Dyamond

Flames Strip Club, Manhattan

Friday, 11:47 pm

Shauna stared past the rim of her glass, watching the scene that was unfolding in front of the main stage. She lurked quietly in the back of the club, alone, while her man sat at the front table, his hands running over glittered asses and slipping dollars into dancers' panties.

Shauna looked mature and sexy tonight, with her blonde hair freshly curled and hoop earrings that sparkled in the flashing lights. She wore a long black dress that reached just past her knees, with a slit up one side all the way to her hip. One thick, pale thigh was all it took-men had been all over her since she came in. But she only had eyes for Giovanni, watching his hands like a hawk.

It was so subtle when he made the drop, she almost missed it.

A stripper sat in his lap and arched her back, twisting her neck until her lips met his. Everyone around the table roared, eyes locked on the seemingly genuine, passionate kiss. But behind the girl's tattooed back, Giovanni reached into his own pocket, pulled out a baggie, and slipped it into the crack of her bottom, where it disappeared into her panties.

Shauna pulled out her phone and typed a brief text message: Gs good.

That was the signal that the drop had been made, and as the stripper disappeared into the bowels of the club to pass off the contraband to her pimp, Shauna breathed a sigh of relief.

Another one down.

That tiny baggie of Dyamond was worth a thousand dollars that was already wired to Giovanni's bank account. There was no room for error when it came to a prepaid drop.

Dyamond was the newest super drug, as emotional and beautiful as ecstasy with the addictive potential of crack cocaine. A gram went for around $4,000, but it was usually sold by the "grand bag," which was a quarter of a gram.

At the peak of the country's third war on drugs, "dying" was the riskiest, highest paying business in the underworld. The Dyamond market WAS the black market, and it was booming. Bringing in hundreds of thousands of dollars every month, Giovanni made a substantial living by dying. Shauna was along for the ride, acting as his secretary and managing his finances.

With another successful sale in the bag, Shauna slipped away to the bathroom, which she'd been waiting to do for the last twenty minutes.

The door to the women's bathroom erupted open before she could touch it, and two girls stumbled out, the unmistakeable sparkle in their eyes for which Dyamond was named. They had obviously just smoked a few rocks, because the whole bathroom was drenched in a sickly sweet scent. "Like roses on meth," was how Shauna had always described the smell.

Pulling her shirt up over her nose, Shauna stepped into one of the tiny stalls and hiked up her dress to the top of the slit. With a sigh of relief, Shauna quickly took a piss then fixed her thong. Just as she was pulling her dress back down, she heard a commotion out in the main room of the club.

A woman screamed, a man shouted. Then two distinct pops as a gun went off. Cursing to herself, Shauna fumbled with the lock on the stall. The smell of Dyamond in the air had made her head swimmy, and she opened the bathroom door with unsteady hands. The club was chaos.

The music hadn't stopped but the strippers had hit the floor, and everyone was rushing the doors, trying to get out as quickly as possible. She scanned the crowd for Giovanni but the mob was thick and his table was at the front of the club. She pushed through layers of people, sweating brown bodies rubbing up against her as the panic started to rise in her throat. Giovanni should have been calling her that moment to be sure she had cleared out, but her phone was silent.

Finally the crowd thinned enough for her to see the main stage. Her heart skipped a beat, then started pounding. Her veins felt like they were filled with ice as she walked toward Giovanni's lifeless body. The thought of crying didn't even cross her mind. She was in shock as she stepped over the pool of blood, reaching down to his pocket. She tried not to look at his face, where a bullet had blasted through his forehead, probably at point blank range. She didn't have time to think about that. The room was clearing out and she had to get out too.

Pulling two grand bags from his pocket and a small gun from his sock, Shauna slipped everything into her purse and bolted for the door, shaking from head to toe.

Outside the club, the scene was just as hectic. White women were crying, and everyone else was talking about what they'd seen with fervent drunken voices. Most people had crossed the street or run down to the corner, where they seemed to be trying to flag down a cop.

The police had already been called, and the sirens were just starting to be audible in the distance. Walking at a calm pace and trying not to draw attention, Shauna headed towards the opposite street corner, away from the crowd. She crossed the bike lane and stood in the median, reaching out her arm to hail a cab.

She hadn't broken down yet but it was getting harder to maintain her composure as the adrenaline wore off. Still feeling the rush of the Dyamond she had smelled in the bathroom, she felt as though this all must be a dream. All she could think was that she had to get back to Harlem and get to the stash. If someone came for Giovanni, they would come for her next. It was no secret they worked as a team. And if whoever shot Giovanni had known exactly where he was going to be tonight, it was probably no secret that there was over five hundred thousand dollars in drug money inside of their apartment.

A black car pulled up to the curb, honking the horn once to snap Shauna out of her haze. She glanced at the green sticker on the window and climbed in, closing the door behind her, then knocked on the partition, asking the driver to open it.

Instead, there was a soft hiss of hydraulics and then a solid click, as the rear door locks latched remotely. The surprise apparent on her face, she reached for the locks, but they had disappeared into the frame of the door. Cursing and shouting, she kicked her stiletto against the glass of the window, then the partition, as the driver pulled off.

He spoke to the back of the car with an intercom, his voice crystal clear. "How have you been, Shauna? Long time no see. You can stop kicking my windows now. They're shatter proof." As he turned around in his seat, she matched his voice to his face and there was instant recognition.

It was Darius; nothing had changed, not the scar through his eye, his snaggle tooth on the top, or his gold bottom grille. Shauna had met Darius in a rough time, shortly after her parents had passed and she was living on the streets, smoking meth. Darius had seen potential-he rehabilitated her, got her back on her feet, and basically nursed her until she had gained back her weight and her strength. Then he tried to pimp her.

It was never a question in Shauna's mind whether she had the body to be a stripper. Everyone knew it. But Darius wanted to make her big. He'd offered to pay for her to get breast implants and take pole classes, but Shauna refused. It just wasn't in her nature.

Darius had thrown her back out onto the streets and she'd never seen him again. When Giovanni had picked her up on 121st St and introduced her to the world of Dyamond, she'd never looked back. She'd honestly forgotten all about Darius, and what he'd done for her, both good and bad.

"What the fuck is this shit, Darius?" She shouted at him, still trying to open the partition.

"I'll tell you what this is, little bitch. You're going to stop fucking with my windows, first of all." He swerved the car hard to the left and then back, tossing Shauna around and banging her head on the door. She caught herself and braced against the partition as he swerved one more time, throwing her onto the seat.

"Second, when we get to your place you're going to take me upstairs and show me around a little. Okay?" It wasn't really a question, Shauna knew, as he glanced over his shoulder at her. She glared back, waiting for his eyes to return to the road.

Holding her purse low behind the partition where he couldn't see it, she unzipped it silently and pulled out Giovanni's gun, a subcompact Baretta that he carried with a single round in the chamber. She had one chance.

Angling her body so she wouldn't get hit by the splash of shattering glass, Shauna took aim quickly and fired directly at Darius's head.

The world exploded into sound and color. The glass spiderwebbed but didn't shatter, and as the bullet warped the partition for a few thousandths of a second, there was a sickening thunk as the glass struck the back of Darius's head, then another as his head hit the steering wheel. The bullet ricocheted back, landing in the seat of the car with all of its energy spent and absorbed by the bulletproof glass.

The car started to drift right against the curb; with no control whatsoever, the axle twisted with a loud crunch and a metallic screech, and the car began to spin out. Screaming, Shauna got low in the seat and gripped the door handle, trying to grab onto anything she could. The side of the car clipped a pole, smashing the rear driver's side door into a mangled mess, before the car finally careened to a stop.

Shaking, Shauna sat up slowly. She looked around. The car had crashed just a few blocks from the apartment, spun out over an empty intersection, and come to rest halfway up the curb. Tentatively, she pushed against the destroyed driver's side door, and thankfully it opened with a loud shriek. Glancing once at the body slumped over the steering wheel, Shauna took off running as fast as her high heels would allow. She was pretty sure there had been no witnesses, but there would be fingerprints. Those, however, would take time.

Shauna still had the two grand bags of Dyamond in her purse, and less than four hours to make those drops before Giovanni's customers called Big Cash. And once Big Cash came looking, it wasn't going to be pretty.

Mumbling curses under her breath and putting aside thoughts of all the death she'd witnessed tonight, Shauna strutted up her block like nothing was wrong. And prayed there wasn't someone upstairs waiting for her.