“Are you ok?” I asked Alexis after I opened the closet door.
She looked up at me with tears in her eyes. I felt like shit. She looked scared as fuck and I couldn’t blame her for that. In all the years that we’d been married, she thought I was some squeaky clean white boy. She thought I was the VP of Sales for some company my parents owned.
I loved Alexis, but she was the perfect wife for this type of shit. She never asked any questions. As long as the checks cleared, she never wondered what it was that I was actually selling. I’d wanted to tell her what was going on for a while but she never made that easy. Each time I invited her to come with me on a business trip so I could show her the other side of my life, she would decline.
“Baby…are you ok?” I repeated. Alexis nodded her head and reached out to me. I grabbed her hand and helped her up. “Get dressed. We have to get out of here now.” She nodded and ambled over to grab a suitcase in silence. She had a blank expression on her pale face. I guess she was still in shock.
“Drop that, Lexi. We aren’t taking anything but the clothes on our backs. I’ll have someone come get everything else. Just get dressed and let’s go,” I said firmly. Tears gathered in her eyes but I decided to let her deal with that on her own. The babying her thing was about o stop anyways and I needed to make some calls.
“Ortega, I need you to arrange a flight for two, heading from here back home. Have to get the wife up out of here,” I said into the phone.
Ortega was the one person I knew I could always depend on when I needed to get something done. We grew up together and his father had been my father’s right hand. We were raised and groomed for our roles. No matter what went down, I knew Ortega would die before he betrayed me.
“I’m getting to it right now. I’ll arrange car service to pick you up from the house and also get you from the airport.”
“Ok, good.”
“Something happened I should know about?”
“Yeah. The Pachellis found us,” I informed him.
“Shit. Fuck car service. I’ll be there in less than ten minutes to get you to the airport,” Ortega stated before the line went dead.
I dropped the phone in my pocket and went to check on Alexis. She was fully dressed and sitting at her vanity in the closet, staring at herself in the mirror.
“You don’t have to be afraid, Lexi. I’ll protect you. That’s the least of your worries. When we get to New York, you’ll see.” I stood in the doorway and watched her for a while. She was still in a state of shock and I had no idea what to do about it. I shrugged my shoulders and sighed, punching my hands down in my pockets.
I should just give her some time.
“Where is she?”
“Sleeping,” Ortega replied.
“Sleeping?” I asked him with my eyebrow raised. Ortega decided to fly in with us to New York City after I told him that I would need his help. I had a lot of shit popping on the business side in addition to now dealing with the Pachellis.
We had just arrived at my estate in New York City. My family owned a lot of property in and around the area. This particular estate was the one I grew up in. They gave it to me as a wedding gift. Alexis had never seen it and when we drove up through the gates, she seemed so out of it that she didn’t even care.
I had a lot of stuff to go over with Ortega before we pulled in the other heads of the organization later on.
“Well, she may not be sleeping but Sylvia told me that she went up to bed.”
“Alright, well, let’s discuss business. We will be joining with another group called The Family soon.”
“The Family?” Ortega laughed. “What kind of name is that?” He threw back his head and let out a deep, throaty chuckle. I narrowed my eyes at him. I didn’t appreciate someone making light of my business affairs.
“You done?” I asked him. He stopped laughing abruptly and cleared his throat before I continued. “The Family is a group just as powerful as ours. Together, they have operations working out of Atlanta, Miami, Los Angeles and they just moved into New York City. They are international as well. We have inked a deal with the head of the crew to join our operations together. They are just as powerful as us. Connecting with them can make us unstoppable.” I watched as Ortega thought it out for a minute.
“I’ve heard of them,” Ortega said finally. “You sure you want to trust your operation to a bunch of moolies?”
Before I knew it, I had punched Ortega square in the jaw. He backed up in his seat, holding his face in his hands. Moolie was the Italian way of saying ‘nigger.’ I knew Ortega had probably said it without thinking, but it was a mistake that, if he were anyone else, would have cost him his life.
“My wife is black, if you haven’t noticed. Don’t forget your place,” I warned him.
He nodded his head at me and looked at me with a sheepish expression on his face. “My bad…you know I didn’t mean anything by it,” Ortega apologized.
I nodded my head to signal my acceptance of his apology before continuing. “A man by the name of Ty, Tytan Johnson, heads up the organization. His father has pretty much stepped down and handed the reins to him. Only comes in if some top notch shit goes off.” I paused and looked at Ortega to make sure he was paying attention. He nodded at me.
“So he pretty much operates it like we do,” Ortega said slowly.
“Yeah, he does. Except we haven’t ventured into the drug side of things. Since we deal in uh…acquiring merchandise…and they deal in pharmaceutical distribution, we can pretty much take over every hustle in every major city in the US. And abroad, eventually,” I finished.
This was a major connection, combining with The Family, and I knew it as soon as my father mentioned it to me. The reality of the situation was that they were powerful and so were we, and we were both expanding to the point that we were invading each other’s turfs. Instead of fighting it out in a massive street war, it made sense to combine our expertise and multiply the dollars.
“You trust them?” Ortega asked me.
“Yes. Ty was deeply involved with Vanessa…Alexis’ sister. I’m sure he would never do anything to betray her family.”
“When do you want to communicate this to the heads?”
“Tomorrow,” I answered him. “I have a conference call with Cal tomorrow. He’s the one that Ty put in place to head up their New York operation. I want to let everyone know before I speak with him.” Ortega nodded his head and pulled out his phone. I knew he was sending a message to all the heads to meet us for an early morning meeting. I stood up.
“We’ll meet a little before and discuss the details. But I’m sure it will all be fine.”
“It will. I can promise you that.”