“Thanks, Daddy,” she whispered. Apple remained silent and just smiled, responding to her with just that gesture. Apple focused his attention back on the mime and observed his movements. Right before his eyes, the mime turned into Hassan.
“Hello, my friend. We are about to get rich,” Hassan said as he showed Apple a duffle bag full of bricks of heroin. Apple frowned as he tried to understand what had happened, not understanding that he was in a dream. He looked at the bricks in the bag and temporarily got distracted. He looked next to himself and Hazel was gone.
“Hazel? Where are you, baby girl?” he called, looking for her, during a total three-sixty searching for her. It wasn’t until he looked up the way, did he see his baby on top of the ledge that was over the water. Her nice mink was all of a sudden covered in blood. Apple frowned, trying to make sure his eyes weren’t playing tricks on him. He squinted his eyes and stepped toward the bridge.
“Hazel!” he yelled as he watched her take off her bloody coat and let it drop into the water. “Hazel! Get down!” he yelled as she took one look at him and smiled. She spread her arms out like an eagle and looked down at the water. Apple took off full speed trying to get her, but before he could make it she leaped.
“Noooooo! Nooooooo!” he yelled as he ran to the ledge and looked down. “Hazel!” he yelled as he began to cry, scanning the waves, frantically trying to locate Hazel. He only saw the mink coat coasting away, coasting on top of the waves. He looked back where Hassan was originally standing and noticed that he had disappeared. Apple was now in the park alone. Apple’s dream was symbolic for the failed life that he felt he had lived. He was too busy focusing on the money and he let Hazel slip away from him in his dream . . . just like he did in real life. Apple had abandoned Hazel by going to jail. Apple felt a sharp pain go through his heart and gripped the left side of his chest. In his dream, he was dying . . . The sad thing was that he was dying in real life also. Apple fell over the cliff and followed Hazel to the bottom of the ocean, where they would be together forever. He was finally reunited with his baby and no prison or drug could ever tear them apart again. “I love you, Daddy,” Hazel whispered in his ear as they both slowly fell to the bottom of the ocean.
Apple suffered from a heart attack at 3:15 that morning and never woke up. He was pronounced dead at the age of thirty-nine in his sleep. The doctors said he died of a massive heart attack, but anyone who knew Apple well, knew that he really died of a broken heart.
Chapter Twenty-four
Millie was covered in dirt as she dug with the steel shovel. She sweated as she frantically searched for the package that Apple had told her about in his backyard. It was the end of winter and the weather had warmed up, a good thing for Millie. She wiped the sweat from her eyebrow and dug the shovel into the ground once again, but that time she hit something hard, causing a loud ping sound. Millie quickly dropped to her knees, tossed the shovel, and began to dig hurriedly with both of her hands. Just as Apple said, there was something there. A small chest with flowers on it appeared. Millie dug around the box some more and finally pulled it out. She quickly unsnapped the latch and looked inside. Stacks of fifty- and hundred-dollar bills were wrapped in Ziploc bags. Millie’s eyes shot wide open and instantly her arm began to tingle, a natural reaction to a recovering addict: money equated to copping dope. Millie quickly shook off the urge and the voice of Apple sounded throughout her head. “I know that pack was meant for you!” Millie grabbed the money and stuffed it in the book bag she had nearby. She was about to put her plan in motion. Millie had a one-way trip back to her hometown on the east coast. She was about to get herself together and bring the old Millie back. She knew that without power she would never be able to touch Seven. Seven was much too smart to make the same mistake twice and Millie fully understood that. Flint knew Millie as nothing more than a dopefiend, but what they didn’t know that she was one of the baddest and biggest that ever graced this ill-willed Earth. Millie was about to go back to her roots and come back full force. She understood that Seven was a boss . . . and to kill a boss you have to be a boss. Simple blueprint to the game that Millie fully comprehended. She was taught by the best.
Seven and Rah drove down the interstate while Nas lightly pumped out of the speakers, both of them slowly nodding their heads in unison enjoying the melody. Seven had just gotten word that Apple died in his sleep while in jail, and although Apple hated him at the time of his death, Seven still had love for him. Seven looked in his rearview and checked to see if Toya was still following him, with the car full of dope. He used her as his mule, knowing that a woman was always less likely to get pulled over and be subjected to a search. Seven was on his way back from a brief road trip. He had gone to meet his Ohio dope connect to re-up. Hassan had cut him off at the request of Apple, so Seven back from getting his dope from elsewhere. Luckily Rah had family in Ohio who was getting it and that’s how Seven made that connection. It worked out in Seven’s favor because his new connect had better dope with dirt-cheap prices.
Seven grabbed the spliff from the ashtray and took a deep pull. He kept having visions of himself getting shot by Mouse and that heightened his paranoia to the point where he developed a sweaty hands problem. Seven passed the spliff to his right. Rah grabbed the spliff and reached to the dash to turn down the radio.
“Fam, you okay?” Rah said, noticing the expression on Seven’s face.
“Yeah, I’m good. Why you say that?” Seven asked.
“I don’t know. Something is just different about you lately. You smoking now and before you never would touch any drugs. You are always in your own little world. You just seem spaced out sometimes. This ain’t you, fam,” Rah said as he took a deep pull of the spliff, letting a little smoke escape his mouth just before he sucked it back in deep into his lungs.
“I just got a whole new perspective on life now. I don’t give a fuck no more. I don’t have anybody but you, my nigga,” Seven said sincerely. Both men took in what was said and like only gangster would, they didn’t discuss it any further. There was pain in Seven’s voice and the deaths of Hazel and now Apple were weighing heavy on his heart. Seven was transforming into another person. Mouse fucked it up for everybody. If Seven had respect in street before, now he was about to make himself feared. He now understood that fear was more powerful than respect. Because if Mouse feared him, the robbery would have never happened. Now Seven was more ruthless, more strategic, and eventually he would become untouchable. This was the making of a kingpin.
Millie had just left Apple’s grave and left flowers on the site. Although she didn’t know Apple well, she felt it was right. She also visited Hazel’s gravesite and paid her respects to her baby. Now, the only thing on her mind was making Seven pay. She had camped out in front of Seven’s apartment all day to only find out that he had been moved out. She had no idea where to start looking for Seven so she hit the block with a plan.
Millie walked into the dope house with a book bag on her back. The hustlers and some of the fiends began to look at Millie funny, not expecting to see her because of her extended absence from the underworld.
“Is that Millie?” an older man said just before he smacked his neck, trying to find a vein.
“Millie?” another fiend called out, but Millie wasn’t there to socialize. She had business to handle as she walked over to the table where four young hustlers sat. Millie approached the table and held the straps of the book bag tightly.
“Yo, can I talk to you all for a minute?” she asked. It seemed as if Millie didn’t even say anything because the hustlers ignored her request as they sat around talking shit among each other.
“Excuse me!” Millie said louder this time, demanding their attention. All eyes shot to her and one hustler grew a smug look on his face when he noticed who it was. There was a rumor that Millie had killed Li’l Rico, but he quickly dismissed the notion when he thought about who she was in his eyes: nothing more than a junkie. But little did he know, Millie was fully capable
of murder and would be willing to do it again if the situation arose. She was out for revenge.
“Oh shit! It’s Millie,” one of the hustlers said as he looked her up and down, remembering how she gave him the best sex he had ever had a while back.
“Damn, it sholl is,” a hustler agreed as he noticed that Millie had gained a little weight, which made her look more healthy.
“I need to holler at y’all for real,” Millie said, growing impatient.
“Yo, what up?” the hustler asked.
“Let’s go in the back,” Millie said as she headed to the rear of the dope house. The hustlers all looked at each other, thinking Millie wanted them to run a train on her in trade for dope, but she had another thing in mind. Millie waited in the room as three of the four hustlers came in, smiling.
“I got a proposition for all of you,” Millie said, looking each one of them in the eye. The men instantly began to unbutton their pants but Millie quickly took off the book bag and exposed the bag full of money, catching them all off guard. “It’s eighty thousand dollars in here,” Millie said as she kneeled down and placed the bag on the floor. She looked up to see their surprised facial expressions.
“What the fuck? Where you get that shit from, Millie?” one of the hustlers asked.
“Look, don’t worry about it. I need somebody killed. Someone I can’t get close to . . . feel me? That’s why I need you niggas to do it for me.”
“Fuck yeah! Where that nigga at?” one hustler asked as he began to lick his lips and rub his hands together as he stared at the money as if it were steak.
“It’s Seven,” Millie said, and noticed all of their expressions had suddenly changed.
“Seven? Big homie Seven? You got to be out of your fucking mind,” one hustler said as he thought about how Seven had tortured and killed Mouse for trying to cross him.
“And even if we wanted to do it for you, we couldn’t. Ever since Mouse popped him, he doesn’t even show his face around here anymore. Nobody hasn’t seen him in a long while. He don’t fuck with the hood no more, just supplies it,” one hustler said as he broke down Seven’s new habits.
They all wanted no part of it. All of them automatically began to think about robbing the brave woman in front of them. Millie looked at the others and they were all singing the same song, so she zipped up her bag and stood up.
“Scary-ass niggas,” she whispered as she headed out. She saw one of the hustlers slide his hand near his waist as if he was about to pull a gun. Millie wasn’t green to the game; she anticipated them having the urge to rob her, because they looked at her as nothing more than a junkie. She quickly pulled out a gun that was inside the book bag, surprising them all, and walked backward toward the door. They never expected Millie to have a gun, but they didn’t know Millie’s past. She used to hold court in the streets of Baltimore and knew how to handle situations like that one accordingly.
“Don’t think about it,” she warned. “I tried to put y’all down but I see Seven got all of you shook. Y’all can get it too,” she promised as she faded into the front room and quickly headed out and ran to an alley off of the block. Millie had to approach the situation from another angle. She understood that Seven had secluded himself and would be hard to touch. But she promised herself that vengeance would be sought. But first, she was to return to Baltimore and get herself together and next time she would come correct.
Millie sat Indian style in the dirt next to Hazel’s grave and talked to her as if she were still alive. To a bystander, it would look as if Millie had gone crazy, but Millie didn’t care; she was talking to her Hazelnut. Millie stood up and walked directly in front of the tombstone. She kissed her fingertips and then rubbed the stone that had Hazel’s name engraved in it. Millie quickly wiped away the tear that fell, smiled, and walked away. She was going back to see Apple to get his advice on getting to Seven.
Chapter Twenty-five
Millie left the correctional facility in disbelief, just getting the news that Apple had died in his sleep a few weeks back. The doctors said he died from a heart attack, but Millie knew the real cause of death was from a father’s grief. Millie had no alliance and would have to get Seven on her own. After an hour drive back to Flint, she pulled up to her home and grabbed the book bag full of money that sat in her passenger’s side. She got out and looked at the setting sun, which gave the sky a purple hue. She took a deep breath and headed to her door. Once Millie approached her doorstep, she got a funny feeling for some reason. Something didn’t seem right. She stopped in her tracks just before she put the key in the keyhole. She heard movement inside of her apartment and quickly stepped away from the door and reached into the book bag where the gun was tucked. Millie heard a gun cock from the inside of her house and she instinctively took off running to the car, knowing that Seven had sent someone to finish the job. She frantically jumped in the car and started it up, but the sound of shots thumping the metal on the car made her pause and duck for cover.
“Aw shit!” she yelled as glass shattered onto her head and the sounds of bullets whizzing by her head erupted. Knowing that she had to get out of there fast, she threw the car into drive trying to get away from the raining bullets. She put her foot on the gas and the tires screeched as she drove wildly out of the parking lot, jumping a curb, causing the car to do a small wheely. Millie slightly peeked up so she could barely see over the steering wheel as the bullets continued to fly non-stop. She finally got far enough where the bullets stop hitting the car and sat up breathing heavily as her heart raced what seemed to be a thousand beats per minute. Millie drove a couple of miles down the road and turned onto a dark side street to gather herself. She made sure no one was tailing her before she pulled over to the side of the road and threw the car into park.
“Fuck you, Seven!” she screamed loudly as if he could hear her cry from where he was. She hit her wheel repeatedly, taking out all of her frustrations. Millie knew that she would have to come at Seven a different way than she had originally planned. He had too much clout in the street for her to try to pay one of his own to get at him. She would have to lay low and resurface wiser and more strategic. Millie tuned the car around and headed toward the freeway. She was on her way back home, to her original home . . . Baltimore, Maryland.
Chapter Twenty-six
Three Years Later
Millie looked around the room and watched as the two young females cut the heroin and packaged it up, while wearing doctors masks.
“You are cutting that pack too much,” Millie said as she stood over the shoulder of one of the girls sitting at the table. She noticed that she was putting too much lactose on the dope, making it less potent. “That’s a sure way to lose customers. Putting out stepped on dope ain’t good business,” Millie taught, thinking about the days when she used to shoot dope and when she would get a weak pack. She knew how it felt to get stuck with subpar product and that reason alone used to make her go to the opposite side of the town. She was speaking from experience, but the girls would have never known.
They were cramped up in a small apartment in lower east side Baltimore. Millie was counting the money and placing it in a duffle bag, preparing it for Lovie. Lovie was a seventeen-year-old who worked as a mule for Millian. She traveled back and forth from Newark and Canada, transporting dope for Millie. Millie had been back home in Baltimore for three years and within that time she got clean, used Apple’s money and connect to get back in the dope game, and became Millie of old: the hustler. Millie once was a part of a crew that reigned supreme in Baltimore, but when death and treachery among the crew entered, their reign ended and Millie moved to Flint. Now Millie was back in her comfort zone and making money; reestablishing her street credibility through Baltimore’s black market.
“You ready, li’l mama?” Millie asked as a cigarette hung from the right side of her mouth. Millie had picked up some weight, roughly fifteen pounds. However, it looked good on her. Millie stood up and walked to the table where the two girl
s where sitting and repeated herself.
“Ready?” Millie asked again.
“Yeah, I’m ready,” Lovie said as she pulled down the mask and sat back in her chair as if she was tired. She had been cutting dope for four hours straight and she was mentally exhausted, having to focus on one thing for so long. Millie emphasized that every pack had to be cut just right, so it required precision. Lovie was brown-skinned with a thick frame. She had been a product of the streets and daughter of a drug addict. She could relate to street life and when Millie found her tricking by her apartment, she quickly took her under her wing.
“Cool, here is your bus ticket and a Russian female with a red flower in her hair is going to pick you up. She will tell you what to do when you get there,” Millie instructed.
“I know, Millie. You give me this speech every single time,” Lovie said in an exasperated tone.
“Yeah, yeah. Well, I’m going to tell yo’ ass every time so you can’t say you didn’t know. Because if anything goes wrong . . . that’s your ass,” Millie said with a smile, but was as serious as a heart attack and Lovie knew that. Millie handed her the bag and walked to the window, looking down at the project’s playground where her workers were stationed slanging product. There wasn’t a day that went by that Millie didn’t think about killing Seven, but she knew that to catch a wolf, she had to become a wolf. She would have to get on Seven’s level to even come close to him and that’s exactly what she did. Millie was getting rich off the same thing that she once was a slave to: dope. A knock on the apartment’s door sounded throughout the apartment and Millie quickly walked to the door and grabbed the pistol that sat on the stand near the entrance. She stood on her tiptoes and peeked through the hole and quickly put the gun down when she saw who it was. It was Baby, a young hustler who worked under Millie. Baby was her street captain and designated killer. Millie opened the door and Baby stepped in with a brown paper bag in his hand. He handed it to Millie and then kissed her on the cheek.
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