and the light off. He didn’t look into either of the two rooms; he was just worried about handling his business. He flipped on the light and shut the door to let anyone else who potentially had to use it know it was occupied. As soon as the door was locked behind him he unzipped his pants, pulled his nine inches of thickness through the hole in his Ralph Lauren boxers, and emptied his bladder.

  “Ahhh.” He threw his head back in relief with his eyes closed.

  When his bladder was completely empty he shook the tip and zipped his pants back up. After he flushed the toilet he washed his hands vigorously in the white jail-like sink. Turning the faucet off he made to leave the bathroom, but he heard something that caught his attention and made him stop mid-step.

  “Lance is my man but this shit is just too easy.”

  Being that it was an older house every wall in it was thin. Brayland could make out every word that Dot was saying in the room to the right of him.

  “How you think they got their hands on coke that good?” A voice that Brayland knew as Drew said.

  “It was acquired,” Dot said.

  “Stolen?”

  “Most likely. There is only one cartel that carries product this rich. The Last Kings.”

  “They stole from the Last Kings?”

  Brayland heard the fear in Drew’s voice and he himself stopped breathing. The Last Kings to a grown man was equivalent to the boogeyman to a child. They were as ruthless as they came and the last thing he knew Dot wanted was to harbor their stolen product.

  “I don’t know,” Dot said. “And honestly I don’t care. I paid for these bricks so in my eyes they are mine.”

  “I feel like you have somethin’ else to say, cuz.”

  “If these bitches are this good, I want more.”

  Their voices got slightly quieter making Brayland go to the wall and put his ear to it so that he could hear the rest of what they were saying.

  “Well, you gon’ have to wait until we flip these bitches then. ’Cause you just spent all the re-up money on these muhfuckas right here. I can have the corner boys work some overtime to get it off.”

  “Nah. I’m not a patient man. This is something you should know. If these bricks we have are stolen I don’t want it to even be known that I have them. And if I don’t want them traced back to me that means I have to eliminate the sale and get my money back.”

  “And use that to double up on the product.” Brayland heard the smile in Drew’s voice. “I like how you think, cuz.”

  “Word up. I’m always two steps ahead of all these niggas in the game. It’s the only way to keep the cycle going. When they were in the house I had a tracker put on their car. This man came into a lion’s den with sheep; he was asking for this to happen. Load up; we’re about to head out now.”

  “What about Lance?”

  “Throw that nigga a couple extra stacks for setting up this lick.”

  Brayland exited the bathroom in a hurry not wanting them to know he’d heard everything they said. Drew was Dot’s cousin and, besides Brayland, he was his best shooter. Drew and Dot were as thick as thieves so Brayland knew that if Dot said the word go there was no question after that. He went back down to the porch and sat back in the chair he had just gotten up from.

  “Damn, nigga,” Tank said when he saw him. “Did your high ass fall in or somethin’? I finished that blunt and twisted up another one since you been gone.”

  When Brayland didn’t say anything back Tank shrugged it off and lit his blunt. Brayland’s thoughts were coming to him a hundred miles an hour and he barely heard what Tank said to him. Any other time he wouldn’t care about the way that Dot did business but right then he was bothered. This was the man he worked for. The same time Brayland was filling his own pockets he was putting more money in Dot’s. This was the man they helped keep on top of the game and if Larry could see his son now he would be disappointed.

  “Never make unnecessary enemies.”

  His father’s voice crept to his mind and echoed there. These people just brought Dot a means to save his ever-fluctuating business and in return he was going to rob and kill them. That wasn’t a businessman, or a man for that matter. That sounded like a con artist and a snake. Like somebody who would turn on anyone, no matter how much work had been put in for him.

  The front door opened and out walked Dot and his cousin Drew. “I need you little niggas to hold down the fort until I get back,” Dot said.

  Drew reached to dap everybody up but when he got to Brayland his hand was extended longer than he would have liked before he got a dap back. A funny look came across Drew’s light-skinned face and he brushed the waves on his head. “You good, young’un?”

  “I’m straight.”

  “You sure? ’Cause a part of me felt like you ain’t want to dap ya big bro up.”

  “I didn’t,” Brayland told him bluntly. “And since when were you my big brother?”

  Brayland didn’t give either one of the men eye contact; instead he just glared at the neighborhood in front of him. Drew wanted to floor the kid and his arm flexed slightly.

  “Come on, nigga,” Dot said, checking the clips on the guns at his waist. A big black Suburban full of Dot’s men pulled up in front of the house. “It’s time to head out.”

  “We gon’ talk when I get back,” Drew threatened, pointing a finger at Brayland’s face.

  “Yeah, a’ight, man,” Brayland said, leaning back in his chair.

  If looks could kill Brayland would have dropped dead from the plastic white chair he was sitting in. Out of all of Dot’s shooters Brayland had always been the most arrogant. Drew told Dot that he needed to handle that kid before he got out of hand but Dot never listened. He would say that his nonchalant attitude was what made him a great asset to the team. Drew turned his back on the porch and went to take his seat in Dot’s BMW when he pulled it behind the Suburban.

  “Them niggas gonna go put in work on somebody,” Tank acknow
ledged. “Man, why they ain’t pull me to go?”

  “On God!”

  Tank was slapping hands with another man when Brayland stood and bounded down the porch steps. Brayland realized at that moment that he was surrounded by a bunch of jokers. Nothing Dot had would be blessed and it was something that he’d been noticing for a while now. There was no reason to stay down for a man who was only down for himself.

  “Where you going, nigga?” Tank called after him. “Dot told us to watch the block.”

  “So watch the block then,” Brayland told him and kept walking.

  Chapter 5

  “No questions. Grab everything you came with and meet me back out here in five minutes.”

  Quinton wasted no time in barking out orders when he pulled back into the parking lot of the hotel. He parked the car a few spaces away from his own and the girls wasted no time in hopping out. They heard the seriousness in Quinton’s voice and knew that it would be best if they did as they were told.

  When they took off toward the building Quinton smoothly relocated the briefcases of money to the trunk of his car. His bags had already been placed there long before they’d left to make the deal in the first place. He stood by the girls’ car and waited for them to come back out. Instinct told him to check his surroundings. The scenery seemed normal: families checking into the hotel, bellhops carrying bags. Still, something was off in the air and he couldn’t shake the bad feeling he had in his stomach. Something wasn’t right and Quinton mentally rewound to when they walked out of Dot’s house. At the time he didn’t think anything of the men walking from the car but the more he envisioned it the more off the whole scene seemed. There was no reason for anyone to be as close to their vehicle as they were, especially if Dot was just going to let them go. Unless . . .

  A thought entered his mind and his chest tightened. “Shit,” Quinton said when took a few steps back toward the girls’ car.

  He bent down and saw that his inkling had been correct. He reached his hand under the Camaro and pulled a small black device from one of the axels. There was a small red light blinking in the top right corner of it and he took a brisk breath.