“She did? How?”
“For the first few months, she sold it to her friends and perverts around the neighborhood who always catcalled her. When she was eighteen, a friend of hers hooked her up with a job working at this exclusive escorting club as a host. I had her give it to the girls that performed, and had them sell it to their clients. I’d dragged her into it, all for my own personal gain.” I dropped my head. “I was good at it, though. Too good, and Draco noticed. He noticed a lot of things. I told him I’d sold it all within a month, but didn’t hear from him for three months after that. By that point, I’d graduated college and everything. Then one day he showed up in my city. Popped up right at my apartment. He had one of his men put a stack of money on the table—two million to be exact—and told me he was investing it into my company privately as a start-up. He told me that if I wanted out of selling drugs, that the money he gave me had to be doubled within a year. It wasn’t wise of me to take the deal. For any business owner, it was hard to double that much money that fast, especially for a new business, but see, the thing about Jefe was that I had no choice. With him it was either push his cocaine for the rest of my life, or invest his money and make a profit off of it. I didn’t have any other options. If I didn’t do one or the other, I was dead. So I took my chances. I took the money and within ten months, I had doubled it…but not legally.”
“What do you mean not legally?” she asked.
“There were men who would buy from me—older, rich men who cheated on their wives and hired escorts from my sister’s job to come to their hotels. We had a whole package deal going on. I had dirt on them that I could use against them if they didn’t help out. I told them to invest in my company, get the word out about it, or I’d tell their wives about their secret lives. Many of them didn’t want their secrets brought to light, and of course they were angry with me, but I promised them a return of income too…and eventually they got it.”
“Wow, Cane. I didn’t realize it was that deep.”
“Yeah.” I ran my slick palms over my pants. “The thing is, I thought after I doubled Jefe’s money, he would leave me alone. But no, he kept coming back with more, demanding me to flip it. Without saying it, he saw something in me—a drive that was hard to find in other men. He knew that I could reach the wealthy Americans, and he wanted to keep their money. During it all, we got a little closer. He trusted me a lot more than he had in the beginning because I had proven my loyalty to him. I built Tempt, got the wine going, and it only got better from there. After two years, I did stop selling drugs completely, and I made a deal with Jefe to let Lora out, but of course she ended up with Aaron a couple months later. We were friends, and he’d been selling Jefe’s product in South Carolina for a while. He decided to move to Atlanta, where he spotted Lora at the club.” I shook my head. “Lora had the chance to get out, but never did…and I honestly don’t think she really wanted to. She liked the thrill. The secrets. She liked capitalizing off of it, even though it was dangerous. I blame myself for ever getting her involved, and sometimes I hate myself for selling the very drugs that my mother couldn’t stay away from.”
Kandy sighed and tightened her grip around my hand. “You did what you had to do, Cane.”
I looked into her glossy eyes. “Yeah, but at what cost? Just to live the good life? My choices didn’t repair my family, like I thought it would. If anything, it ripped us apart.”
Her lips twisted for a moment. “But you’re all here, on the other side of it. That’s all that matters. Sometimes you have to unravel before coming together again.” She rested her head on my arm.
We were quiet a moment.
“I bet this makes you want to run back home, huh?”
“He knows where I live…” she muttered.
“He does. Going home would be pointless. Not only that, but if he notices you’re gone, he’ll think you talked, and he’s always hasty to get shit done. It sounds wrong, but you’re safer here, honestly.”
She pressed her lips, looking up at me. “Your life is so…complicated,” she said, exasperated. “I know you had to do what you did to get to where you are now, but it’s scary as hell having all of these random things happen.”