My Milf Conqueror System

Darius went home first.

Not to the villa. Not to any of the properties Jake owned. Home. Liberty City. The apartment wasn't there anymore. His mother had moved to a better place in Opa-locka three years ago, paid for by Darius's salary from Jake's operation, and the old two-bedroom on NW 15th Avenue was a parking lot now. But the neighborhood was still there. The corners were still there. The men who stood on them were different men, younger men, but they stood the same way and watched the same way and the code was the same code it had always been. You didn't walk into someone's territory without being introduced. You didn't ask questions without offering something first. And you didn't come back to a place you'd left and expect it to remember you.

Darius parked on NW 27th Avenue at two in the morning and walked.

He was looking for a man named Tito. Not a friend. Not even an acquaintance. A name he'd heard years ago, back when he was still in high school, back when the world he lived in was smaller and the people in it knew each other's business the way families know each other's business. Tito Reyes. He'd run numbers out of a barbershop on NW 54th Street. Small-time. Careful. The kind of man who survived because he never reached higher than his reach could hold. Darius hadn't thought about Tito in years. But Darius remembered everything, and remembering was a kind of currency in the world he was about to enter.

The barbershop was still there. Different name on the window. Different chairs. But the same layout, the same smell of talcum and hair tonic, the same low hum of a place where things happened that had nothing to do with haircuts. Darius walked in at two-fifteen. The chairs were empty. A man sat behind the counter reading a newspaper. He was young, maybe twenty-five, with thin shoulders and quick eyes that measured Darius the moment the door opened.

"We're closed," the man said.

"I'm looking for Tito."

The man's eyes flicked. Just for a second. Then they settled. "Don't know a Tito."

"You're reading a newspaper at two in the morning behind a barbershop counter. You know a Tito."

The man put the newspaper down. He looked at Darius the way people looked at Darius, which was up, because Darius was six-four and built like the wall he'd always been, and looking at Darius meant deciding quickly whether you were going to be helpful or whether you were going to be a problem.

"Who's asking?"

"Darius King."

The name sat in the room. The man turned it over. Darius watched him do it. King wasn't a common name in Liberty City, and the ones who had it were connected to each other by blood or by history, and Darius's history in this neighborhood was the kind that people remembered even if they didn't talk about it. A football scholarship. A kid who got out. That meant something. Getting out always meant something.

"Tito doesn't work here anymore," the man said. "But I know where he is."

"Tell me."

"Who do you work for?"

Darius looked at the man. The question was a test. In this world, every question was a test, and the answer you gave told the other person everything they needed to know about whether you were someone to respect or someone to rob. Darius could have said Jake Hart. He could have said the King of Kings. He could have dropped the name that opened doors from Miami to Macau. But that wasn't why he was here. He was here to build something with his own name, and his own name was all he had.

"I work for myself," Darius said.

The man studied him for a long time. Then he wrote an address on a piece of paper and slid it across the counter. Darius took it. He read it. A house in Allapattah, six blocks south. He put the paper in his jacket and walked out without another word because another word would have been too many and Darius had always understood that the man who spoke least was the man who controlled the conversation.

The house in Allapattah was small. Concrete block. A yard with a chain-link fence and a dog that barked once and went quiet when Darius looked at it. Darius didn't knock. He stood on the porch and waited. Three minutes. Four. The door opened.

Tito Reyes was older than Darius remembered. Fifties now. Gray in his beard. Thinner. But the eyes were the same, sharp and quick and calculating, the eyes of a man who'd spent thirty years reading rooms and people and situations and surviving all three. He stood in the doorway in a white undershirt and looked at Darius and didn't speak.

"Tito Reyes," Darius said.

"You know me?"

"I know of you. Numbers out of a barbershop on Fifty-Fourth. You were careful. You still are."

Tito leaned against the doorframe. "And you're Darius King. The football player. The one who got out." He paused. "People who get out don't come back to Allapattah at two-thirty in the morning unless they want something."

"I want to talk."

"Talk is cheap. Come in."

The house was small and clean. A kitchen table with two chairs. A coffee maker on the counter. A TV tuned to a Spanish channel with the volume low. Tito sat. Darius sat. The chair groaned under his weight.

"You want coffee?"

"No."

"You want something stronger?"

"I want information."

Tito smiled. It was a careful smile, the smile of a man who'd learned that smiling was a way to buy time while you decided how much of the truth to give. "Information about what?"

"The cartels. The organizations running product through South Florida. Not the big names. The middle. The people who move things, who hold territory, who have relationships with the suppliers and the distributors. I want to know who's in charge, who's fighting, and where the gaps are."

Tito's smile faded. He looked at Darius the way a man looks at a door he's not sure he wants to open. "That's a dangerous question, kid."

"I'm not a kid."

"You're asking kid questions. You want to know about the cartel world in South Florida? That's not a barbershop conversation. That's a conversation that gets people killed."

"I'm not most people."

Tito was quiet. He studied Darius the way Darius had studied the young man in the barbershop, measuring, weighing, deciding. Darius let him. He sat in the chair with his hands on the table and his back to the wall and he let Tito look because looking was free and what Darius was offering was not.

"You came back to Liberty City," Tito said slowly. "You came back to a barbershop at two in the morning and asked for me by name. That means you're not playing. That means you're serious. But serious and smart are different things, and the cartel world is full of serious men who weren't smart enough."

"I'm smart enough to start with you instead of someone who'd kill me for asking."

Tito laughed. A real laugh, short and rough, the laugh of a man who hadn't expected to laugh tonight. "Alright. I'll give you this much. South Florida is Rodriguez territory. Has been for years. Camila Rodriguez runs the coast from Homestead to West Palm. She's the top. Below her are lieutenants, each running a section. Little Havana. Hialeah. Overtown. Liberty City. Each one answers to her. Each one pays up. She's organized. She's disciplined. She doesn't tolerate competition."

"Where are the gaps?"

"The gaps are in the northwest. Hialeah Gardens. Miami Lakes. The edges. The territory nobody wants because the margins are thin and the police presence is heavy. But the margins are thin because nobody's worked them properly. Someone with patience could build something out there. Small at first. Quiet. Grow it slow."

"Why hasn't anyone?"

"Because anyone who tries gets a visit from Rodriguez's people. She doesn't like competition. She doesn't allow it. The last man who tried to set up outside her network was found in a canal in Pembroke Pines. He was missing his hands."

Darius filed the information the way he filed everything. Neatly. Completely. The northwest. The edges. The territory nobody wanted. That was where he'd start. Small. Quiet. Patient. He'd build something Camila Rodriguez wouldn't see coming because it wouldn't be worth seeing, not at first, not until it was too big to ignore and too solid to break.

"What do I owe you?" Darius said.

Tito shook his head. "You don't owe me. But if you build what I think you're building, and if it works, you remember who gave you the map."

Darius stood. He straightened his jacket. "I'll remember."

He walked out. The dog didn't bark this time. The street was quiet. The sun was coming up over Liberty City, orange and heavy, turning the concrete gold. Darius stood on the porch and looked east toward Little Havana, toward the restaurant where a woman was probably sleeping, and then north toward Hialeah Gardens, toward the edges, toward the territory nobody wanted.

That was where he'd start.

Darius got in his car and drove north. The sun rose behind him. The city woke up. And Darius King, who had been the muscle for years, who had stood at the wall and watched the room and said nothing, began the work of building something that would stand on its own.