“It’s okay. Don’t cry. I’ll get you in. Just tell me what it is that I have to do,” he stated, trying to conceal the tone of his hidden intentions in his voice. Everything had unfolded right on schedule. The drug he had slipped into her drink last night actually sped things up. There was much more time to play now, but at the end of the day, for Prime, it was all about business.
Behind Prime’s back, Monica had a hidden smile of her own. Twisting the truth was her last resort and it worked perfectly. She couldn’t believe that Prime had bought her story. True, she had been put on him by the Double Gs, but the instructions she was given were not what she had just told Prime. He had no clue or idea about her intended plan that he nearly foiled, who she really was, or what she was really going after. I guess drug dealers really aren’t as smart as they think they are, she concluded, pulling the wool over Prime’s eyes so easily.
Ten minutes later, Prime was fake strapped to his bed and was reading the memo that the Double Gs required their victims to read on the handheld recorder Monica possessed.
If he only knew what they really had new recruits do to their potential victims, he would’ve definitely tried to kill me, she thought.
Chapter Ten
Rob-C spent the last fifteen minutes yelling into his cell phone at the top of his lungs. He paced back and forth across his living room’s hardwood floors inhaling a mouthful of the loud-smelling blunt in between each line of the escalated dialogue.
“I don’t give a fuck, bitch! It’s whatever. I ain’t one of those fuckin’ puppets connected to your strings. You got the wrong nigga! You got me fucked up! I’m R-o-b to the mother fuckin’ C! This conversation is over. Lose my fuckin’ numba!” he yelled into his iPhone.
He partially heard the woman on the other end try to calmly respond before he hung up on her in midsentence.
Feeling the extra boost of confidence, he relit the blunt as it went out and then he went into the bathroom for the second half of his ritual. He pulled down his pants and backed his 280-pound ass onto the porcelain toilet seat. A few seconds later, his phone rang again; he checked the caller ID and declined the call, returning to his thoughts.
He looked at the time on his Rolex watch and calculated a quick estimation. He had almost a half hour to drop off a brick and a half of coke to one of his workers. Rob-C controlled the entire east side of North Las Vegas. Every hustler up there either had his work or was at least supposed to. And he planned to keep it that way. He paid his goons well. He figured that after he got off of the toilet, there would be just enough time for him to get to his stash house and over to the drop-off location on schedule. He believed in clockwork and punctuality when it came to any type of business legal or illegal.
Rob-C thumbed through a Straight Stuntin’ magazine. He stopped in his tracks when he heard a sudden knock on the door. It startled him for a second. He wasn’t expecting any company. He was super cautious. No one knew where he lived. Not even his main girl. He quickly wiped his ass, hiked up his pants up in nervous haste, and exited the bathroom. He snatched up his Glock from the dresser and made his way into the living room, tiptoeing in case he wanted to act like nobody was home. He was still very anxious to peek out the curtains to see who it could be. Just as he got close, he flinched as a flashlight beam hit him. Two flashlight beams swayed back and forth, followed by a hard tap on the window. Shadows of faces appeared out of nowhere and Rob-C was faced with a drug dealer’s worst nightmare.
“Open up! It’s the police!”
Rob-C didn’t know what to do. He was sure they had seen him. He made a quick mental assessment. The house was clean aside from a few jars of weed in his coat pocket. He also had a registered gun with all of the necessary documents in his bedroom closet. He felt he was straight. If he was wanted for any of his illegal activities, they would be so big that he was sure it would be the Feds kicking in his door with SWAT, not local police announcing themselves with flashlights.
Rob-C quickly got himself together. He sniffed his own shirt, noticing the fact that it and the entire living room smelled like purple haze. He nonchalantly brushed it off and opened the door with the safety chain still on.
“Can I help you?” he asked the black officer.
The white officer stepped up, shining the light into Rob-C’s face and inside of the house while he spoke. “We received a call about a loud domestic dispute. It was reported to this address. Is there anyone else here with you?”
Rob-C was confused at first. And then he thought about the out-of-control phone conversation he had just had and he laughed to himself, but still he wondered how his neighbors had heard him. He figured that they had to be eavesdropping in the first place. So he brushed it off, expecting the cops to go away.
“Nah. Nobody’s here with me. I’m alone. Everything’s cool. The neighbors probably just heard me on the horn,” Rob-C explained through the cracked door.
The white cop acted as if he didn’t quite buy the story. He looked past Rob-C and never stopped shining the light into the house the whole time they stood there. “Well, I hope you can understand that since the O.J. incident, we just need to be sure,” he seriously joked, to lighten the mood. “So if you don’t mind, we’d just like to have a quick look around and we’ll be on our way.”
Rob-C instantly got defensive. He was tempted to ask for a warrant, but thought better of it. He knew his crib was clean, so there was no reason to draw extra attention to himself than he was already doing just by having the cops on his porch. He realized they weren’t leaving, so he felt it was better to let them in so the nosey passers-by could at least wonder which house they were at as opposed to having the answer right in front of them.
“Okay. Look. I was really on my way out. So please, just make this quick,” Rob-C asked them as he closed the door, unchained it, and reopened it.
“Go ’head, Blake. I’ll be in the car,” the black cop stated.
“Ten-four, Douglass,” Officer Blake confirmed.
Rob-C shut the door behind them. He led the officer upstairs first in an attempt to distract him from the weed scent, giving the downstairs more time to air out. It was no use though. Rob-C turned to the officer as he reached the top of his steps. He was sure by the look on Officer Blake’s face that he had smelled the strong aroma. There was no way of knowing why the broad smile appeared across the officer’s face though. Rob-C had no clue as to why the officer was so adamant about entering his home or why he was really there.
Ten minutes later, Officer Blake returned to the passenger side of the squad car. Office Douglass just stared at him, watching as he sat down and closed the door, removing his standard-issue leather gloves.
“Well?” Officer Douglass uttered.
Officer Blake glanced over at his partner. Instead of responding, he reached for the charcoal gray unmarked car’s radio and cleared his throat. He instantly got into character. “We have a black male, five foot nine, late thirties, down! He appears to have been strangled. No signs of a breach or a perp. I need medical assistance and forensics notified,” Officer Blake radioed in.
Officer Douglass dropped his head in shame as he sat in the driver’s seat across from his partner. He had taken an oath to protect and serve but for the past few years of the seven years he had been on the force he had been dishonoring that oath.
“This just ain’t right,” he shook his head and uttered under his breath as he pulled out his small flip phone Blake had been given when the blackmailing began. Although years had gone by, he was still trying to figure out how he had allowed himself to get tangled up in the web he found himself stuck in.
“Come on partner, not today.” Blake grimaced. “This was the last one, buddy,” he offered, before Douglass had the chance to complain about their conduct for the past three-plus years. He too knew what they were, or rather he was, doing was wrong, but he had no choice or say-so in the matter. He had made his bed and knew he had to lie in it. The video he had been forced to watch was still b
urned in the back of his mind. His fetish for young hookers had cost him more than money could ever buy. It had been a hard pill for him to swallow, but he had been living with being the Double Gs’ puppet. What ate at him the most was the fact that he had dragged his partner, who he knew was as clean as an old wooden squeaky screen door up until this, into his mess and corrupted him, tarnishing his reputation. That was his biggest regret, but he was grateful to have a friend like him.
“I promise,” Blake reassured him.
Douglass looked over at him. “I hope so, bro.” Both his stare and words were solid.
Blake faced him. “We’re on the same page. The sooner you let them know, the sooner this’ll all be over and we can go back to being the good cops we’ve always been prior to my hiccup,” he replied.
Douglass nodded. He opened the flip. Target deleted, he texted to the woman he knew as Starr: the mastermind behind the predicament Blake had gotten him.
A thumbs-up emoji followed by a smiley face was the reply he received.
“This fucking bitch!” he cursed at her arrogance. “This really better be it, Blake!”
“What now?” Blake scowled.
Douglass showed him the screen of his phone. Blake chuckled.
“Shit ain’t funny!” Douglass bellowed. “You lucky I fucking love you, bro,” he reminded Blake.
The two formed an unbreakable bond the moment they became partners six years ago. They had been having one another’s back both personally and professionally from day one. Which was why Douglass had even considered hearing his partner out. Had it not been for the story his partner had told him, which had been forcing him to break the law, Douglass knew he would have never agreed to aid his partner in murder or any other crimes for that matter. Although he was empathetic to what had happened to Blake and this was not their first time doing something illegal, it was still bothering him that his partner had just committed murder and made him an accessory. Officer Douglass was glad to hear that this would be their last and final time doing something that went against their shield, because he didn’t know how much more or if for any longer he could take it.
For your sake, partner, this better be over, was Officer Douglass’s last thought before he exited the car with the yellow crime scene tape.
Chapter Eleven
Normally, on a late Monday night, Club Panties would be completely closed. For the most part, it was. Starr, Diamond, Bubbles, and Felicia were at the round table. Starr sat in the huge leather desk chair, on the phone with Queen Fem, while the other three girls stood in front of the glass oval-shaped cherry wood–grained table counting hundreds of thousands of dollars that was about to be moved from the club to the safe house. They could tell the conversation wasn’t going too well. At times, it seemed as if Starr and Queen Fem never got along. They barely ever saw eye to eye. It was an apparent power struggle that quietly seemed to be getting out of control.
Queen Fem and Starr had two different visions for the Double Gs. While Queen Fem had been off the grid while flying under the radar for over a decade, Starr had been right there on the frontline, running the Double G organization with an iron fist and becoming a force to be reckoned with to those who would go against them or rebel against her demand. She felt that she had every right to make major decisions on her own without consulting her. That was second to the fact that she turned a vengeful motorcycle gang into a half-billion dollar empire. Queen Fem’s problem with her young successor was that she had allowed the Double Gs to become too exposed. She had designed the organization in a way in which whenever a target was chosen and a move was being executed they were to not be seen and barely ever heard. She had expressed to Starr on many occasions how she had felt where she meant for them to be ghosts that haunted, Starr transformed them into wolves that hunted.
Both women’s methods were effective so neither of them ever backed down, or away. Both women’s patience was running thin with the other’s method. The battle of old school versus new school was evident to those privy to the conversation. The others were counting up the last few stacks of money and packing them into the duffel bag. They couldn’t help but overhear every single word that Starr freely screamed into the air as they went back and forth. It was obvious to the other members of the Double Gs that their boss and founder were unable to reach an agreement.
“Listen, Starr. You’re still not comprehending the reality of this organization,” Queen Fem continued. “Power is never for sale. It is gained, earned, and exercised until the person or people in control lose it. You don’t sell it or give it away. And definitely not back to the source that it came from. So I’m rejecting your ideas in every form. Please, don’t go against me on this. There will only be consequences. Severe. We cannot jeopardize what we have. Definitely not for money. No matter the amount. So stick to the script and play by the rules. This conversation is over and will not be brought up again.”
The phone went dead in Starr’s ear. She looked at the receiver with disbelief before violently slamming it back down into the cradle. She felt she had just been indirectly threatened and she didn’t like it one bit. The Double Gs had become hers to claim, although Queen Fem still had many followers from the original group who stayed with her and protected her. But Starr and her movement was the new school. The future. The only problem was that Queen Fem possessed all of the G-Files, which Starr needed to execute her future vision for the organization.
Starr was trying to convince Queen Fem that instead of just stacking up the G-Files without putting them to use, they should sell them back to certain victims, which would generate millions in the high hundreds over a short period of six months. Queen Fem never even entertained the idea. Once a victim was in the G-Files, he was stuck for life. It wasn’t about money. It was about position and power for her. One was never far behind the other. Aside from that, how Queen Fem had come to be both in possession and control of the G-Files was more valuable than the organization itself. It was also the reason she was one of the most dangerous women on the West Coast, not to mention one of the most wanted.
Still, one thing Queen Fem stated early in the conversation stood out to Starr: “You’re trying to show me a way to make more money. I’m proving a way to enhance more power that money can’t buy. In the end, money is paper. Go to Cuba with all of the money in the world, they’ll kill you. Why? Because they have more power. Your money is useless. But if you overtake your island with power, you control everyone that comes in with money.”
Queen Fem’s words went right over Starr’s head. All she could think about was the secret that she had on her mentor and how damaging it could be if it ever got out. Starr hoped it never got to that point where she felt her hand was forced.
Chapter Twelve
Special Agent McCarthy stayed in the federal building all night waiting for the call he was banking on. He glanced at his watch. It was nearly half an hour past the time he was expecting the incoming call. Under any normal circumstances it wouldn’t have been an issue, but in this particular situation he knew thirty minutes late could possibly mean you were dead. He shook the thought out of his head. He didn’t want to speak or think anything wrong or bad into existence. Besides, he really needed to ring with something he could go off of. Every informative phone call brought him closer to taking down the Double Gs, he felt. He seemed to be the only one taking the operation seriously. Had he not been so high ranking, he was sure none of the leads he received would have been followed up on. He knew no one really took the case seriously. It was the joke of the Bureau, but not to Agent McCarthy. He knew exactly what the Double Gs were capable of. He answered the phone on the first ring.
“Sheep here,” he chimed into the office phone.
“This is wolf in sheep’s clothing,” the woman stated, using the code words confirming her identity and the fact that she wasn’t in distress.
“Tell me something good,” he replied in a tone as low as hers.
“Well, I’m kinda stagnant. It’s r
eal hard to get any closer now. I’m trying to work my way up, but there are so many people in the way. We have a meeting next month. I’m going to finally bring a mic in to record what’s going on. Right now, that’s the best I can do. But I do have this one thing. I think they had this drug dealer who called himself Rob-C murdered. And I think they used the police to do it.”
Agent McCarthy’s eyebrows rose. “What? What makes you say that?”
“I can’t get into it right now, but I overheard it while I was in the club. Some people were laughing about what happened at his funeral.”
“What happened?”
“A video that was supposed to be a documentary of his life was passed out to everyone who attended. But instead, it was footage of him getting sodomized and all sorts of degrading stuff. Apparently, he was under the impression that he had bought his way out of the blackmail by paying $500,000 to Starr. But it wasn’t the original copy.”
“So why do you think the police killed him?”
“They were ordered to. The guy must’ve refused to do something. Someone’s coming. I have to go. But look into it yourself. I’ll text you and let you know the next time we can speak.”
“Okay. Good work. Just push hard to get in position. I’m giving you the full green light. Do whatever you have to. I got you covered. Do whatever it takes to get to Queen Fem. Find out exactly who she is and where she’s at!”
McCarthy cursed at the sound of the dial tone. He wasn’t sure how much his plant had heard, but he hoped she’d heard enough to get the picture.
Chapter Thirteen
Starr navigated her black Maserati Quattro sport with the cruise control set exactly on sixty-five, which was the speed limit. It was the middle of the night and there seemed to be only a handful of cars on Interstate 15 South. She was usually a speed demon, but tonight she had to be extra cautious. She had in her trunk the duffel bags full of money that was just counted up. She didn’t want any complications. She was only mere miles away before she reached her exit to the safe house just outside of Las Vegas. She had been driving for nearly an hour and a half to the California residence. Between the quiet, dark highway and the fact that she was somewhat tired, it had seemed longer to her. The music was nearly on full blast and both the driver’s side and passenger’s side windows were evenly cracked, leveling the crisp breeze, just to keep her awake and alert. Every few seconds she made sure her eyes rotated past her rearview and side mirrors. Her concentration was broken by the sound of her cell phone’s ringtone blaring out of her car’s dashboard speakers. The screen read Private. She became irritated like she always did.
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