Читать книгу The Nightmare on Trap Street - C. N. Phillips - Страница 7

Chapter 3

A small smile was frozen on Sadie’s lips as she made her way to her master suite inside of the mansion. She had been waiting for this day for a long time, and it had finally come. It was no secret that money had always been her motivation, ever since her cousin Ray had put her on in the game all those years ago. But now she would have something to set her apart from every other hustler in the world.

Quiet as kept, Vita E Morte had been the only thing keeping her going for the last six months, not just because she was dedicated and driven to put it out, but because it had saved her from becoming a victim to her own emotions. There were a few things that she couldn’t afford to think about when so much was on the line, like her ex-boyfriend, Tyler, and his new fiancée. Because if she thought about it, she would have to come to terms with the fact that he wasn’t hers anymore. If she thought about it, she would be forced to admit to herself that she was heartbroken, and that was a feeling she couldn’t afford to feel. Not on the brink of her success. Still, a year ago, when she told Tyler she needed a break, she didn’t think six months later he would be engaged. She didn’t think he would move on so fast. She thought he would wait for her because he loved her. But she was wrong. He had fallen in love with someone else.

As Ray’s right-hand man, Tyler was still part of The Last Kings, so she had no choice but to occasionally be around him on a business note. In truth, he had tried a few times to talk to her about where they stood, but she just couldn’t. He had made the conscious decision to give another woman his heart, and she had nothing to say to him. Sadie found that if she kept herself busy, she wouldn’t think about Tyler. But right then, when she walked into her room and sat on her bed, the only person she wanted to talk to was him.

He knew all about Rhonnie and Ahli and the events that had led her to them. However, she hadn’t told anyone but Ray and their team of scientists about the drug. Maybe if Tyler knew the reason she had been so aloof back then, things would have been different. She had been so wrapped up in doing something that hadn’t been done in years that the last thing on her mind was a relationship. If she could go back and do things differently, she might have. But she was fashioning a new drug, not a time machine.

Before she knew it, Sadie was on her feet again and inside of her closet. It was vast and mimicked a dressing room in a luxury clothing store. In the very back, there was a jewelry cabinet that held some of her most prized possessions. The entire cabinet was a mirror, and the front of it was outlined with diamonds. As she walked toward it, she stripped herself of her clothing. She looked her curvy body up and down, taking in her reflection as a whole. Gone was the girl who had begged her cousin for a piece of his pie. She had been replaced with a woman who had the spirit of a boss. A boss who would do whatever it took to never fall from grace again.

She opened the door of the cabinet and was standing face-to-face with $2 million worth of jewelry. She reached past all the diamonds and gold and pulled something from the back of the cabinet: a picture. Her face was emotionless as she stared down at the man and woman in the photo. The man was Tyler, and the woman was her. She was holding the camera and had caught the perfect photo of them smiling big under the shining moon. They were sitting on a gondola gliding along the canals of Venice, Italy. Sadie felt her heart tug slightly when she thought back to how Tyler had surprised her with a trip out of the country for a few days. She was so happy, and she would have been content anywhere in the world as long as she was with him.

“I’m going to keep this photo forever.”

That was what she had said, and she meant it at the time. But it seemed that their forever had come and gone. A single tear rolled down her cheek and fell on her happy face in the photo. Her chest felt like it had caved in, like someone had knocked all the wind out of her, and she realized she had been holding her breath. When she finally tried to breathe, she was comparable to a fish out of water, gasping at the air. It seemed as if the walls inside the closet were closing in on her, and before more tears could fall, she clenched her eyes shut. She didn’t open them until she had regained her wits, and when she did, Sadie forcefully ripped the photo in half before letting the two pieces fall to the floor. She closed the cabinet and left the closet, grabbing the suit and shoes she was going to be wearing on her way out.

She couldn’t hear the guns going off in the basement, but Sadie knew Ahli and Rhonnie were down there having a field day. She hadn’t expected Rhonnie to have many questions about the meeting, Ahli was the one she had been worried about. Although Ahli was the one who had given the location to the drug’s recipe, Sadie figured she hadn’t given much thought to the fact that one day it would really be on the market. If Ahli did feel any kind of way, she would have to get over it quick. Money was the motive, and there were millions, potentially billions, at their fingertips.

Sadie set the clothes on her California king and went to the bathroom connected to her bedroom. It was one of her favorite parts of the entire house, and she had it designed to fit all her needs. She felt the familiarity of the floor-to-ceiling pebbles underneath her feet as she made her way past the walk-in soaking tub. It was big enough to fit five people, and even though she would have loved to sit and relax, she didn’t have the time. So instead, she opted for a steaming hot shower. She turned the knob so that the water inside the glass walls of the shower spouted out and instantly hit her from all sides. She thought that the sting of water would bring her back to the present instead of in and out of her memories of Tyler, but she was wrong.

“I love you, Sadie,” she heard and saw his lips say in her mind.

“Stop it,” she whispered with her head down and water sliding down her face.

“There’s nobody else out there for me.”

“Please stop . . .”

“Why are you doing this?”

“Get out of my head!”

The truth was that she was inside her own head. Sadie fell to the floor of the shower and curled up in a ball as she finally let out the grief she’d been holding in. All of the strength she was used to carrying around all the time left her body. She cried loudly, not caring, because no one could hear her anyway. Her sobs were so powerful that her entire body shook, and she shook her head left and right.

“You don’t love me,” she said out loud to the Tyler in her head. “You moved on. I asked for space to focus on business, our business, and you left me! I hate you!”

In that moment, she was reminded that she was still human, and it humbled her deeply. She wasn’t just some ruthless hustler. At the end of the day, she was a woman—a woman who had loved and lost her soulmate. She cried and lashed out, banging the glass walls. When there were no more tears in her eyes, she let the shower water replace them.

When Sadie finally got back up, she felt better—not much, but a little bit would do. She cleaned herself and got out of the shower, not realizing exactly how much time had really passed during her episode. When she was dried off, Sadie went back into her bedroom, and she saw that the clock read three o’clock. Although the meeting was at five, she felt rushed because she still needed to get dressed, and the ride there would eat up forty-five minutes of those two hours.

The first thing she did after moisturizing was put her hair into two neat Cherokee braids. Next, she got dressed in her high-waisted maroon skinny pantsuit. She paired that with a black cotton camisole that she tucked into her pants and a black and gold Gucci belt to go around her waist. After sliding into her blazer jacket and pumps, she grabbed a small black Gucci clutch and a white binder off one of the dressers in her room.

Before leaving her suite, she glanced in the mirror at her reflection to make sure there was no trace of the fact that she’d been bawling. Her eyes were a little red, but that was nothing some eye drops couldn’t fix. Other than that, her secret was safe with her. Sadie dug in her clutch until her fingers wrapped around the small eye drop bottle, and she applied two drops to each eye.

By the time she got downstairs to the foyer of the mansion, Rhonnie and Ahli were already there waiting in their normal black attire. To the untrained eye, they just looked like two put-together businesswomen, but Sadie could see the small bulge of the guns on their hips.

“Our driver just pulled up,” Rhonnie announced, glancing through the glass windows beside the front door. “Are you ready?”

“Beyond,” Sadie replied, and the smile that found her lips was genuine.

“Then we should be heading out. After you, boss,” Ahli said, opening the door for Sadie to walk through.

Sadie avoided eye contact with her when she did. She didn’t understand it, but somehow Ahli always seemed to be able to guess when something was amiss with her. The only people able to do that without trying were Sadie’s former best friend, Mocha, and Ray. In truth, Sadie had tried to keep the relationship with both sisters strictly professional. The original plan had been to hire them as security, and that was it. But without anticipating it, the girls had built a tight bond over the years. They were a family now, and the truth was that Sadie would risk her life to save them just as quickly as they would her.

Monroe, their driver, was standing outside of the CEO SUV and holding the back door open for them. He had been Sadie’s driver ever since her old driver, Pierre, retired. Monroe was a sweet older man who reminded her a lot of her late grandmother, Rae, just in the male form. He was originally from Oakland, California, and still had the accent. He didn’t just drive her around. Sometimes she would have to hear his mouth, too. Back in his day, he had been “the man” in Cali, that was until he relocated to Detroit and settled down with the love of his life. He always had new pointers or told her where she needed to tighten up, and for the most part, she listened. The hair on his head was fully gray, but he was as fit and muscular as a man half his age. Sadie liked for everyone around her to look like money, so he stood before her in a Tom Ford tuxedo with diamond cuff links.

“You look like you should be getting chauffeured instead of driving me around,” Sadie teased when she was in earshot.

“You better quit,” he said with a big smile. “And for the record, if you didn’t pay me so good for driving you around, I wouldn’t be able to afford this damn suit.”

“Well, for the record, I pay you so well because of the guidance you give me. Not for driving me around,” Sadie told him and kissed his cheek.

She got in first and made herself comfortable in the leather seat with her clutch and the white binder in her lap. Rhonnie got in and sat across from her while Ahli sat to her right. When Monroe shut the door and got in himself, they pulled away from the mansion en route to their destination. Sadie had arranged for everyone invited to the meeting to have transportation that would bring them to an undisclosed location. The drive was a good forty-five minutes with traffic, but they arrived in a timely manner.

“The meeting is at the stash house?” Rhonnie made a face when she saw the driveway they were pulling into. They were outside of what looked to be an old, abandoned house, but they all knew it was much more. “I guess there is no better place to hold a meeting of this magnitude than in your own territory.”

“Exactly,” Sadie said and took notice of the Mercedes SUV parked up the street. “They’re here. Come on.”

Monroe got the door for them and waited for them to go around the back of the gated house before he got back into the car. When they reached the back door, Rhonnie knocked three times, and it opened. They were met by a tall, handsome man holding an AK-47. When he saw them, the hard look he’d been wearing quickly faded, and when his eyes fell on Ahli, he smiled.

“Brayland? What are you doing here?” Ahli asked.

“Yeah, what are you doing here?” Sadie asked with a raised brow because she had sent him to do other things. “I thought I told you to do drops with Gerron and his team.”

“I did,” Brayland said, stepping back and letting them enter. “This was one of the last stops we had to make. We cleared this spot out to move the work around. But when I saw that truck pull up, I thought I’d stay awhile. Figured you three would pop up soon.”

“Nosy ass,” Rhonnie said, shaking her head.

“Never that. I just like to be in the know.”

“Aka nosy as hell,” Rhonnie reiterated.

“Yeah, whatever,” Brayland dismissed what she said and turned back to Sadie. “Your people are down there waiting on you.”

“Thank you,” she said, turning the corner and heading down the dimly lit stairs.

With each step she took, the voices coming from the large basement space grew louder and more distinguishable. She could hear the tension in all of their voices, and she was sure it had something to do with how she had them transported.

“Were the bags over our heads really necessary? You would think she doesn’t know a nigga or something,” a deep voice commented.

It was a voice that brought joy to her heart, and it had been too long since she’d heard it. When she took the final step off the stairs and into the light, she passed two more of her men holding automatic weapons and peering at their guests with “I wish you would” eyes.

“Thank you, Keith and Lamont, for bringing our guests here unscathed,” Sadie said to them before heading for a large, round table in the middle of the dirty carpeted floor.

There were four people sitting around it a few seats apart. The table had a projector in the center of it, as well as a laptop beside it. All four faces were ones she recognized instantly, and her pearly whites flashed when she stepped into the light. Upon seeing her arrive, their tension instantly went away, especially since she greeted them in good spirits.

“Yes, it was necessary for my men to bring you here with bags over your heads, Legacy,” she said, grinning from ear to ear as she approached them. “Trust or not, some locations I would prefer to remain a secret, sorry. Sorry about having them take your guns, too.”

“Sadie!” Legacy said, standing and pulling her into a deep embrace. “It’s been too long.”

“That it has,” Sadie said when she pulled away to get a good look at him. “Did you get bigger? I don’t remember you being this tall.”

“Shit, the way you’ve been ghost, I’m surprised you even remember me at all. No calls, no texts. Shit, I didn’t even have your new number until you hit me up the other day,” he said in a joking manner, but Sadie knew he was serious by the hurt look in his eyes.

He had a right to be hurt by her absence. After all, there was once a time when the two of them had been as close as siblings. When Khiron had almost defeated her, Legacy was the one who was in her corner. He was the ally who loaned his own army just so she could get her city back. If it weren’t for Legacy, she wouldn’t be standing there in front of him as one of the highest-ranking bosses in the States. He had saved not only her, but The Last Kings. However, even with that being said, Sadie felt like she had earned the right to keep to herself for a while. They were both doing their own things. Still, she hadn’t meant to be out of reach for five months.

“I’ve just been getting some shit in order, that’s all,” she said simply, but by the way he looked at her, she knew it wasn’t a good enough answer.

“We’ll talk, but for now, how about you introduce me to these lovely ladies behind you,” Legacy said, motioning to Rhonnie and Ahli, who had followed Sadie down the stairs.

“Trust me, those two are anything but ladies,” said the person in the seat next to Legacy.

The voice belonged to Arrik, one of Sadie’s underbosses who had expanded The Last Kings’ reach to Omaha, Nebraska. His long hair was braided Iverson style, and he was dressed the most casual out of everyone at the table. Arrik knew Rhonnie and Ahli too well, being as they were the ones who robbed him three years prior. If it hadn’t been for that greedy hit, Sadie would have never been led to them. It was a bad that ended in good, but Arrik still held a small grudge. See, he ran an airtight camp, so for them to have been able to pull off something like that spoke volumes of their skillset. Seeing them was a forever reminder of the time he was caught lacking.

“Hater,” Rhonnie directed to him. “You know you love us.”

“Humph. Sike, nigga,” Arrik scoffed.

“These two are my security,” Sadie answered Legacy’s question, setting the binder and her clutch down on the table.

“That’s my sister, Ahli, and I’m Rhonnie,” Rhonnie said, raising her right hand for a handshake. “And I heard your name is Legacy, but I think I’m just gon’ call you Fine, because you’re fine as hell! Goddamn, Sadie! I thought this was a business meeting, not a tryout for the sexiest motherfuckas in the world.”

“It’s not. And I’m married, so call me Legacy,” Legacy said, shaking her right hand with his left and flashing the ring on his finger. He turned to Sadie and raised a brow. “You sure this is who you can trust with your safety?”

“Trust me, she has me covered,” Sadie told him, but she didn’t miss an opportunity to shoot Rhonnie a look that said to settle down.

Rhonnie and Ahli took their seats at the table, and Legacy did the same, making sure he was far away from Rhonnie. Sadie focused her attention on the other two men sitting at the table. They hadn’t said a word, and instead were observing the scene. The older one was known as King Dex. He, too, was a kingpin in Nebraska, but the two of them had agreed to coexist peacefully. He not only had a work ethic that she admired, but his love for the hustle was vintage. He ran his business out of sight the same way she did, and that was something Sadie respected. She had placed the offer on the table for King Dex to join The Last Kings, but he respectfully declined at that time. This go-around, Sadie thought it would be different. Especially since no one who wasn’t a Last King would have access to Vita E Morte.

Next to King Dex was a young man who had gotten Sadie’s attention within the past year. She’d been keeping tabs on him after the death of his older brother, Cane Anderson. See, Cane didn’t just have love in his city, he was all around the world with it. Sadie had put some money in his pockets by hiring him to put in some work for her after they met. He was a good kid who grew to be an even better man. She heard that L.A. wept when he passed, and she regretted not being able to make the funeral. It was rumored that L.A.’s kingpin, Dubb, had something to do with Cane’s death, and soon after the funeral, he was dead too. The story was what piqued her interest, but Cane’s little brother, Cyril, was what kept it.

He didn’t know it, but he had the eyes of the biggest drug operation on him the moment he accepted the role of L.A.’s new kingpin. At first, she had plans to send Rhonnie in to exterminate him so that they could move in on L.A.’s territories, because what did a kid like him know about being the head of a major operation? But then she remembered she was his age when they started The Last Kings. Instead of killing him, she decided to give him a chance.

She watched him closely and saw him come into himself. In a year’s time, Cyril became five times the boss of what Sadie expected him to be. He moved work faster than anyone she’d ever seen, and his operation was solid. What she liked most about him was that he was smart and he didn’t make decisions based on emotion. All of his moves were calculated, and that was why she approached him with her offer. Unlike King Dex, Cyril welcomed the opportunity of being part of a bigger family. Instead of needing a connect, he now was the connect for L.A., and Sadie was able to expand without another murder on her hands. Needless to say, when she called and told him about a new business opportunity, he was right there.

“What’s up, Sadie.” He nodded at her.

“I’m glad you could make it, Cyril. You too, King Dex.”

“I’m just hoping it was worth the trip,” King Dex said in a dull tone. “I hope you’re not trying to talk me into joining The Last Kings again.”

“Actually, I’m not,” Sadie said, smirking at him. “But by the time I’m done talking, you’ll be begging for a throne to sit on.”

“Is that right?”

“That’s right,” she confirmed. “Everybody get comfortable and pay close attention to what I’m about to say.”

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw movement by the stairs. When she looked, she realized that it was just Brayland switching positions with the soldiers who had been manning the basement. It was apparent that he really didn’t want to miss what was going on down there. Sadie didn’t care. She knew Ahli was just going to tell him everything later anyway. She powered on the two devices on the table and grabbed the wireless mouse for the laptop. She then directed everyone’s attention to the wall the projector was shooting on. She’d put together a slideshow for them all to view, and the first slide was three words in big, slanted letters. Walking to the wall, she used her finger to point while looking at them all.

“‘Vita E Morte,’” Sadie read aloud. “The future of The Last Kings.”

“Vita E Morte?” Arrik asked, making a confused face. “That sounds like a TV show or some shit. What the fuck is that?”

“I’m glad you asked, and so nicely, too,” Sadie said sarcastically before continuing. “Some people believe that drugs poison the world, and in a sense, they do. But we can’t ignore the fact that they often help more than they hurt. It all comes down to the user. The problem lies in the quantity of intake. The need.”

“But isn’t the need what brings the customer back?” King Dex asked.

“This is true, but we can’t ignore the danger of the large quantities people choose to indulge in, nor can we ignore the fake dealers who sell drugs equivalent to toxic waste.”

“So you want us, the drug dealers, to sympathize with the fiends?” Arrik asked, raising a brow.

“No, that’s not what I’m asking at all,” Sadie said, shaking her head with the hint of a smirk on her lips. “Arrik, do you know the one drug everyone always comes back to because it’s safe?”

“Shit, weed?”

“Ding ding! You are correct. Marijuana is the right answer. But the problem with weed is that the high wears off fast. And that’s why people search for a higher and longer-lasting high. There is a reason why it is called a gateway drug.”

“But gateway drugs have always been good for the comeback clientele,” Cyril pitched in.

“But are they really? The drugs inside those gates may have a stronger high, but they’re not long-lasting either. So they indulge in things like cocaine, heroin, and meth in large quantities,” Sadie stated and clicked the mouse in her hand to go to the next slide, which was a page filled completely with names in small font. “As you know, The Last Kings keeps a tally of their most prominent clients. What you’re looking at right now is a list of deceased clients around the country who died from an overdose in the past year. Almost two hundred names are on this list.”

“Two hundred?” Legacy chuckled, looking from the slide back to Sadie. “That list isn’t nearly as big as the list of living clients. Not only that, but with all of the expansions, especially Los Angeles, we can easily replace the ones we’ve lost, and fast.”

“True, but how fast can we do that? And who’s to say more won’t die off in that time?” Sadie asked and went to the next slide. “I took the liberty of calculating what each one of those names spent on our product alone in two years, and I came up with this number.”

“Ten million dollars,” Ahli read aloud.

“Roughly,” Sadie said. “I’m very wealthy, and even to me that number seems alarming. At the rate the economy is going, with the heightening of depression and anxiety in this country, I can see that number doubling in a year’s time. People are killing themselves with the high that’s supposed to make them feel better. Yeah, like you said, Legacy, we can expand even more to make up for what we’ve lost. But even doing that, there are startup costs for a new location, hiring people I can trust to run the operation, and distribution.”

“So, what are you saying?” Arrik asked. “I’m sure you didn’t have me travel all the way here from Nebraska to tell me two hundred people died this year for being greedy with their high.”

“You’re very right.” Sadie nodded. “I understand that we are just the dealers and that, once the drugs are out of our hands, what the user decides to do with them is on them. I also understand that there is nothing I can do to prevent someone from overdosing if they choose to intake a high quantity of drugs. We’ve already said that weed is the one drug everyone goes back to. Can anybody tell me why?”

“Because you may be a little sluggish or hungry, but you’re still you,” Cyril answered when everyone else failed to. “Coke, pills, and all that other shit changes you, and I think people know that. So they go back to weed, but—”

“The high wears off fast, putting them back in the same boat,” Sadie finished for him. “But what would you all say if I told you that I have a solution to that?”

“And that solution is this . . . Vita stuff?” King Dex asked as if the thought amused him. “You say that as if you’ve made a new drug.”

“Yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying,” Sadie said.

The smile on her lips spread slowly as she watched all of them, even Ahli and Rhonnie, sit up in their seats. Sadie let her words loom over the room for a few moments before she clicked the next slide. A photo of a small white pill popped up, and engraved in it were the letters “VEM.” She let them look at it for a few seconds before she clicked to the next slide, which was a five-minute video. The video had been taken inside the labs in Azua and showed the effects of what taking one VEM had on five different patients over the course of a week. They watched them complete normal day-to-day tasks and talk about how they felt while on the drug. One of the patients, a black woman in her mid-thirties, appeared on camera with a bright smile on her face. She was sitting on a chair in the middle of what looked to be a bedroom in the lab.

“How did you feel?” an off-screen voice asked her soothingly.

“I felt . . . fantastic,” she told him. “It’s crazy. I took one pill, and five minutes later, it was like I smoked a fat blunt of Granddaddy Purp, except I didn’t come down from the high after a few hours.”

“And when did you come down from that high?”

“This morning.”

“And when did you take the pill?”

“I think two days ago.”

“Did you have a headache when the high wore off?”

“No. It was just like my feet touched back down on the ground. I can’t . . . I can’t explain the feeling the pill gave me. I just felt good, really good. Like I could do anything. After that, I don’t know if smoking a blunt will ever be good enough, and the relaxing high other pills used to give me just seem mediocre now. This is just . . . it’s crazy. Can I . . . can I have another? Another pill, I mean.”

“We have just a few more questions to get through, and then yes. Yes, you can.”

The video suddenly cut to another patient. That time it was a white man in his early twenties. He, too, was sitting in a chair facing the camera, talking to someone off-screen. He was wearing a short-sleeved shirt, and the needle markings on his arms stuck out like a sore thumb.

“I’ve never felt like that in my life. It was like I was outside of my body, watching myself live my life,” he was saying. “Except I wasn’t fucking shit up like I usually do when I’m high on coke and heroin. I was high for two days, and in those two days, I was more productive in this room than I have been anywhere else in years.”

“Explain?” the off-camera voice asked.

“I mean, I cleaned it, for one, and I never clean shit. I let my wife do that. That’s one of the reasons she hates me. I’m always high, dirtying up shit, breaking things, and angry.”

The man suddenly looked puzzled as if he had just realized something.

“Is something wrong?” the off-camera voice asked.

“Yeah. I mean, no.” The white man shook his head. “I just thought of something. I’ve been angry at the world for the past three years since my mom died. Not a day has gone by that I wasn’t angry . . . until I took that pill you gave me. I’m not even angry now, and the high is gone. Did I tell you I started writing poetry in that notebook you gave all of us to document shit in?”

“Really?”

“Yeah, man, and I didn’t even know I could write poetry. I didn’t know I could not be angry all the time. When I was high, I just felt like . . .”

“Like what?”

“Like I could do anything.”

“If I told you right now that in order to get another pill you would have to throw away the needles and heroin you don’t think we know you snuck in here, what would you do?”

Without hesitation, the white man on the video stood up and went to the twin-sized bed behind him. He reached under the pillow and pulled the needles and drugs out, tossed them into the waste bin by the bed, and handed the bin to the person off camera.

“Can I have another pill now?”

Sadie froze the camera on the man’s eager, almost-desperate face. She wanted the people in the room to see the need for VEM, and by the intrigued looks on their faces, they did. Before she spoke again, she grabbed the thick white binder that she’d brought with her and opened it. Inside, stapled to the paper in the binder, were four Baggies that each contained 500 pills. She tore the Baggies from the binder and went around the table, placing them in front of Legacy, Arrik, King Dex, and Cyril.

“VEM comes in the form of a single pill, and as you can see, the subjects used for testing are all different races and sizes,” Sadie started. “As you can also see, they had better than great reactions to the drug. Not only does it give you a high comparable to the best weed you’ve ever smoked, but it has no side effects. One pill lasts up to two days, guaranteed, and it doesn’t leave the user stuck or too high like crack, cocaine, or heroin. While high on VEM, you are still more than capable of doing all of your daily tasks while feeling good and confident about yourself. No red eyes, munchies, or feeling sluggish. Just a natural cloud-nine high for two days straight. Also, did I mention that it is undetectable in any existing drug-testing process used in the world?”

“So, we’re supposed to believe the words of five users in a video?”

“No, but you can believe the hundreds of users already hooked in Azua,” Sadie said, clicking to the next slide.

Suddenly they were all watching videos of loud clubs filled with people partying and popping VEM. Many of the club-goers were holding the small Baggies with white pills in their hands. The next slides were photos of restaurants and even schools that had people casually popping the pills from the small Baggies, all smiles.

Sadie watched Ahli’s expression of wonder shift to one of indifference. Sadie hadn’t told her that they had already started selling it overseas. She knew now, though.

“And so you all don’t feel like guinea pigs, I want to let you know I’m starting distribution here in Michigan tomorrow,” Sadie informed them all.

“Tomorrow?” Ahli asked, clearly taken aback.

“Yes, tomorrow, and I’m going to need you and Rhonnie to plug all my lieutenants.”

Ahli looked like she wanted to say something else, but her sister nudged her.

“We’ll be on it,” Rhonnie said with a nod.

“How much does a single pill go for?” King Dex asked.

“One two-milligram tablet is one hundred dollars,” Sadie answered.

“So ten of them is a rack,” Cyril said, doing the math. “Damn.”

“How did you come up with the recipe for this drug?” King Dex asked with a raised brow. “Forgive me for asking, but it seems like you’ve done something that nobody else has done since the crack era. I’m just trying to figure out how.”

“Let’s just say a little birdie pointed me in the right direction,” Sadie answered simply. “Vita E Morte is and will always be something that only The Last Kings will have. Even if, and I say this loosely, you were to get robbed of your entire supply, the drug will never be able to be duplicated. If you were to try to figure out on your own how to make it, you wouldn’t be able to. Not without the best team of scientists in the world, and I already hired them. And since nobody at this table has more money than me, you’ll never be able to buy them out.”

“Ooooh, big flex,” Arrik said, shaking the bag of pills. “So what do you want us to do? Buy these off you?”

“No. Consider them a gift from me. Those are yours to distribute. I want you to see firsthand the treasure I have given you. I have confidence that I will be hearing from each of you soon. Very soon.” Sadie connected eyes with King Dex. “Those are on me, but when you want to buy, and I’m sure you’ll want to, the only way to do so is to merge.”

“If what you’re saying about this drug is true, we will cross that bridge when we get there,” King Dex said without batting an eye.

“Fair enough,” Sadie told him respectfully. “Now, gentlemen, this meeting is adjourned. Unfortunately, it’s time for the bags to go back over your heads so you can leave this place and go back to your car.”

She nodded to Brayland, who already had four cloth bags in his hands. Nobody except Legacy put up a fuss when the bag went over their head, but it was what it was. Sadie was different. Losing the two people she loved most in the world had changed her. The goons who had brought the four men there came back down to the basement and led them out of the stash house.

When it was their turn to leave, Rhonnie and Ahli went up the stairs first. As Ahli passed where Brayland was standing, he grabbed her hand. Sadie was a little ways behind them, but she was close enough to hear the exchange.

“Was that what I thought it was?” Brayland asked, and Ahli pulled her hand away from him.

“Not now,” was her response, and she continued up the stairs.

Brayland’s eyes went from the back of Ahli’s head to Sadie. The look he gave her was indifferent, as if he were trying to figure out exactly who she was. Sadie didn’t blame him. The old Sadie might have considered him like a little brother. In fact, he had lived in her home for a while when he first got to Detroit. But the fact remained that the ones who had been the closest to her barely knew her anymore, and she knew it was because she pushed them away. The only thing on her mind was taking the game by storm . . . again.