The Cocaine Princess Part 5 (Cocaine Princess Series #5)(71)

“Yeah.” He gave a head nod to a clique of his guys that were seated and standing around another table. “Blake won’t be there with them. Somebody told me he just got shot up again.”

Momentarily, Tasia’s expression brightened.

“Did they kill him?” She asked, sounding half-excited.

“I think so. I’m not sure yet, though. We’ll find out soon enough. Until then...” T-Walk waved over a waiter and ordered a hundred bottles of Ciroc.

Tasia seemed to relax a bit as the drinks started flowing, but her scowl returned when a hippopotamus-shaped white girl walked up and asked Tasia to sign her book.

“Isn’t Alexus supposed to be here?” The hungry hippo asked.

“This is my book release party.” Tasia was furious. “The only person who’s supposed to be here is me.”

Hippo scoffed. “Most of us in here follow Alexus on Twitter. We only came because she tweeted about this party and we thought she was gonna be here. My friends and I canceled our plans to hit up the Bulletface concert, for Christ’s sake.”

T-Walk cracked up laughing as he watched Hippo storm away from their table, and he laughed even harder when Tasia angrily grabbed her smartphone from inside her Gucci bag and dialed Cereniti’s number.

“Stop f*cking laughing,” Tasia snapped at him.

“Aww man, that was too funny. If you could’ve seen the look on your face…” T-Walk sipped from his bottle and kept right on laughing, vibing to the stentorian bass of Chief Keef’s “Love Sosa” as it boomed throughout the club.



Cereniti didn’t answer the phone. Neither did Alexus. By the time Tasia scrolled down her list of contacts to Mercedes, she was fuming.

“What’s up, Tay?” Mercedes answered.

“Don’t f*cking ‘what’s up’ me, yo. I’m mad heated right now. Y’all got me sitting here all by myself while y’all partying out in big ass mansions and shit. That’s f*cked up, b.”

“Ain’t nobody partyin’, bitch. Me and Tee-Tee just got back from the Bulletface concert with my li’l sister. We ain’t even walked in the damn house yet.”

“So, y’all ain’t comin’ to my book release party?”

“We can’t. Some crazy shit’s happenin’ with my daddy’s sister. Everybody’s staying here with Alexus.”

Grinding her teeth together, Tasia took a deep breath… and said something she’d been itching to say for months.

“How can you kick it with the same person who got your mother killed? I mean, sister or no sister, I’d be pissed, yo. Lexi would have to answer for that.”

Mercedes ended the call abruptly.

Tasia smiled.





Chapter 46

Mercedes slowly lowered the iPhone to her side. Her hurt green eyes landed on an aluminum gum wrapper that was stuck to the rear right tire of Porsche’s pink Bentley, and they stayed there until Cereniti, grabbing her purse off the Bentley’s hood, turned to Mercedes and spoke.

“Yo, I can’t remember where I put my phone charger.”

Porsche said, “You left it on Papi’s jet.” She picked up Meyoncé, Mercedes’ two-year-old daughter, and put the little girl on her hip. Then she noticed the troubled expression on her sister’s face. “Girl, what the hell is wrong with you? Who was you just talkin’ to?”

They were all standing in the circular driveway at the Highland Park mansion. Strategically placed lawn lights revealed a bevy of dark-suited bodyguards positioned all across the estate, from the still open wrought-iron gates at the end of the driveway, to the impeccably landscaped multi-acre lawn, to the mansion’s gray-stone porch.

“This bitch done went mute on us,” Cereniti joked, walking toward the porch stairs.

But her words collapsed and perished before they made it to Mercedes’ ears; Mercedes was still hearing Tasia. ‘How can you kick it with the same person who got your mom killed?’ The daunting question bounced around in her head like a hyperactive child.

Was Alexus responsible for the Whitney murders?

After all Mercedes had heard during the flight to Chicago, the idea of Alexus orchestrating a killing spree did not seem far-fetched.

The front door of the mansion behind Mercedes opened, bathing her in a lake of foyer light just as her son, Baby Duke, who was not even five years old yet but sometimes wise enough to be twenty-five, tugged on her pant leg and murmured, “Is you okay, Momma? ‘Cause you don’t look okay.”

“Momma’s okay, baby.” She turned around and watched Alexus and Papi step out onto the porch. There was blood all over the front of Alexus’s white Pucci dress and Louboutin heels. “Everybody go in the house. I need to have a long talk with Papi and Alexus,” Mercedes said.

But just then, Blake’s matte black Bugatti Galibier came roaring up the driveway, followed by a smoke gray Ferrari and two Range Rovers. The passenger’s side of the Bugatti was covered in bullet holes.

*****

An overwhelming sense of dread washed through Alexus as she took in the sight of Blake’s car. Golden Eagle in hand, he got out of the car and slammed the door shut. Streets and Young-D hopped out of the Ferrari, and several more members of the MBM crew exited the Range Rovers holding pistols.