My Milf Conqueror System

Rene got out on Wednesday. Darius posted bail with money from the Honda sale and six thousand from Nina's personal savings, which she offered without being asked. "Pay me back when you can," she said, and the way she said it told Darius she wasn't loaning money. She was investing in something she believed was worth investing in.

Rene walked out of county at noon. Oscar picked him up. Rene was thin and shaken and had the look of a kid who'd spent three nights in a place he never wanted to see again. He stood in the bay and his eyes were wet and his hands were shaking.

"I didn't talk," he said. "I held."

"I know you did."

"The cops said if I gave them a name they'd drop the distribution charge. I almost did it. But I thought about what you'd do, and I waited."

"You did right."

"I did scared. Scared and right aren't the same thing."

"In my crew they are. Scared means you felt it. Right means you didn't break. Most people break. You didn't."

Darius gave Rene two weeks off. Paid. Come back when the shaking stops. Rene left and Oscar drove him home. When Oscar came back he said, "The other dealers know. Marcus told one, and by tonight all six will know. You sold your car to bail out a nineteen-year-old. That story's going to travel."

"Good. Let it travel to Rodriguez if it wants. I'll deal with her when she comes. Right now, I have something else. Salazar's stash house in Pembroke Pines. The man who handles the handoff, Ferro. Marcus says Ferro's been charging a tax. Fifty per pickup. Off the books."

"Ferro's skimming?"

"Ferro's taxing. There's a difference. Skimming is stealing from your boss. Taxing is charging the customer extra and pocketing it. Salazar doesn't know, or Salazar knows and doesn't care, or Salazar knows and is testing us to see if we'll pay it or push back. Either way, I need to know which one it is."

Oscar crossed his arms. "How do you want to handle it?"

"I'm going to talk to Ferro."

"Talk."

"Talk. Face to face. At the stash house. Not at a restaurant. Not through intermediaries. I'm going to drive to Pembroke Pines with Marcus, walk into the stash house, and talk to the man who's taxing my pickups, and I'm going to find out whether the tax is his or Salazar's, and if it's his, I'm going to tell him it stops, and if it's Salazar's, I'm going to tell Salazar I want a word."

"That's bold, Darius."

"It's direct. There's a difference."

"Ferro has people. The stash house has security. You walk in there, you're in his space, on his terms."

"I'm not walking in there to fight. I'm walking in there to talk. Ferro needs to see my face. He needs to know who he's taxing. Right now, I'm a name and a pickup schedule. After today, I'm a person. People think differently about people they've met. They tax names. They don't tax faces."

Oscar was quiet. Darius could see him turning it over, the way Oscar turned everything over, carefully, looking for the flaw. Oscar had been in this world long enough to know that bold and stupid were neighbors and the fence between them was thin.

"I'll come with you," Oscar said.

"No. You stay here. If something goes wrong at the stash house, I need someone on the outside who knows where I am and can move. Marcus drives. I go in alone."

"Alone in a stash house with Ferro and his people."

"I'm not going to threaten anyone. I'm going to introduce myself. Ferro's a businessman. Businessmen talk."

Darius called Marcus. They drove to Pembroke Pines. The stash house was a single-story bungalow on a residential street, unremarkable, the kind of house you'd walk past without a second look. Marcus parked. Darius got out.

"You know what to do," Darius said.

"Thirty minutes."

"Thirty minutes."

Darius walked to the front door and knocked. A man opened it. Short, heavy, with a beard and suspicious eyes. He looked at Darius and the suspicion deepened because Darius was six-four and built like a wall and walls didn't knock on doors in Pembroke Pines.

"I'm here to see Ferro," Darius said. "Tell him it's Darius King."

The man looked at him for five seconds. Then he closed the door. Darius waited. Two minutes. The door opened again. The man stepped aside.

Ferro was in the kitchen. He was smaller than Darius expected, compact and quick, with a face that had been in a few fights and a demeanor that said he'd won most of them. He sat at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee and a gun laid beside it, casual, the way a man lays a pen beside a notebook. Not threatening. Just present.

"Darius King," Ferro said. "The man who sold his car to bail out a dealer. I heard about that."

"Then you know I'm serious about my operation."

"I know you're serious about your people. That's different. A lot of men are serious about their operation and still let their people rot. You're not one of those men. That's interesting."

"I'm here about the tax."

Ferro's eyes changed. Just slightly. A tightening. "What tax?"

"The fifty dollars per pickup. The one you've been charging my driver for three weeks."

Ferro picked up his coffee. He drank. He set it down. "That's a handling fee. Standard practice."

"No, it's not. Salazar didn't mention a handling fee. My terms with Salazar are cash, market price, no extras. The fifty is yours. It's not in the agreement."

"It's in my agreement. I run the house. I handle the product. I take the risk. The fifty covers my risk."

"Your risk is covered by Salazar. He pays you to run the house. The fifty is extra. It's a tax on my pickups that goes into your pocket, and Salazar doesn't know about it, and if he did know about it, he'd have a question for you, and the question would be why you're taxing his customers without his knowledge."

Ferro looked at Darius. The kitchen was quiet. The gun was on the table. Darius didn't look at the gun. He looked at Ferro, because the gun was a prop and Ferro was the decision, and decisions were made by people, not props.

"You're making an assumption," Ferro said.

"I'm stating a fact. The fifty stops today. My pickups continue. Salazar gets his money. You get your salary. Nobody gets taxed. If you have a problem with that, call Salazar and ask him whether the fifty is part of the deal. I'll wait."

Ferro was quiet. He looked at the gun. He looked at Darius. He looked at the coffee. Darius stood in the kitchen with his hands at his sides and his weight balanced and his eyes on Ferro and he waited, because waiting was the thing Darius was best at, and in a kitchen in Pembroke Pines with a gun on the table and a man deciding whether to push back or stand down, waiting was the only move that worked.

"Fine," Ferro said. "The fifty stops."

"Thank you."

Darius turned and walked out. He got in the car. Marcus pulled away from the curb. Darius looked out the window.

"Well?" Marcus said.

"The tax is done."

Marcus drove. Darius sat in the passenger seat and felt the adrenaline drain out of him the way water drains out of a glass, slowly, and he let it drain because the draining meant the danger was over and the danger being over meant he'd done what he'd gone to do.

He'd walked into a stash house with a gun on the table and walked out without paying the tax. That was respect. Not the kind you demanded. The kind you earned by showing up, looking a man in the eye, and not blinking.

Darius called Salazar. "Ferro was taxing my pickups. Fifty per. I talked to him. It's done."

Salazar was quiet. Then he said, "You went to the stash house."

"I went to the stash house."

"And Ferro stopped the tax."

"He stopped the tax."

Salazar was quiet again. Then he laughed. It was the same light laugh from the restaurant, easy and genuine. "Darius King. You've been in this business for three weeks and you're already walking into stash houses. Either you're the bravest man I've ever supplied or the dumbest."

"Which one are you betting on?"

"I'm betting on the one who sells his car for a kid and walks into a stash house for fifty dollars. That's a man who understands value. Not the value of money. The value of principle. Fifty dollars isn't money, Darius. Fifty dollars is a line. You drew it. Ferro saw it. That's worth more than fifty dollars."

"How much more?"

"Enough that I'm raising your supply to ten kilos a week. Starting next week. You've earned it."

Darius hung up. Ten kilos. Double what they'd started with. The operation was growing. The gap was getting bigger. And somewhere in Miami, Camila Rodriguez was quiet, and the quiet was getting louder.

Darius looked out the window. The city passed. The sun was going down. The body shop was waiting. And Darius King, who had been the muscle, who had been the wall, who had been the man who stood behind, was becoming the man who stood in front.

The table was his now. And he was sitting at it.