Chapter 3
Riot St. James
I finished up in the restroom, and I opened the stall door.
I quickly went over to the sink, so that I could wash my hands.
While doing that, I stared at myself in the mirror.
I was simple tonight, just like I always was whenever I was coming in to work.
Just a plain white tank top, with light blue denim jeans is what I had on.
My hair was in its curly state, and because I had been moving around, working since five this evening, I had it pulled up with a bun sitting on top of my head.
I was content with what was looking back at me in the mirror, so once I finished washing my hands, I dried them off with some paper towel, and I left out of the restroom.
It was quiet out in the hallway, mainly because everyone had already made it inside the meeting room. The large double doors were open, and the room was filled with Dolo, and all his workers. He stood to the front with Diego, Kendrick, and Bray.
I’m telling you, this man could smell me from miles away because the second I walked inside the room, he immediately paused from his conversation with Bray, and his eyes landed on me.
He motioned with his finger for me to come to him, but I shook my head no at him.
It was too many eyes in here, plus when it came to Dolo and his business, I never wanted to take the shine from him.
Yes, I was his girl, but I really considered myself to be a worker just like anyone else.
I knew he was going to keep pushing, so he motioned again for me to come, but I chose to take my spot in the first row, sitting at the end.
It’s like everyone knew that this was my seat, so whenever Dolo hosted meetings, no one would sit there.
It was this level of respect that everyone in the organization gave me, now that they knew that I was his girlfriend.
Dolo ended up walking over to me, and he stood right in front of the table.
I could feel the eyes on us. He put his hands on the table, dropped his eyes, so that he could focus on me, and he smiled.
That smile always led him to getting whatever the hell he wanted out of me.
I could be annoyed as hell with him, but when he would flash that smile, followed by him planting kisses on me, I would always melt.
“Where you was at?” he asked me.
“In the restroom. I had to pee. Go ahead, Dominique. You know how I am about the attention. I hate it. You know that,” I said, looking up at him, wanting him to go to the front of the room, so that everybody could stop staring at us.
Even though it was mostly men that worked for Dolo, there was still a great amount of women that worked for him as well, and you know how messy bitches could be.
Instead of him responding back to me, he just leaned in, and he kissed me on my neck. There were a couple of women sitting behind me, and you could hear when they cooed, saying “aww”.
His ass was showing off. As bad as I hated the attention, I couldn’t sit here and pretend that I wasn’t happy to feel his lips on me.
We could have had one of those things going on where he was hiding me from the world and not wanting to let it be known that he was dealing with me, but Dolo wasn’t like that at all.
He loved me out loud. He let it be known out loud that I was his girl.
Just a couple of hours ago, I was at one of the traps, and I had to call, and ask him something.
When he picked the phone up for me, he was around his friends, and his brother.
He could have tried to play gangsta over the phone and not admitted to loving me once we ended the call, but he still did it, even with his boys around.
“Everybody in here? Fred, go ahead and close the doors. If somebody knocks, don’t let them in. I gave a ten-minute grace period. Whoever not in here, then that’s on them,” Dolo said, taking the front of the room, all eyes on him.
Everyone was sitting up straight, waiting to hear what it was that was going to be said in tonight’s meeting. Even I was sitting up straight, eyes glued to Dolo, eager to know myself what this meeting was about.
“I feel like everybody in here has this look in their eyes, as if their scared to hear what the sole purpose of this meeting is about. Ya’ll can relax and take those worrisome looks of your faces.
This isn’t that kind of meeting,” Dolo started, and you could hear the sighs of relief that people around the room had taken.
Dolo was known for having some pretty intense meetings, calling people out, getting on them for fuckin up in front of everyone.
“This meeting is about expansion. It’s no secret the shit that MBM has been enduring these past few months.
I’ve lost some of my corner boys, I’ve had my car shot up, a nigga that was supposed to be like a brother to me has been stealing from me, and the ongoing shit that we have with dem 9 boyz.
I don’t know how ya’ll feel about all these things happening back-to-back, but to me, there are too many problems tied to old systems. I’m at a point right now, where I feel like a lot of old shit must go,” Dolo went on, and my eyes were still glued to him, wondering where he was getting ready to go with this.
“I want to talk to ya’ll a little bit about the expansion.
I’m looking into getting a second warehouse.
I don’t want to get rid of this one because too much blood, sweat, and tears went into building this one.
The purpose of adding on another warehouse would be to split the product.
We got a lot of product running in and out of this warehouse.
I feel like I’m holding too much weight in just one place.
I think about the shit that we just did to dem 9 boyz, and how we took all their shit, and even though I have this warehouse swamped with security, and it’s damn near impossible for niggas to get in here and steal from us, I still want to be smart about it, and stop hiding all the work in one place,” I nodded my head towards that because it made a lot of sense.
“The warehouse that we’re standing in right now is mainly used for packing up, meetings, and typically the main headquarters.
I’ll use the secondary warehouse as a spot for incoming shipments, overflow storage, and just making the movement that takes place over there a little cleaner.
Meaning, not everyone is going to have access to that warehouse.
Your ranking in this business would have to be high to know where that spot is,” that made a lot of sense to me because although Dolo had a big crew, which could be a good, and a bad thing.
You didn’t need too many niggas knowing every little detail about the business because it was just a harsh reality that niggas would switch up, and they could start running their mouths to the wrong people.
“Another thing that I want to talk about is expansion out of Miami. I feel like when niggas talk about drugs Lords from Miami, all those niggas have one thing in common, which is the fact that they only ran drugs through Miami. Don’t get me wrong, I have a lot of respect for the OG’s that’s come before me, but I don’t want to just be known as the young nigga that was running shit in Miami.
I want to start off small. We don’t have to branch off too far away, but I do want to look into expanding into other cities.
I’m thinking that we can start off with Orlando and Tampa.
Those cities have a lot of action running through it,” Dolo went on, and I could feel the people around me nodding their heads, agreeing with it.
Out of everything that he’s said so far in this meeting, this was probably the only thing that I didn’t agree with. It’s almost like he knew that I wasn’t going to agree with it because his eyes went directly towards me after he said it.
I didn’t want to be the kind of girlfriend to disagree with my man in public. I would share with him my thoughts after the meeting but judging by the way he looked at me, he might want me to speak on it right on the spot.
“Why the face, baby?” this man called me out, right in front of everyone.
I’m always getting on Dolo, telling him that when we were working together, that I wanted it to be strictly work, but his ass didn’t give a damn about none of that. It was obvious in the way that he just called me baby, and the hearts that he had in his eyes, waiting to get a response from me.
His question had every eye in here on me, making me want to sink down into the damn seat.
“Nothing. You can continue, Dominique,” my voice was firm, wanting him to drop it, but I knew he wouldn’t.
“Nah. Speak on it. You’re not feeling what I just said about expanding, and I just want to know why,” he kept going.
I cleared my throat, thinking about how I wanted to respond. I didn’t want my response to sound emotional. It had to come from a business standpoint, so that Dolo, and everyone else in the room could feel, and understand what I was trying to say.
“Dolo, I feel like expanding before stability is dangerous,” I went on.
“Elaborate on that for me, bae,” I couldn’t get mad at him for calling me that in front of everyone because I think it was one of those things where he couldn’t help himself.
Dolo rarely called me Riot. I was always bae, or baby. If he called me Riot, it would be because we were having a serious conversation, or I had pissed him off.