Start reading King of Ashes by bestselling author S.A. Cosby

Chapter Five

(edited extract)

After they swept up the broken dishes, they moved to the living room. Roman sat in his dad’s easy chair and Dante sprawled across the sectional couch. Roman leaned forward and let his hand dangle between his  knees. Dante ran his hand across his face. Silence lived between them for what seemed like hours, until Dante finally spoke.

“So, um ... I been hanging out with my boy Getty and his girl Cassidy. You know, she go to Hempstead College over in Richmond. She knows a lot of the Beckys and Tylers over there. Getty was talking about how they be into Molly and shit. So Getty was like, ya know, we should get something and flip it. He was saying how them people at Hempstead love to party and shit. Said it would be easy money,” Dante said.

“Dante, you have money. Daddy gives you three grand a month and pays your car note and insurance. You live here rent-free. You don’t even have to pay for your food,” Roman said. 

“I know that! That’s why I got on. I’m thirty. I gotta go to that fucking firepit every day. Gotta walk in there and smell that shit. See the bodies with flies on them. Taste the burnt air. And I can’t say no, because Daddy do pay my car note and he do give me money and he do buy the fucking groceries. You got to go away. You got to leave. I wanted my own money. Wanted to do something on my own,” Dante said. Now he was standing, waving his hands as he talked. Roman let him pontificate without pointing out that he knew that Dante in fact did not go to the crematory every day. Not the one in Jefferson Run or the other one out on 301 near Red Hill. He let Dante tell his tale with all the caveats and reimaginings he needed. Because, despite the revisionist history Dante was indulging in, despite the editorial license he was employing, Roman thought he knew where this story was going. He could see the end coming like a clairvoyant.

“All right. You and Getty got some Molly and tried to sell it. Then what happened?” Roman asked.

Dante walked to the end of the couch and turned his back to his brother. “Yeah, we got some Molly. Got some brown too. A lot.”

“How much is a lot?” Roman asked. He’d known for a while that Dante was self-medicating with both legal and illegal drugs. The last time Roman had been home Dante had been walking around with an Altoids container full of Percocet while drinking Lean. He didn’t chastise him then, nor did he feel the need to do so now. They were all living in the shadow of loss. She didn’t light up at the hospital, but he knew Neveah smoked a pack and a half of Newports a day. She’d taken up the habit a month after their mother disappeared. He didn’t know what her other vices were, and he didn’t want to know. He had enough of his own to contemplate. If Dante wanted to dull the pain, to find a way to float among the detritus of their shared grief, then who was he to judge? 

But this, this was something else entirely. This was like swimming with sharks when the water was full of blood.

“It was like fifty grand worth of Molly and ... two hundred fifty grand worth of heroin,” Dante said. Even as Dante spoke, Roman felt incredulity rise in his chest like bile. He couldn’t have heard him correctly. There was no way his little brother had gotten into the drug game as a neophyte and just been given three hundred grand worth of product to sell at a nearby liberal arts college whose most notable graduate was a guy who’d won in a reality TV game show.

“Dante, how did you get so much product? Have you been dealing all this time?” Roman asked. He did his best to keep his tone steady, but rage and fear were magnificent vocal instructors. 

“No. This was my first time, I swear to God. They just ... they knew who Daddy was. They was like, ‘You’re good for it,’ ” Dante said.

Roman closed his eyes.

“You and Getty and Cassidy used your own supply, didn’t you? Y’all partied it up with the Molly and heroin and now you in debt,” Roman said.

It wasn’t a question.

“Yeah,” Dante said.

“How much?” Roman asked. He noticed he was now gripping the arms of the easy chair. His long narrow fingers digging into the smooth velour fabric like he was gripping a stripper’s ass.

Dante responded, but Roman was again struck by the words so fully that he was sure he had misheard him.

“How much?” Roman asked again. 

“All of it. We owe all of it. Three hundred thousand. Cassidy and Getty used up the brown, shared it with their friends, then some frat boys just jacked us for a lot of the Molly. Like they took almost twenty grand. We tried to sell the rest, but nobody wanted to pay when they could get it free from Phi Delta Zeta, so we just popped it ourselves.”

“What the fuck do you mean, they jacked you?” Roman said. Now he was shouting, and he didn’t care. He found himself nearly apoplectic.

“Getty went to sell them a chunk, and they beat him up and took it. We told Torrent and Tranquil, but they was like, that wasn’t their problem,” Dante said.

“Okay, okay ... first, was you with Getty when he got jacked? Because that whole situation sounds suspect as hell. And second, two hundred and fifty thousand dollars’ worth of heroin is about two and a half kilos. You really think Getty and this Cassidy chick used that up and didn’t die? Your friends played you, D.”

Dante shook his head.

"No. Why would Getty lie? He owe the same debt as me. Torrent and Tranquil ain’t the type of niggas you play with. They run the Black Baron Boys. Rome, they’re bad. They just ... they bad, man. We should’ve never fucked with them dudes. They crazy, and they ... just ain’t the ones to fuck with. They were the ones in the club tonight. The ones with the Afro and the braids,” Dante said.

“Getty don’t owe the same debt as you,” Roman said in a full-on Virginia cadence.

“What? Didn’t you hear me? We got it from—” 

“No. You got it from the Black Baron Boys. They fronted y’all based on your family ties, Dante. This is your debt, not Getty’s. Now can you see why it might be plausible that he lied to you? Like, can you stop and think about it for a minute? Think hard,” Roman said. Dante turned and faced him. His eyes were wide as hubcaps. His pupils seemed to fill their sockets.

“He wouldn’t do that. He wouldn’t put me out there like that.”

“Why wouldn’t he? Because y’all are friends? I work with money every day. Money is like acid. It burns through everything. Friendships, family, lovers, husbands and wives. Whatever bond you think you have, money will make that shit dissolve. It’s acid. Don’t ever lie to yourself and think it ain’t,” Roman said. 

Dante collapsed on the couch. Roman let go of the arms of the chair. He let his mind absorb all that Dante had told him and he filled in the blanks where his brother was holding back. Because he knew Dante was holding back. No one ever told the whole truth, not even with their hand on a Bible.