Larger Than Lyfe (25 page)

Terrence was still busy attempting to clean up the sticky mess of Keshari’s spilled latté without further agitating Keshari with his movements. He sat down and opened his laptop to pull up his notes.

“You meet with Cassandra Harrington and her son as soon as we return from Miami. It’s time to finalize your contract with VIBE Network. Also, Rasheed has requested a meeting when you get back from Miami. His manager called this morning.”

“Did he say what it was about?” Keshari asked curiously.

“No,” Terrence said, “but it seems like it might be serious.”

“Serious?” Keshari said, now giving Terrence her undivided attention. “What makes you say that?”

“That was just what I took from his tone,” Terrence responded. “Better yet, you and Rasheed have always had open door communication with each other. You rarely work through his manager. That’s mainly why I figured that the matter must be serious.”

“Put him down for the first thing available when I return from Miami. Better yet, call him today and tell him that I’ll fly him out to Miami if he wants to meet with me there.”

“No problem,” Terrence responded and quickly typed it into his notes.

“Is there anything else?” Keshari asked.

Everyone present was now still too stunned by Keshari’s actions a few moments ago to say or suggest a thing. Keshari maintained a poised and firm control of the operations of Larger Than Lyfe Entertainment that demanded respect because she treated all of her staff with respect, but no one knew how to take this “new” Keshari.

“Okay, then,” she said, mental exhaustion clearly wearing away at the very core of her. “I’ll see you guys at the airport tonight.”

With her broken laptop in her assistant Terrence’s hands, she grabbed up her BlackBerry and the set design boards for the finale show and left the conference room while everyone else was left sitting around the conference table wondering what exactly was going on with their boss.

“Babygirl, you’ve officially got more extremely volatile shit on your hands than you’ve ever dealt with in your life. You’re not gonna be able to continue going about your days, playing executive, and leading a relatively uneventful double life with this one. The moment that DEA agent walked into your office in search of information, the entire game changed. So, what’s your plan?” Marcus asked.

“What the fuck do you mean, what’s my plan?” Keshari snapped. “I plan to do exactly what I told you that I would do; separate myself COMPLETELY from this organization.”

“Girl, do you realize that you are so close to having a price put on your head that you can bank on not making it to see the winner of your nationwide talent search?” Marcus chuckled and shook his head. “I always told Rick that no matter how smart you are, you were NEVER cut out for this business.”

“Marcus, I have negotiated terms, safely moved and distributed more cocaine than any woman and most men in the United States.”

“I sure hope that you didn’t tell that to the DEA agent who paid you a visit,” Marcus said.

“Fuck you!” Keshari snapped.

“Keshari, are you taking any of this seriously? No, better yet, have you lost your fucking mind?! You go about your day-to-day affairs as if you’re completely oblivious to what’s happening. You’ve even gone and gotten yourself involved in some romantic relationship that’s plastered on the cover of every entertainment tabloid in every major city in the U.S. You follow this trial nonchalantly as if you don’t fully comprehend the ramifications of Rick being sent to prison. So, again, I ask, are you taking any of this seriously?”

“To be completely honest, the only thing that I’ve really been doing is everything in my power to begin to try to live a normal life,” Keshari responded. “The only way for me to leave this business, Marcus, is for me to leave this business, stop handling The Consortium’s affairs, walk away from all of it, and never look back.”

Marcus shook his head and rolled his eyes. He was becoming extremely irritated by Keshari’s stupidity. “You do realize that the only reason you’re not dead already has to do with the history you have with Rick.”

“Yes, I’m well aware of that,” Keshari said seriously. “I also know that I will have to take more precautions than I ever have to protect myself, but I have to do this. I can’t live with myself another day, leading my life as a member of The Consortium.”

“Keshari, we’re operating at a disadvantage here and we have never been in a position like this before. The changes in suppliers, Rick’s murder charges, the visit from the DEA agent…and, for now, at least, I’ve managed to keep out of the pipelines in
formation
about your determined efforts to walk away from your role in this organization. Word gets around in our world a lot faster than it gets around anywhere else. Sharks smell blood in the water and rush to attack. A billion-dollar, Black-owned enterprise is in serious jeopardy right now. You owe it to The Consortium, you owe it to Rick, to help preserve what we’ve built.”

The two of them sat in the living room of Marcus’s tenth-floor oceanfront apartment with its magnificent view of Santa Monica and the Pacific Ocean.

“Rick put you through college and then paid for your very prestigious MBA from the Wharton School,” Marcus continued. “He even provided you with the initial funding to start up your record label…and this is how you repay him?”

“All that’s going on right now, Marcus…maybe it’s a sign to all of us that it’s time for things to change. Better yet, maybe it’s just like you said. Perhaps I was never cut out for this business.”

“This is more than just about The Consortium, Keshari. The Mexicans, our new supplier in Miami, the Colombians… These organizations span generations with power that reaches out farther than The Consortium. DEA inquiries are not acceptable to them, under any circumstances, and they believe in silencing every witness that federal law enforcement might even think about sub-poenaing before a grand jury. They don’t give a fuck about history.”

“You know that I know all of what you’re saying,” Keshari responded.

“You know that The Consortium will no longer protect you if you walk.”

“I know that, too,” Keshari said, “and, still, I cannot do this anymore.”

“You’re on your own now, Keshari,” Marcus said solemnly, “and there are dire consequences in this business for disloyalty.”

L
arger Than Lyfe’s private jet landed at Miami International Airport. Two limousines awaited the group. One took the LTL executives to their block of hotel rooms at the Mandarin Oriental Miami. The second limousine loaded Keshari’s Louis Vuitton luggage into the trunk to deliver Keshari to her luxurious, Mediterranean-style home in Palm Beach. The house was twice the size of her mansion in Palos Verdes and twice as extravagant.

Palm Beach was an ultra-exclusive community comprised of mainly White, “old money” residents who were still quite resistant to accepting rich, Black residen
ts into their ultra-elitist, little microcosm, no matter how wealthy they were. This made Keshari all the more determined to purchase the $12.5 million home that she had fallen in love with at first sight. She could have easily purchased or built the home of her dreams on Star Island, another ultra-exclusive, Florida community that welcomed very affluent, celebrity types like Rosie O’Donnell and Sean “Diddy” Combs, but she’d owned the Palm Beach residence for more than a year now and her neighbors, for the most part, were amicable.

Keshari had sat by herself on the plane for the entire trip. She tried to sleep but couldn’t, so she kept her eyes closed so that she wouldn’t be bothered. Almost everyone kept a safe distance anyway, after her blow-up earlier at the staff meeting. The last thing any of them wanted more than a mile up in the air was a verbal or physical assault that they couldn’t fully get away from.

Keshari’s security team had arrived the day before to get settled and view the property. They’d already reviewed the blueprints of the property prior to flying out of Los Angeles and they prepped Keshari as soon as she arrived. The housekeepers unpacked her things in the master suite while Keshari took a bath. Then she curled up with a cashmere throw on a chaise longue on the master suite’s balcony and went to sleep. Even while she slept, her mind could not stop analyzing her situation over and over again and planning her next steps.

Mars’s limousine arrived at Keshari’s mansion late that night and Mars found Keshari wide awake in the library reviewing fabric swatches and design sketches for her upcoming apparel line, “The Plush Collection.” The woman was like a locomotive, Mars thought. She moved smoothly from one, intensive project to another all day every day, flew back and forth across the country almost every week, worked out with a physical trainer whenever she could fit her in, rarely ever slept, and still managed to be the most beautiful woman he’d ever laid eyes on.

She had a long, project table set up next
to her desk, where she could spread out the fabric swatches and sketches and organize them into groups. She had the telephone receiver to her ear and she was speaking to someone in Italian. She rolled back and forth in her desk chair between her desk and the project table while reviewing on her laptop photographs of models wearing samples of the prospective pieces for her apparel line.

She waved to Mars and blew him a kiss as he came in and sat down. “The Plush Collection” had been a goal of hers for some time and she was finally laying the groundwork to bring
her hip-hop-to-couture
line to market. She was so excited about the ideas that were coming to fruition and she was zealously managing every aspect of the development of this brainchild by herself. She loved high-end clothing and accessories almost as much as she loved music and she’d become something of a fashion trendsetter in the industry. “The Plush Collection” was destined to become yet another endeavor of hers that was larger than life.

Keshari tossed one idea after another at the designer on the phone, and then discussed taking a trip to Milan to view more fabrics and a few runway shows for insight. Mars pulled off his suit jacket and tossed it across the arm of the library’s leather sofa. He went over and spun Keshari around in her desk chair to face him.

“I didn’t fly all the way here to watch you work,” he said.

“In a minute, sweetie,” Keshari whispered, placing her hand over the receiver’s mouthpiece.

She smiled up at Mars distractedly, and then turned back to her laptop and phone call. Mars spun her chair around again, knelt in front of her, and kissed her though her satin pajama pants. Keshari smiled and attempted to shoo him away. Mars reached under her top, untied the drawstring of her pajama pants, and pulled them off.

“WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!” she mouthed at Mars as he smiled up at her mischievously.

He buried his face between her thighs and found what he was seeking.

“Woo-o-o-o!” Keshari yelped as she felt Mars’s tongue exploring her intimately.

“I’ll have to call you back,” she said to the person on the other end of the line. “You are a very bad man,” she told Mars, wagging a finger at him.

With freshly polished, pink toes dangling over Mars’s shoulders,
she put her head back and allowed her gorgeous man to have his way with her.