I sighed, rolling my neck. “I heard about him through the grapevine. Many of them warned me that he would probably kill me before he heard me out, but at that point in my life, I had no choice. At first, I was selling stolen goods to people, but I wasn’t really making any money from it, and my mother was in the hospital because she’d almost overdosed on coke, and I didn’t have the money to pay for the bills. While she was in the hospital, the doctors discovered she needed a kidney transplant. I was at a loss.” I looked down, and her eyes were wide and glossy.
“And then what?”
“I met this guy named Horacio who sold for Jefe. Your dad told you about Horacio, I believe. Anyway, I told him I wanted in—that I’d do anything to make some money, so he had me start selling for him first. I was so good at it that he took me under his wing and had me pushing heavily. I sold coke to people all over the city, some rich and some poor. I think word got out that I was selling so well and being very discrete about it, so much so that it reached the ears of Jefe. Jefe wasn’t a man of many words. He thanked me by giving me more to push, which meant more money for both of us, but he would never meet up with me. I made so much that I could afford to pay off my mother’s medical bills, pay for my college classes, and keep Mama’s kitchen full of groceries…but to me, it wasn’t enough. I wanted out of selling. I wanted out of that shitty neighborhood. I wanted to do something bigger, so I got my business plan together, packed up a bag, and when the next delivery came, I took a big risk and followed my supplier.”
“What?” Kandy gasped.
“I know. I was young and dumb. I mean, everyone knows not to sneak up on a man like him. I’d told a few people that I wanted to see him, but they told me it was impossible and that I was an idiot for wanting to see him anyway. I didn’t care. I followed the supplier all the way to Texas. He stopped at a warehouse that was in the middle of nowhere. I watched from my car for a while. Jefe didn’t show up until later that night. I knew without even seeing pictures that it was him. The way he dressed was different from everyone else. He wore suits and nice clothes and all this fancy fucking jewelry. I didn’t really have a plan, and honestly, I didn’t need one. I was snatched out of the car before I was even given the chance to think it all through.”
She gasped again.
“Some man with white hair dragged me to the warehouse with some big man following behind him. I was scared for my fucking life. I was so stupid, thinking some cartel leader would hear me out. They tossed me in a room, and I waited for almost an hour before Jefe came inside. Instead of killing me on the spot like I thought he would, he asked me who I was and what I wanted, all with a gun pointed at my head. I told him I was his top money-maker in Georgia right now. I was the one pushing so much of his product. To my surprise, he heard me out, but he didn’t lower that gun. Not for one second. Some big guy came into the room with my notebooks and binders, tossing them on the table. Jefe asked what they were for, and I told him it was for a business I wanted to launch, and that I wanted to collaborate with him—that I wanted out, and that I could double his money if he went the route I wanted to take. I told him I’d been working on it since I was nineteen, and that I had really put a lot of thought into it. At first, he wasn’t interested. He told me I was a dumb motherfucker to even bother seeing him. I thought I was dead…until he told me he wanted me to set up shop to sell over fifty kilograms of cocaine.”
“Holy shit,” she breathed.
“I went back home and sold that shit. I sold it to the kids I went to school with and even the business owners I had worked for before. I went to a simple community college in Fayetteville, North Carolina. They were bored there, and I carried the thrill. The coke that I was selling was some of the purest. It couldn’t be topped, and was the best on the East Coast, so it wasn’t that hard to sell. It only took me a month to get rid of it all.” I swallowed hard. “Lora helped me.”