Page 21 of Rich Forever: Zo & Remy

“He said, he calls Judah the bull, but he’s going to call you brave heart.” He said as Santos put his hand over his chest in respect. I nodded and finished walking while he continued to show us how the field was coming along.

We walked for another hour. I was relieved once I realized that we were finally done. This was the last part of our trip, and I was ready to head back to the States.

“Nigga, you done scared the whole Bolivian field crew,” He chuckled as we got inside the truck.

“Fuck them. It’s not even about the money; I didn’t even count the shit to see if it was all there. It’s just the fact that he thought he was going to take it from me.” I chuckled as I turned the volume down on my phone and went to Remy’s video. I didn’t know what to expect, but it was a video of our daughter. I turned the volume up to listen to it.

"Tell me again what you said, Zoey," Remy said as my baby came into view. “I just said that these beans is hard when you make it, and it’s not hard when daddy makes it.”

Remy was quiet for a while before she blew out a deep breath and said, “Get away from me, Zoey.”

Sanchez and I laughed at the same time. My daughter humbled us every day. I responded to the video and put my phone back into my pocket. I had done all the work there was to do in Bolivia, and now I was ready to get back home to that chaos.

***

My driver rolled through the gates of Trouble’s estate slow enough for the guard to log the tag number of the truck. One thing was for sure: if anyone ever came there wanting to test their luck, they would be carried out in a body bag. All of our homes were secure, but his security was provided by the Italian mafia, and it was next level. Six armed men stood in towers overlooking the property like guards at a prison. They were armed, bored, and waiting for someone to come through and test their shooting precision. And those were just the guards you could see. They probably had niggas in the bushes too, pretending to be hedges. Throughout the years, I don’t remember being here more than once. Normally, meetings take place at the headquarters, the central meeting ground. But today they invited me over so I could fill them in on my trip to Bolivia.

Trouble was a tough nigga, he didn’t spare anything, but he was cool as hell. He had been in the game for a minute and worked his way up the ranks to National underboss. Now, he was mostly out of the way and traveled less than all of us. But that’s how it worked in the Mafia: if you grind the right way, you can chill later on.

I slapped hands with the guard standing at the door. I had met him a couple of times before. He was a big, tall, bald ass nigga who always looked like he was waiting for something to pop off.

“Sup, boss?” He asked as he dapped me up and fell right back into his position.

“Ain’t shit, what’s good?” I said as I stepped through the door and closed it behind me. For there to have been a meeting, it was quiet when I walked into the house. Quiet wasn’t normal when they got together, especially if Judah was there. They were already chilling when I walked into the family room. Judah sat at the bar, reading through shipment reports; Jax was lying across the couch, tracing routes; Trouble had his safe open and was putting cash in it.

Nobody noticed me standing there at first.

Finally, Jax lifted his eyes. “What’s up? I see you made it back,” he joked as he stood to dap me up.

Judah cracked a grin. “Back and stupid.” He said as he got up to shake my hand, then dropped back into the stool.

Trouble didn’t look up; he was focused on logging the stacks of money he was counting. Then he finally broke his silence and spoke. “Sanchez sent me the footage.”

They all started laughing as I looked at them, confused.

“What footage?” I asked.

Judah couldn’t hold it in. “This nigga… You really stabbed a man in a coca field?” He said as they burst into laughter again.

“Man, fuck y’all,” I said, shaking my head but laughing with them. “I should’ve known y’all were going to come with the bullshit.”

“We’ll come back to that. Right now, we need to go over the numbers.” Trouble said once the laughter had died down. He abandoned the safe and then went over to grab the other set of papers in front of Judah.

“Sit down.” He said, pointing next to Jax. I dropped into the chair, and the clowning faded just enough for business to take over.

“What’s the field looking like?” Jax asked.

I started with what we had gone over in Bolivia: “Santos said he’ll move the next two shipments at seventy percent purity. That’s better than Russia but worse than Colombia. Cost margin still gives us a profit. But we need to find a way to get better. The product is moving faster than they can grow it. I know you like doing business with Santos, but you might have to expand to another field.”

Once no one agreed with me, I kept talking, “The demand right now is too high, and his workers can’t produce fast enough. Theyare processing the plants too early, and the purity is suffering as a result. Eventually, the shit is going to stop selling.” I continued.

Nobody told me that becoming an underboss meant I'd be doing homework in another country. But that’s what it had become. Spending thirty days in the fields with Santos opened my eyes to many flaws in their business. I wasn’t trying to undermine their connection; I was just bringing it to attention that they had outgrown that one field.

Trouble was the only one who seemed to understand what I was saying because he nodded in agreement.

Jax nodded, eyes sharp, but he disagreed. “Nah, it’s not a production problem. They’ve been doing this shit for years. They could easily produce more than we could handle. It’s them niggas being lazy. If Santos’ nephew is out here stealing from anybody on our side, it means the field crew is getting too comfortable. Comfortable always leads into something else.”

Trouble cut in, “Comfortable turns into stealing my shit. I say we give him the opportunity to tighten up on his guys before we look for a second field.”