Chapter Thirty-Two
Thirty-Two
Crystal climbed into the car and turned to face a wide-eyed Kendrick. His body seemed to be twitching with some invisible energy.
Crystal cocked her head. “What’s wrong with you?” she said.
“Nothing,” Kendrick answered and flashed her his million-dollar smile. He turned the music on and began bopping his head to the beat that banged out of the speakers.
“I just want to go home,” she said as she leaned her head back into the leather headrest.
“Home it is!” Kendrick yelled and gunned the car down the street.
After dropping Crystal off at her place, Kendrick went home, stripped himself naked, and stood in the middle of his apartment. Well, it used to be his: now it belonged to Chase Manhattan Bank, which had foreclosed on it two days earlier, giving him thirty days to vacate.
Long gone were the expensive pieces of art that had once graced the walls, the sculptures that once stood on marble podiums throughout the 2,800-square-foot loft, the big-screen television, the leather sectional, the ten-thousand-dollar entertainment center, and the four-poster Kenyan mahogany bed.
It was all gone, sold off piece by piece in order to sustain his drug habit.
People automatically assumed that because he was the vice president of a multimillion-dollar real estate company, he too had millions of dollars, but that wasn’t the case. His father, Aldridge Greene, simply employed his son. Kendrick was salaried, just like the goddamn cleaning women!
Aldridge had always assured him that there was a trust fund in his name, and of course Kendrick would inherit the company upon his father’s death, but for now, his $300,000-a-year position as vice president would have to suffice, because as Aldridge had put it, “You may be in your forties, but your mind is still that of an adolescent!”
People don’t realize how quickly you could party and sniff three hundred grand away. Shoot, he personally knew some former multimillionaires who’d done it.
The car he drove belonged to the company, and he had exactly ten dollars and twenty-six cents left in his checking account. His credit cards were maxed out due to all of the cash advances he’d taken out, and his savings and mutual bond accounts had been emptied and closed three months earlier.
He was flat broke and homeless now.
When would it stop?
A casual habit had grown in just two years to an addiction. He needed the drug in the same way he needed air to breathe. Kendrick felt as if he couldn’t live without it.
He opened his hand to expose a small vial of Hades—deadlier than heroin and more addictive than cocaine. Kendrick had a $1,500-a-day habit that was climbing. One vial of the copper-colored dust cost five hundred dollars. It was the drug of the super rich.
Some dude named Musa had turned him on to the narcotic twenty-six months earlier, while Kendrick was in Dubai on business. Prior to that Kendrick had been a casual drug user. A little cocaine, amphetamines, and some marijuana here and there.
But Hades made him feel like the man he was expected to be.
The second man in charge of a multimillion-dollar company.
Hades made Kendrick feel invincible. It kept him going through eight meetings with six different companies over a four-day period.
It kept him cool while he negotiated with Mexican investors in an outdoor café underneath the searing Acapulco sun.
It kept him on his toes when dealing with the Nigerians.
Kendrick needed it just to be in the presence of his father, Aldridge Greene. He couldn’t stand tall or look directly into his father’s eyes without a hit of it.
But now the money was gone. So there he stood in an empty apartment: one vial left and a new day dawning.
What was he going to do?