The Cocaine Princess Part 5 (Cocaine Princess Series #5)(24)

“Begging already?” Alexus narrowed her eyes at Tasia’s reflection. “It usually takes you twenty to thirty minutes before you turn into Sister Gimmy.”

“Ha ha ha,” Tasia retorted sarcastically. “Real funny, bitch.”

They shared a laugh, a welcoming, I-miss-you sort of laugh, and then the quotidian topics began. Tasia and her boyfriend Bookie—Alexus’s first cousin on her mother’s side—had broken up again after Tasia caught him sexting with another woman; Cereniti was still single and in search of a new lesbian lover; she and Tasia had finally decided on a plan to host their own stripper based reality show, which Tasia had already named “Down the Pole.”

“Who do we pitch the show idea to?” Cereniti asked. “And please don’t say T-Walk. He already thinks he’s the black version of Ryan Seacrest.” She sucked her teeth. “Ol’ bougie-ass nigga been wearin’ suits ever since they put him on the cover of GQ Magazine.”

“Why you always hatin’ on my brother?” Tasia snapped. She called him brother because he and Bookie were best friends.

Rolling her eyes, Alexus stood and adjusted her strapless white Marchesa dress. “Submit your idea to T-Walk. I’ll tell him to work out the kinks and get it to the MTN board of executives.”

“Will they approve it?” Tasia sounded anxious.

“I’ll approve it,” Alexus said. She started out of the dressing room, which connected her massive bathroom and her and Blake’s master bedroom suite; the clicking of her six inch, pearl white Christian Louboutins on the white Carrera marble floor muted as she reached the snow white faux fur carpet in the bedroom. “I’m having lunch in New York with Beyoncé’ and Serena tomorrow while Blake’s on 106th and Park, and I can’t think of a damned thing to say.”

“Ask her about the baby,” Cereniti suggested “You two are probably the only black celebs who have babies with two names. And both of you are in relationships with rappers.”

“Serena used to date a rapper, too,” Tasia pointed out.

Alexus shrugged, picking up her iPhone from its charging pad. “I guess so.” She grabbed her white Himalayan crocodile skin Birkin bag off the dresser, and the three of them left the bedroom.

Enrique and seven other bodyguards were waiting in the foyer, along with the butler, who had Alexus’s white fur coat draped over his arm, and two house maids holding Tasia and Cereniti’s gray-black chinchilla coats. The butler helped Alexus into her coat, while she gazed emptily at the gold-framed portrait of Michael Eric Dyson and wondered what Blake was up to. She hoped he wasn’t somewhere cheating on her. She’d already been forced to shoot dead Janautica Spalding, the last woman he’d cheated with, and she had vowed that day to leave him for good if he ever cheated again.

As she was walking out the front door, checking her Twitter page on the iPhone, something occurred to her belatedly.

“Enrique,” she said. “About that…international business venture. How are we going to acquire that much product?” She stopped next to him.

The Rolls Royce limo was parked a couple of feet ahead of them in the circular driveway, a chauffeur waiting beside its open rear door. Enrique waited ‘til Tasia and Cereniti were inside the limo to reply.

“You’d have to start purchasing Kilos from Peru’s Lima cartel, Bolivia’s Santa Cruz and La Paz cartels, and Colombia’s Medellin and Cali cartels. You might also need to have the North Valley cartel in Colombia double the shipments you’re getting from them now. Papi’s working on getting the bosses of all those cartels together for a meeting on his yacht some time before next month’s NATO summit. Of course, you’ll need to be present as well.” A pronounced grin brightened his usually stern expression. “All of them refer to you as the ‘boss of all bosses’.” He shook his head, incredulous.

Alexus frowned at him. “What are you smiling about?” she asked.

“Oh, it’s nothing derogatory. I’m just…impressed, that’s all. The CIA offered that same international cartel deal to your grandmother when you were nine or ten, and she turned it down. Said she wasn’t interested in digging herself any deeper into the Illuminati than she already had. If she had taken that offer in ‘02, I’m almost certain she would have been worth at least two hundred and fifty billion when she died.”

“The Illuminati? She never said anything to me about the Illuminati.”

“You aren’t supposed to find out until your twenty-first birthday.”

“Well, what if I don’t wanna wait?” Alexus turned and studied the other four vehicles in her driveway—the two white Tahoe’s that sandwiched her limo, Cereniti’s even whiter Lamborghini Aventader, and Tasia’s same colored Panamera Turbo.

“Enjoy your youth,” Enrique advised wisely. “All you’ve got is a year and twenty days left before you become one of them.” He placed a hand on the back of her coat and urged her toward the supremely ostentatious limousine.





Chapter 16

Tasia and Cereniti were chattering about how exciting it had been to sit courtside with Pippen at a recent Bulls game when Alexus climbed into the limo. She was grateful that they were so enveloped in conversation. It gave her time to ponder the ominous question that was bouncing around in her head.