Chapter 22
Shio Cuppacio
Three hundred sixteen… seventeen… eighteen… nineteen… three hundred twenty.
Three hundred twenty bricks, stacked in piles of twenty, sat in front of me.
The pure white cocaine that had been making us richer every day lined the back wall.
I’d counted the kilos at least a hundred times, and no matter how many times I repeated my count, the number hadn’t changed.
The numbers wouldn’t change. It had been three hundred twenty when they were delivered personally by Goal himself a few hours ago, and it would be three hundred twenty even if I counted it a hundred and one times.
There was a long list of shit weighing on me.
My body was craving rest, but my mind was telling me I could do that when I was dead.
This count was accurate, but nothing else in my life was aligned in the same way.
For starters, bringing the product to this cabin was wrong.
It was bad enough that I had a prisoner in the basement, and adding enough white to send me to the chair was a bad judgment call.
However, that was all I had to work with.
I was so against the shit that Goal himself insisted on delivering it.
Don had been anal about us keeping shit tight with the police sniffing around about the missing women and kids, but money still had to be made.
I knew better than to store the product in our stash houses.
They were reserved for money only, and having both in the same places was a recipe for disaster, so the cabin was the only option.
Pulling my burner phone from my pocket, I sent a text to Ezio letting him know all was well.
He responded immediately, which meant my work here was done.
Nel would come to collect the product for distribution tomorrow.
It would take him a span of a week, so he’d probably do it every other day, but again, we were pivoting from our usual routines to safeguard our freedom.
I adjusted the mask on my face. Goal’s cocaine was straight from Colombia, and handling so many kilos of this shit, even sealed tightly, was risky.
The masks we wore weren’t that COVID-19 shit that was always out of stock on the pharmacy shelves a few years ago.
I insisted we get specialty masks that filtered the air before it reached our nostrils when handling this shit.
With this type of mask, I could be in the presence of a nuclear bomb and still breathe in fresh oxygen.
Solana’s phone buzzed, and going against my instincts, I removed my gloves and swiped the screen.
Solana
I feel okay today. The last time I felt okay was when I was with you, Shio. I know it’s not right, to want you. I shouldn’t replace it with you. Not healthy, but it’s the truth.
Like clockwork, Solana’s text message came through, following the pattern she’d created over the last few days.
She’d been sending texts, sometimes expressing her feelings, other times revealing her past. She was so much bigger than the drugs.
The texts she sent me were heavy. They were so fucking heavy with the spiraling and learning how she became what she was.
She’d broken a part of herself, all for cocaine.
A drug. The same drug that I’d counted a hundred times today alone.
The same drug that had made my family and me rich.
It had a fucking hold on her. Every day that she sent a text, it further proved that she wasn’t ready to be any man’s wife.
She wouldn’t have lasted a day with the Rodríguezes.
Knowing what I know now about them, I don’t think he ever had intentions of truly marrying her.
Beauty like Solana’s was a rare occurrence.
God only sprinkled one of her every few hundred years.
They were going to make a killing off of her, and her being addicted to drugs would’ve only made it easier for them.
The camera app had been my worst fucking enemy. I’d seen Solana nearly die at least twice, tweak out every single day, pray until her knees bled, and scream like her lungs were just as pure as her pussy. She was fighting demons. Shit, she might’ve been fighting the Devil himself.
Picking up the brick of cocaine, I held it in one hand and the phone with the text message displayed on the screen in the other.
I shouldn’t replace it with you. Not healthy, but it’s the truth.
This fucking cocaine.
Why couldn’t she just shake this shit? Why did God have to place a woman in my path who was fighting more demons than all of us Cuppacios combined? Feeling my hand tense, the brick cracked down the center, not breaking through the Saran Wrap.
With my thumb hovering over the screen, I typed out a reply.
You letting this shit consume you Solana. You letting this shit get the best of you. If you not willing to let it go then what the fuck you want me to do? I can’t shake it for you. Stop fucking texting and start praying.
The same thumb that had typed the message now hovered over the send button.
But instead of sending it, I deleted the entire message.
This girl—this fucking girl—she wasn’t good for me.
She wasn’t good for no nigga. Yet, here she was on my fucking brain like a tumor.
The same way she couldn’t shake the drugs was the same way I couldn’t shake her ass.
I had some pussy lying up in my home, willing and ready, but I wouldn’t even touch it. I knew part of the reason was because Bahati wasn’t her. But I refused to admit that shit aloud, and that plagued me more.
“Fuuuuuuuck!”
Tossing the brick at the wall, I watched it shatter before powder flew everywhere.
“Fucking cocaine! This the shit that got her fucking tweaking?”
Grabbing another brick, I repeated the motion. Before I knew it, my count began drastically decreasing as I grabbed another and another and another, creating a dusty mess that would’ve been a dream to Solana.
“She… She ain’t what I fucking need! She ain’t what I fucking need!”
If it weren’t for the mask, Nel would walk in tomorrow and find my ass dead from an overdose.
There was a white haze in the air, and I could no longer see in front of me.
I went to reach for another and nearly slipped on the residue coating the floor.
Still, that didn’t stop me from finding my way to the piles again, not giving one fuck that I was destroying hundreds of thousands of dollars of product.
With my chest heaving, head pounding, and muscles aching, I was furious. Furious at her vulnerability to a fucking drug. Furious that it had been weeks of her being locked in Jisei’s basement.
“It could have been anybody! Anybody!” My knees hit the floor, and my arms dropped as my head hung. “Every assignment you’ve thrown my way. I’ve completed every assignment you’ve thrown at me. I’ve been obedient. I’ve been loyal. I’ve been honest. I’ve been disciplined. But…”
I looked up at the ceiling, needing an answer.
“Why her, God? Hunh? This shit ain’t funny.
The same—” My head dropped again, me struggling to find the words.
“She got the same fuckin’ addiction my father had.
She thought she was gonna love me in secret like that bitch-ass nigga?
She thought she was gone be able to have them drugs and me?
Had she not learned enough living in my fuckin’ house? My house!”
My chest heaved aggressively, and my lack of breath were not from the tiny specks that still floated down on me.
“Why the fuck you give me a bitch that’s addicted to cocaine? You gave me a fuckin’ coward. Slick and sneaky. You gave me my father in female form. Why do that shit to me?”
Boom! Boom! Boom!
I could feel the tremor in my knees from the banging.
Covered in powder from head to toe, I stood carefully not to bust my ass.
Keeping the mask in place, I trudged across the room.
Some of the cocaine particles were still floating in the air, but most of it had created a thick blanket on the floor.
Typing the code into the panel that granted me access to downstairs, I nearly sprinted down them.
“Woah! Woah! Fuck you lookin’ like a big-ass abdominal snowman for?”
Hobo had the railing from the bed in his hand and must’ve been hitting the ceiling with it.
“What the”
Grabbing him by his neck, I rammed him into the brick wall.
He’d been taking care of his hygiene, so he wasn’t sour, thankfully.
I wouldn’t have been able to smell him through the mask anyway, but I didn’t want to be in no dirty motherfucker’s presence.
He’d been brushing his big chicklet-ass teeth, too, judging by the dried toothpaste at the crease of his mouth.
“I don’t know if you know this, but you way past your fuckin’ expiration date. You’re fed, housed, and clothed. The way I see it, you more put up than these bitches out here.”
Hobo was gasping for air, and when I began to see the whites of his eyes, I let him go. He dropped to the floor like a rag doll, coughing roughly.
“What the fuck, bruh? I was just tryna call you down here to tell you the hot water ain’t working.” Hobo grabbed his neck.
“Nigga, do I look like the fuckin’ plumber?”
Hobo scooted backward, not having anywhere to go since the wall was behind him. “Aite, aite! Damn. You know if my people been lookin’ for me? My mama—”
“Nigga, yo’ mama dead!”
“I… I meant my brothers.”
They were dead too. I didn’t divulge that information to him, though. His mother had died when he was a jit. His brothers’ demises were compliments of the mob. Neltz wanted his daddy alive; he didn’t say shit about the rest of the lineage.
“Hobo.” I was at my wits’ end and would fuck around and kill this nigga too.
“Aite, damn. Angry-ass nigga! And is that cocaine?”
Stiffening, it dawned on me that I’d fucked up. It was bad enough that the two of them were in one place. I was moving recklessly, and it was all because of this girl in my fucking frontal.