The Cocaine Princess Part 5 (Cocaine Princess Series #5)(72)

“Bitch ass niggas tried to do me in,” Blake said, looking at Alexus and slapping the roof of his Bugatti. “They didn’t know this muhf*cka was bullet proof. Better hope theirs is, too.”

“Do you know who it was?” Alexus asked.

“Of course I know who it was! I know who sent ‘em too. It’s all good. On Vice Lord, this shit gon’ end tonight.” Blake turned to his crew. “Come on, y’all. We finna load up and roll out.”

He and his MBM team breezed past Alexus and disappeared into the mansion leaving behind Mocha and two pretty girls who were sitting in the back of one of the Range Rovers.

Dropping her head, Alexus pinched the bridge of her nose and sighed. Everything seemed to be going bad at once. Everything. And what was Mercedes looking so angry about? Was it because she’d found out on Papi’s jet that the Costilla cartel was not just a myth?

When Alexus finally lifted her head, she found herself alone with Mercedes and Papi; Cereniti and Porsche had taken the kids into the mansion, and Mocha was driving away in the Range Rover with the other two girls.

“Let’s go inside,” Alexus said. “We’ll talk after I calm Blake down. You know how crazy that boy can get.”

Mercedes was shaking her head. “Have Enrique pull your car around. I have a lot on my mind, and I don’t want anybody interrupting this conversation we’re about to have.”

With another sigh, Alexus sent a bodyguard to fetch her purse, and Enrique went and got her pearly white Phantom limo. She got in back with Papi and Mercedes, then Enrique headed down the driveway ahead of two white Tahoes full of Costilla cartel henchmen.

Mercedes crossed her arms over her chest and scowled at Alexus.

“What’s this all about?” Papi asked.

“It’s about my mother.” Mercedes regarded Papi with the same cold scowl. “You remember her, don’t you? The cosmetologist you hired for your wife about twenty years ago? The woman you got pregnant behind your wife’s back? The woman you sent here to Chicago without a dime to feed your child?”

“That is not true, I loved Whitney. I gave her more money than you can ever imagine. But the bottom line is, I was a married man. I was wrong for cheating on my wife with Whitney. To be honest with you, I had planned to spend some time with you and your mother after Rita and I divorced, but Whitney was already too…”

“Too what? Too strung out on crack? Is that your excuse for being a f*cking dead-beat?!”

Papi’s expression remained placid, but Alexus knew how much he hated being cursed. An outsider would have certainly been killed for such a transgression.

He lit his Cuban cigar and said, “What are you complaining about? Huh? Alexus gave you forty million dollars. That’s a little over two million for every year I missed of you growing up. You should be happy.”

Mercedes shifted her steaming emerald eyes to her sister’s, and for a moment she didn’t speak; then, “I want to know who killed her, and I want to know why.” Her accusatory stare was frigid and replete with emotion.

“Why are you looking at me?” Alexus said.

“Who killed her?” Mercedes persisted.

“How the f*ck should I know? You and I didn’t meet until after your mother was killed. For all we know, it could have been a drug deal gone bad.”

“Bullshit! Tasia told me you had it done!”

“I don’t give a damn what Tasia told—”

“Quiet!” Papi said, raising a wrinkled brown hand to cease the burgeoning argument. “Now, Alexus I want you to tell her the truth. Get it over with. It’s not like it was intentional.”

Although Alexus had nothing to truly be angry about, she tried earnestly to match her sister’s wrathful expression. They locked eyes, and the stare down began.

‘Damn you, Papi,’ Alexus thought. ‘Why’d you have to tell her?’

She looked down at her blood-stained dress. “Okay, Mercedes. Here’s what happened. I, uh… was doing something with Blake last year, at the house on Trumbull Avenue, and, uh… I tasted another girl’s stuff on him. I asked him who the bitch was, and he said Whitney.”

“So you had somebody go to Michigan City and kill every Whitney in the phone book?!” Mercedes was stunned.

“I told them to find the girl he was cheating with, and to make sure it didn’t happen again. If I had known that they were going to kill all those women, I would have stopped them.” Alexus’s head was weighed down with shame and guilt. She didn’t want to look back up at her sister, but she did it anyway—just as her iPhone started ringing inside her purse.

To avoid her sister’s intense gaze, she answered the call.

“Hello, my dear niece.” Aunt Jenny’s voice was a cold whisper. “If you ever want to see your mother alive again, come to the First Baptist Church on the corner of Eighth and Willard Avenue in Michigan City. And lose the two SUVs behind you. I only wish to see you, Mercedes, Juan and Enrique. Anyone else and she dies.”

In the background, Rita shouted, “No, Alexus! Don’t come! It’s a set—”

Then the call ended.





Chapter 47

“I can’t believe that motherf*cker shot me,” said Nona. She was driving Blake’s charcoal black Rolls-Royce Phantom coupe down Interstate-94, her head wrapped in gauze to cover the deep gash streaked across the left side of her head. Her hands were trembling on the steering wheel, and she kept swatting away the smoke that was drifting up from the end of Blake’s blunt.