2
Mecca
Arelaxing rush of warmth always filled me before I erupted into total fury. My patience was barely hanging on by a thread that was quickly unraveling, but I had maintained it longer than I expected to, enduring the usual complaints from my crew. I spit my words at the men eyeballing me, my tone low and deadly.
“I can’t believe my uncle left me in charge of you no-balls-having, whining and complaining, titty-sucking bitches.”
The first thought that popped into my mind—kill them all—would’ve been the easiest thing to do. However, I had never taken the easy way out of anything in my life. My calm, the side of me that had matured and sustained my life and mental health in a male-dominated world, surfaced. As much as I would have loved to restart with a new crew, the sensible part of my brain reminded me that, for the most part, the men did good work.
I gave them shit, a lot of it. However, each knew that I would walk through hell for them and had their backs even when they may have been wrong. This was our time to hash shit out, voice our frustrations, and for me to get in their asses if they were out there screwing up.
The calm I summoned helped to quiet the ruthless savagery that ran through my veins, demanding release. I lifted my gaze from the men and concentrated on the deep gray walls of the warehouse we were in. Those walls held more interest than the men as their voices carried as much shit around the open space as a city-fed pigeon.
After my uncle pulled a fuck-move that left me and my cousin, Desiree, in the middle of a shit storm, I had inherited the job of running my family’s drug business.
Overnight, I had become the queenpin of the organization known as the Black Saints. After working for years under my uncle, Raymond Evans, he had handed me the reins, claiming it was temporary while he handled some business.
The cold hard truth fell like a ton of bricks after gaining control. My uncle had conned twenty million dollars from two of the highest level criminal organizations in the world. To make matters worse, millions of dollars of our drugs were seized by the authorities in multiple sting operations. Now, I was left holding the bag with a gaping hole ripped in the bottom.
I was solely responsible for leading the men who were my peers weeks ago. The idea of being shot at was more appealing than dealing with a bunch of complaining ass men. Since regular English didn’t appear to compute for them, I used curse words in the place of nouns, verbs, and adjectives.
“I’m not my fucking uncle,” I barked for the umpteenth time, my words passing through my lips with more ease than I felt.
“When I give you a fucking order, fucking follow it, or go and work for the enemy so you can make it easier for me to take your complaining ass out.”
I pointed at my tits.
“Please don’t let the fact that I have titties trick you into thinking I’m a fucking joke.”
They stared like I had lost my natural mind, but they knew better than to test my crazy. These men were my street specialists, the ones who had earned enough creds to sit at the table. It meant they had a level of authority that allowed them to offer input to be considered in the decision making.
My cousins, Raymond Junior, and Rayland had never wanted the job I had inherited, although they had grown up sucking from the tit of the empire financially. Rayland was addicted to the drugs we sold, and Ray Junior was gay and extremely in the closet. Ray Junior stayed clear of the spotlight and didn’t show his face unless he was summoned.
Growing up, I had studied my uncle’s movements like he was a street bible. I even took a bullet in the shoulder once that was meant for his conniving snake-slithering ass. I didn’t want my uncle dead, but I wasn’t trying to be a hero either when I took his bullet. Unfortunately, I had just been in the damn way.
Now, I had inherited a drug empire that was one kilo, one drug bust, one indictment, or one good rat’s tale away from crumbling. To top it all off, the men were complacent, spoiled, and not used to being dealt with.
I had started in the business at the bottom, selling small, piece by piece until I went through the ranks like a soldier was supposed to. If anything, my uncle was harder on me because I was his kin, and a female. He stayed on my ass the same as any of the guys who stepped out of line, and I had taken the shit and moved the fuck on.
Now, here I stood, a grown-ass woman who should have been enjoying this life after all the grinding I had done, but instead, I was about to start from scratch.
Since leaving me to run a broken empire wasn’t enough, my uncle had also promised me and my cousin, Desiree, to the Vallin brothers for ten million dollars to build an alliance between our families. The deal, in my opinion, was the smartest thing he had done in a long time. The only regret I had was that he had involved Desiree.
Uniting our drugs, and the Vallins weapon sales would make us superpowers in our respective criminal arenas. The Vallin brothers were also members of the Ferali Syndicate, one of the most notorious crime syndicates in the world.
The Vallins had agreed to my uncle’s proposal, only to later find out that he had played us all. The cherry on top of the shit pile was that he had also promised Desiree to a second group called the Fallen Angels, for the same price, and had taken their ten million too.
Raymond disappeared with the twenty million and left us to face the consequences of the tangled web he had spun. Now, the Vallins were depending on me to uphold the Evans name in the drug arena, so that their investment in the Black Saints wouldn’t be in vain. Arjen Vallin was set to marry Desiree, and I would soon marry Khane ‘the Kannibal’ Vallin.
A waving hand stopped my runaway thoughts, pulling my attention back to our meeting. “What?” I asked Elijah, who went by ‘Boogie.’
I had taken the stance of calling the men by their given names. They didn’t like it, but I didn’t give a damn about what they liked. In my opinion, code names and call signs should be used when you were conducting more life-threatening operations.
Holding back curse words, my lips pulled tight at the notion of unleashing if I received one more complaint about the way I was changing things.
“I’ve been running distribution through Constance Street for eighteen months, if J.T. starts using a different route, there are going to be questions,” he stated.
“Let there be questions. Who gives a shit? Whoever questions you, give them my number, and tell them to call me so I can give them some of these curse words. What you fail to understand is that they need us more than we need them. If we cut them off, they have nowhere else to go but outside their territory. Are they willing to risk a war because we are improving our game?”
He dropped his head without replying, knowing I was right.
Was it possible to restore the empire I had longed to run, or had my uncle made too many mistakes and cut too many raw deals for it to be salvaged?