His ass was showing off. As bad as I hated the attention, I couldn’t sit here and pretend that I wasn’t happy to feel his lips on me. We could have had one of those things going on where he was hiding me from the world and not wanting to let it be known that he was dealing with me, but Dolo wasn’t like that at all. He loved me out loud. He let it be known out loud that I was his girl. Just a couple of hours ago, I was at one of the traps, and I had to call, and ask him something. When he picked the phone up for me, he was around his friends, and his brother. He could have tried to play gangsta over the phone and not admitted to loving me once we ended the call, but he still did it, even with his boys around.
“Everybody in here? Fred, go ahead and close the doors. If somebody knocks, don’t let them in. I gave a ten-minute grace period. Whoever not in here, then that’s on them,” Dolo said, taking the front of the room, all eyes on him.
Everyone was sitting up straight, waiting to hear what it was that was going to be said in tonight’s meeting. Even I was sittingup straight, eyes glued to Dolo, eager to know myself what this meeting was about.
“I feel like everybody in here has this look in their eyes, as if their scared to hear what the sole purpose of this meeting is about. Ya’ll can relax and take those worrisome looks of your faces. This isn’t that kind of meeting,” Dolo started, and you could hear the sighs of relief that people around the room had taken. Dolo was known for having some pretty intense meetings, calling people out, getting on them for fuckin up in front of everyone.
“This meeting is about expansion. It’s no secret the shit that MBM has been enduring these past few months. I’ve lost some of my corner boys, I’ve had my car shot up, a nigga that was supposed to be like a brother to me has been stealing from me, and the ongoing shit that we have with dem 9 boyz. I don’t know how ya’ll feel about all these things happening back-to-back, but to me, there are too many problems tied to old systems. I’m at a point right now, where I feel like a lot of old shit must go,” Dolo went on, and my eyes were still glued to him, wondering where he was getting ready to go with this.
“I want to talk to ya’ll a little bit about the expansion. I’m looking into getting a second warehouse. I don’t want to get rid of this one because too much blood, sweat, and tears went into building this one. The purpose of adding on another warehouse would be to split the product. We got a lot of product running in and out of this warehouse. I feel like I’m holding too much weight in just one place. I think about the shit that we just did to dem 9 boyz, and how we took all their shit, and even though I have this warehouse swamped with security, and it’s damn near impossible for niggas to get in here and steal from us, I still want to be smart about it, and stop hiding all the work in one place,” I nodded my head towards that because it made a lot of sense.
“The warehouse that we’re standing in right now is mainly used for packing up, meetings, and typically the main headquarters. I’ll use the secondary warehouse as a spot for incoming shipments, overflow storage, and just making the movement that takes place over there a little cleaner. Meaning, not everyone is going to have access to that warehouse. Your ranking in this business would have to be high to know where that spot is,” that made a lot of sense to me because although Dolo had a big crew, which could be a good, and a bad thing.
You didn’t need too many niggas knowing every little detail about the business because it was just a harsh reality that niggas would switch up, and they could start running their mouths to the wrong people.
“Another thing that I want to talk about is expansion out of Miami. I feel like when niggas talk about drugs Lords from Miami, all those niggas have one thing in common, which is the fact that they only ran drugs through Miami. Don’t get me wrong, I have a lot of respect for the OG’s that’s come before me, but I don’t want to just be known as the young nigga that was running shit in Miami. I want to start off small. We don’t have to branch off too far away, but I do want to look into expanding into other cities. I’m thinking that we can start off with Orlando and Tampa. Those cities have a lot of action running through it,” Dolo went on, and I could feel the people around me nodding their heads, agreeing with it.
Out of everything that he’s said so far in this meeting, this was probably the only thing that I didn’t agree with. It’s almost like he knew that I wasn’t going to agree with it because his eyes went directly towards me after he said it.
I didn’t want to be the kind of girlfriend to disagree with my man in public. I would share with him my thoughts after the meeting but judging by the way he looked at me, he might want me to speak on it right on the spot.
“Why the face, baby?” this man called me out, right in front of everyone.
I’m always getting on Dolo, telling him that when we were working together, that I wanted it to be strictly work, but his ass didn’t give a damn about none of that. It was obvious in the way that he just called me baby, and the hearts that he had in his eyes, waiting to get a response from me.
His question had every eye in here on me, making me want to sink down into the damn seat.
“Nothing. You can continue, Dominique,” my voice was firm, wanting him to drop it, but I knew he wouldn’t.
“Nah. Speak on it. You’re not feeling what I just said about expanding, and I just want to know why,” he kept going.
I cleared my throat, thinking about how I wanted to respond. I didn’t want my response to sound emotional. It had to come from a business standpoint, so that Dolo, and everyone else in the room could feel, and understand what I was trying to say.
“Dolo, I feel like expanding before stability is dangerous,” I went on.
“Elaborate on that for me, bae,” I couldn’t get mad at him for calling me that in front of everyone because I think it was one of those things where he couldn’t help himself.
Dolo rarely called me Riot. I was always bae, or baby. If he called me Riot, it would be because we were having a serious conversation, or I had pissed him off.
“Let’s use a house for example. Would you build a second house if the foundation of the first house was shaky? Dominique, you had a nigga stealing from you. That was one problem. You lost a lot of men that night when dem 9 boyz pulled up. Let’s not forget the nigga that was talking on the phone, saying how he wishes that he would have ratted on you when he got the chance. The biggest problem right now is the fact that we just took dem 9 boyz shit. That’s going to come with some consequences.That’s the house, Dominique. It’s shaky. All I’m saying is fix this foundation first before you go building a new house,” my example was perfect, and I could see it in his eyes that he understood me, but I didn’t really know if he felt it though.
“I feel that but see I’m looking at it different though. When I talk about expansion, I’m leaning that way because of the problems that we’re having in Miami. Miami has shown me in these past few months that its unstable, and that’s why I don’t want to keep everything solely here in one city. You don’t feel like we being a little too dependent on just one city? Everything within this business is solely tied to Miami. If niggas were to hit us up, take everything we got, well at least I got some shit running through Orlando and Tampa that they don’t know about. That’s how I’m looking at it” his outlook was a good one, but I still wasn’t really moved by it yet.
I sat quietly, thinking about what he just said, trying to see how I should respond.
“When you hear me say expansion, I think you looking at it as a bad thing. To me, it’s the insurance that I need within the company. If shit ever get too hot in Miami, and we got to slow down, bae we still got Tampa producing over there. Tampa ever get touched, then we still got Orlando up, and running. You gotta feel that,” he was on me.
“Bae—”
I caught myself. I realized what I just called him in public, and that’s why I paused and stopped.
“Dominique—”
“Man, you was right the first time. Call me what the fuck you said first,” he cut me off, and his antics caused everyone in the room to laugh.
I was so used to him by now that I kept my game face on, trying to get my point out before I forgot what it was that I was trying to say.
“It’s not that I’m not feeling where you’re coming from. I do. The insurance is important, but to be completely honest with you, it’s mainly the bad that I’m worried about. I guess I think about the niggas that you’re going to have in Orlando and Tampa that’s going to be out of reach for you. You’re not going to be able to oversee everything that their doing. I know how you are when it comes to the business. If you get a phone call right now that a corner boy is out there slacking off, you going to pull up. If you leave now, you can be to any of your Miami corners in ten to fifteen minutes. What you going to do when you got niggas slacking off on one of your corners in Tampa, or Orlando? That’s four hours to get to both cities,” I went on, and he nodded his head.
