VANESSA's MOODLIST
Praise The Lord (Da Shine) - A$AP Rocky featuring Skepta
Pour it Up - Rihanna
Mal à Dit - Shannon
Tina Snow Interlude - Megan Thee Stallion
Miami - Kali Uchis featuring BIA
Small Reminders - Tinashe
There's something about when Rihanna sang about money. The way her accent wrapped itself around the word.
It was so possessive.
It was as if she was a snake charmer, singing her song to will every note of any currency to come to her. And they did.
Clearly, they were a match made in heaven. She was a very rich bitch now. A humble little girl from Barbados, who was forced to live out her redemption song in the view of everyone who consumed pop culture. When the men in her life failed her, she turned her eye to her bag. And never looked back.
On "Nothing is Promised" she said "I'm in love with the cash, I put that on my mama and father".
She also professed "I'mma never put a nigga above this money." Words to live by if you listened to the goddess Rih.
On "Bitch Better Have My Money" the grit in her voice when she adlibbed her way into the track told you everything you needed to know.
"Pour It Up" was my favourite. She washed Juicy J's attempt on the strip club anthem beat. His was good, hers was phenomenal, though. The song itself was simple, she wasn't saying anything ground breaking. It was the way that every other line was a mantra. A reminder. "And I still got my money."
I wanted to be like that.
No matter what, I was gon' have my money.
Mine.
All I see is signs, all I see is dollar signs.
Money on my mind. Money, money on my mind.
Which is why I planned to leave everything Angelo ever gave me behind. I needed to start again, and to prove to everyone and myself that I was capable.
They could never recreate me, but I could recreate my success.
I knew it could. Now I had to prove it.
How did I let it come to this?
That question was one of many that I would spend years trying to find an answer to that wasn't the one that I came up with immediately.
Love.
Was love worth the agony I was in now? I wasn't sure.
When I mentally wrote out the facts, I had no one but myself to blame. How could I possibly have thought our relationship would ever evolve past the transactional confines of the arrangement it began as.
I knew who he was, and how he was. I saw him in action, using ironclad will to force things into existence. When he bent me to his will, I obliged. I wore what he wanted me to, worked the way he wanted me to, and eventually, saw myself the way he did.
He thought of me as a possession. Something he owned, to do with as he pleased. His intentions were never to actually let me become his equal. Or even my own person. I could see it so clearly now; his endgame was for the greatest achievement in my life to be becoming his wife.
And I just sat there and let him make move after move to make it happen.
I stayed. When I should have left.
I accepted the loan for Nesto's care, under the foolish guise of having some semblance of control over the situation.
Instead of pushing back more during our arguments and demanding the respect and devotion I deserved, I would cave, and over accommodate, because I cared about his well being more than my own.
When we fucked, he would push one of my legs back, so far that it would be almost parallel to my torso. And I would be right there with him, having the time of my life, holding the other leg back for him.
Even now, behind the anger that was fuelling my every move, was guilt. For what I said in the heat of the moment. And for how dirty I was about to do him.
Him.
Everything was about him.
My whole earth revolves around his sun. He was at the centre of everything I did and I hated it. I needed to escape his gravitational pull.
At this point, my tear ducts had rid themselves of all of the salty fluid available to them. I wept profusely, over the course of the days between the argument and now. God understood my dilemma, and to help ease my emotion, decided to open the heavens, letting my despair precipitate and fall over the city in droves instead.
I was in my car, sitting outside of Malia's house, a little earlier than agreed, needing a few minutes before we made our play.
My eyes tracked with short movements, individual raindrops from the moment they hit my windscreen, all the way until they ran off at the bottom of the glass surface. As the rain got heavier, my task became increasingly difficult. They all bled into one, losing their individual form.
What a metaphor for my life.
Who am I?
Outside of Angelo? Outside of the life? Outside of my family?
I didn't know. All that existed of me now was a girl beaten into shape as the consequence of a tough life.
I needed to find out. For me.
But first I needed to leave. And get away as far away from this place as possible. Some place where he could never find me and cast his wicked spell on me again. I thought I had come up with the perfect plan, and today was the day we would put it into motion.
Things had started smoothly already.
The security guards that usually trailed Malia and I had been called away from their posts by their superior, Raymond. I asked for a three hour window and he came through for me, no questions asked.
I wouldn't have told him anything, even if he did enquire. I loved him too much to take away his plausible deniability.
Inside of her home, Mally was gathering the last of the things she wanted to take, including the sizeable stash she had amassed over the last few months. She would be bringing with her a case, specifically for me, that would a key form part of my exit strategy.
My eyes moved to the left, almost involuntarily, when they detected movement from their peripheral. Her front door had opened, to reveal the beautiful young woman, wearing her battle scars proudly. As she approached the car, my mind's eye recalled how we got here in the first place.
Her home had a Mid-Century Modern feel to it. The colour palate was minimal; with lush creams and nudes, framed by deep mahoganies and midnight blacks. There were exposed, natural materials and tasteful decorative pieces everywhere, accentuating the design motive.
It had taken her while to curate this new vibe, and I could see why she was a little bit sad to have to leave it behind. But needs, must.
We were sitting on the floor of her walk-in closet, about ten days before D-Day, after she explained she had something she wanted to give me.
"I can't accept this Mally. I appreciate you so much sis, but I just can't." She was not about to leave it there.
Malia was trying to gift me $350k. She put the money in a 30cm Niloctus Crocodile Leather Birkin. It would be enough to repay everything I ever owed with interest. She said I had to do it like this.
"FUCK HIM! You need to hit him where it fucking hurts. He thinks he owns you? FUCK THAT! He thinks he made you?!? Tell him to do it again! Give him the money and be done with him. If he comes after you it's because you were right." I didn't feel comfortable with the gift. I didn't want to owe anyone else. I looked at her, as best as I could while my eyes stung with a familiar feeling.
She was stunning with her bald head. I hated how it had come about but she looked like a model with or without hair. Maybe we could play with colour before she let it grow back.
"Nessa, look at me. You are putting your life on the line to get me out. And you're coming with me. We're going to get your mom and brother out first, and then we'll go. Please think of this as a facilitation fee if you must. I have been putting this aside for you , and planned to give it you one way or another. I'll even put it in writing. But take the money. I have $5mil in cash in this house. Another $5 in investments. I've been a mob wife long enough to have stacked up. I have money, that's never an issue. I need you to leave with your head held high. You deserve it." I cried inconsolably. Again. But I took it. And swore I would find away to pay her back.
"Okay, so how did things go with the Don?" She was alluding to the piece that was holding everything together.
The favour.
It was the right time.
Initial plans of a sneaky run to the border via my diamond network were cancelled. There were too many of us in need of extraction now. That's what had brought me in front of the Don. We met up in a small meeting room in the local library. It was the only place my security detail wouldn't follow me. They hated having to go into the library with me and spend hours standing in the dusty building for me to get my heart's content of books. It was a poverty habit that had yet to die.
I slid a file across the table.
"Thank you for seeing me today sir. The matter is quite urgent and I was hoping I could take you up on that favour."
He listened as I told him everything. The arrangement, my involvement in several schemes that had put Angelo on his radar to become the next Underboss, my desire to leave and start afresh. I left the final argument out, though. No need to cry over spilt milk. Malia's tale was also revealed to him. His frown got progressively deeper as he was made privy to the details.
My ask was simple. A flight out of the US, to South America. French Guiana to be exact. It was a colonial remnant of France's once far reaching influence. A geopolitical quirk. The people born in the country were French citizens. It's why France technically shared a land border with Brazil. Once there, Malia and I would look like the locals. Two black girls, in a country full of black people.
Paris didn't take care of French Guiana and it was decades behind in terms of governance. You could still go to a town hall in the capital Cayenne and request a passport with your birth certificate.
Malia and I would go to a local library, and look for obituaries of girls that would have be around our age if they had lived, and ones for my family as well. We would go to the hospitals they were listed to be born at and request copies of their birth certificates. We would use those to obtain French passports and thereby identities. And we would take what was considered a domestic flight to France Metropolitaine. From Paris we would be able to move without passport checking points in the Continent of Europe, and without the fear of having fake passports discovered if we ventured outside of it.
It was perfect.
All we needed was an escorted and concealed passage out.
"So let me get this straight, you're asking me to kidnap the Wife and Girlfriend of my two top Capo Regimes?"
"It wouldn't be kidnap, more so facilitated exits. And let's face it. We are causing distractions. They will work better and harder with the fuel of having their women gone." It was true. Angelo and Ale had been incredibly distracted with us and the issues in our respective relationships. Although Fabio was incredibly misguided in how he went about things, he got his dying wish in the end.
"I know you've got connections, why are you asking me?" He had to know. He was already sold, being extremely unhappy with the duress I had described myself and Malia to be under. He was an old school guy, and hearing of women being subjected to what we had been was not the news he wanted.
"When men are looking for something they've lost, they don't look up at the sky. They look down, at the ground. And even if they did suspect your involvement, they can't question you about it. Angelo doesn't know that you even know what I look like." It was perfect.
I'm glad I had waited until now to call in the favour. I knew I had him but I wanted to secure my next step.
So I told him "In the file on the table, you'll find details the elaborate scheme that has been in play for the best part of a decade to keep you and Cosa Nostra out of Europe."
Sal wasn't a particularly expressive man, but I could see the severity of the information that landed in his ears, pinging around in his brain life a pinball. He sat up slowly with incredulity, silently willing me to continue.
"You'll find details of the man who leads your case at Europol. You'll also find flight manifests of his trips to the Philippines and the online chat logs of the conversations he engaged in to arrange child rape. Finally, you'll find a link to a taped webcam confession of the person he was in contact with as well. The man at Europol has been working with an old foe of yours, and your lawyers. The charges of arms dealing they are trying to get you on have reached their statute of limitations in the countries concerned. Your lawyer has been fraudulently advising you to stay out of Europe for fear of being apprehended. There are records of him receiving payment from Europol controlled accounts in use before the leak of the Panama Papers. I can assure you, you will not be arrested the next time you decide to visit the continent."
He was stunned.
Again.
Every time I came around him, I came dropping bombshells, or rather, prevented him from stepping on a land mine, in the nick of time.
Reading the papers led me to stumble across the name of the law firm that Lo used. Ismail loved to brag about working with the Don, so I got curious as to why they were connected to a scandal so far away. I pulled the string and found out about the payments. It was only a matter of time until I dug up the dirt of that paedophile that ran the case. My intention had been to use the information to get Lucas, the oldest Leone brother out.
Sorry Wild!
It took me weeks to put it altogether. The amount of time I spent looking at a screen was ungodly.
Vince had taught me a lot. Thank God for him.
Miss Monique's passing comment about Tony's time in Russia stuck. It reminded me of something I had let escape my sight.
Those documents that had once upon a time raised my brow.
It hadn't necessarily been their content that confused me, as I couldn't read it. Instead, it was the fact that they were written in the Cyrillic alphabet. A writing system reserved for Russian and adjacent languages. My young little eyes couldn't figure them out so I noted them, as I had been told to.
I didn't know the right time would come.
A painstaking amount of interpretation work, made easier by Raymond's instance on teaching me Russian, God bless his soul. A lot of research, surveillance and recon over the course of weeks revealed to me a secret. A secret that I hoped would secure my future.
Turns out that Tony Leone wasn't the simple Robin Hood that he made out to be. He was working directly with the Don to sell weapons to independence movements around Russia and former soviet republics, arming them in their resistance to their former overlords. He needed to be low-key in the US to give him room for the amount of work it took to get these deals over the line.
It's why he let those debts spiral out of control the way he had.
It was a tall order no one else wanted to fill at the time and the money made it worth the risk. The Kremlin got wind and struck back, first kicking the mob out and having Europol add them all to their most wanted list. And then coming back years later, they killed Tony as final reminder and a warning. The Don took heed. Until today.
"You'll also find details of a painting, currently kept in a Freeport in Geneva, Switzerland. The artist is irrelevant but the buyer isn't."
This is why I had been cosying up with the young Saudi guy at that party. He was telling me that the Sauds had been trying to get into the Freeport, where art and other pieces could be stored tax-free due to some kind of loophole in Swiss law. They needed in to give them a tether through which they could begin to launder money across the continent again. Sanctions were a bitch.
He didn't tell me the full detail but I had enough to political awareness to understand. They knew that no legitimate business or entity would sell to the Saudi's after their questionable foreign policy. They needed a person who had a hand in the underworld to own the painting so it could be purchased with ease.
My intentions had been to round up all the information I had gathered and hand it over to Angelo, and solidify his ascent to Underboss. He would be Mr Make It Happen all over again. The boy that opened Europe again, as he had Vegas. The Saudi tip was just a cherry on top.
Fuck that. I'm taking the glory for myself this time.
"The Saudis will bid and win on that painting in six months time. The sum they will purchase it for will be in the high eight figure region. They have been trying to get into the Freeport for years, but the state-sanctioned murder of Jamal Khashoggi and the subsequent fallout killed their previous efforts. The only way they can guarantee that this time around they'll succeed is if the seller is agreeable. So you could make sure you're in the right place at the right time by buying this painting now." The next bit was the clencher, and what I hoped would mark the beginning of the rest of my life.
"Although, even with the information I've given you, it will take some time for the heat to come off you. Instead, you could send someone on your behalf to bid and secure the painting. I think the sooner the better really." I was giving him something he didn't even know he wanted. Something he didn't know was possible anymore. Angelo taught me well.
And I was firmly inserting myself in the vision. I was careful though, because after all, you can't tell them what to do; only proposition and suggest. Thank you Guido.
He didn't even open the file. He knew I was good for it.
"Vanessa, how do you feel about becoming my consigliere?"
It was a cold winter day in early February. The rain hadn't let up yet.
I was dressed in all black. A turtleneck minidress. It was Vicuña wool, eye wateringly expensive, but it felt sensational. Thigh high stiletto boots, in the iconic Knife silhouette. Balenciaga usually did the shoe in spandex, but a exclusive run of croc leather came out a week ago. A phone call and I got them. A tailored wool coat. Gucci. The monogram was hidden to the untrained eye but I saw it. A Signature pair of Balenciaga shades. A gold, diamond encrusted Van Cleef & Arpels bracelet, which was the only thing to break the colour code.
I felt like money.
My jet black hair went down to my ass, bone straight and parted down the exact middle of my head. A bussdown if you will. The bundles and frontal had come from three single donors in India. The lace had been hand ventilated with a reference picture of my hairline. Thanks to them for their hard work and dedication to this wig.
I had to dress to the nines for this occasion. I was attending a funeral after all.
I pulled up to the hangar where all the men I loved bar one were waiting for their boss' return. Angelo had decided to take a business trip to let the situation cool off.
Perfect, works for me.
They weren't expecting to see my E Class, or for me to step out with a Goyard trunk in my hand. The tinted windows concealed Malia's presence in the passenger seat. I made my way over to the hustle and bustle of it all. 50 footsoldiers were in attendance, doing something or the other with a shipment of whatever.
They saw and greeted me, happy to see me back. They could tell me and their boss were on the outs, as the orders coming down being more stringent than before.
I headed for the table Guido, Vince and Ray were stood at, looking at a map. Without warning, I placed the trunk of top of it, breaking the conversation.
"What the fuck it that Vessa?" Vince's bruised face came into view. They young man had got into some lightskin fisticuffs with his older brother and for the first time in his life whooped him.
"It's for Capo, can you guys make sure he gets it?" He was about two hours out, his ETA somewhere in the early evening.
"Who's it from?" Guido knew the answer, but was trying to buy time.
"Me." More than that was not required.
"What's in it?"
"You'll have to open it to find out."
They all knew what it was. Money. A lot of it.
I had found a loophole out of that terrible loan he gave me. I had simply asked the facility my brother was at to refund the monies paid to them to Angelo and paid in cash myself. The money he would be getting today was his own.
$100k for my debt + $100k for Nesto + $100k in interest and other gifts he had given me during our time together. The account with the commission he gifted me for my birthday remained untouched.
"What the fuck are you trying to do?"
"I'm done Vinny. I'm out." Finality.
"What d'you mean, shouldn't you discuss this with him first?" Guido was starting to get antsy, a true hater of a family feud.
"No."
"It's time Vanessa. I'm happy for you. Where will you go?" Ray spoke this time. Hearing him say that made me glad I wore sunglasses.
"You know I can't tell you that."
"When will we see you again?"
"If I play my cards right, you won't." That was the bit that was breaking my heart. I was leaving my adopted family behind.
My blood family were already in French Guiana, waiting for us. Their passage had been seamless. Not a single surveillance camera bore witness to their escape. Nesto would be okay for about two weeks without another round of chemo. That was more than enough time. Once we tipped handsomely, we would have our passports within days. By the time he would be in need of another round he would be settling into a new facility in Switzerland. An advance from the Don bankrolled this.
"You can't let him make you do this. You deserve to be here just as much as we do." Vince was going to make me cry.
I cleared my throat, to release my voice from the grip sadness had on it before saying "That's the thing Vin, I deserve so much more than this. And I'm gonna go get it." That was the hope I was clinging onto.
"FUCK!" This drew 100 eyes towards us. Vince came and hugged me tight, because he knew I was right. I hugged back, even tighter.
"You know he's gonna come after you, right?" Guido was throwing in one last attempt to keep me. I did know that. It didn't change anything though.
"Tell him I said not to bother. He'll never find me." Guido looked destitute. He knew there was nothing he could do to make me stay. So he started praying for me and my safety.
Similar affections were shared between me and the other men at the table. The men were all in their own way giving me parting words. Trying to conceal teary eyes.
"Remember what I taught you. You kill, never be killed. And if you ever need me, make the call and I'll be there." Ray's father tongue slipped out of his mouth in hushed tones and I understood every word, praying it wouldn't come to that.
And with that I walked away. I stopped though, taking one last chance to turn around and look at what I would be leaving behind. I could see 53 men staring back at me. The 50 not involved in our conversation could feel the shift in the air. The hugs we exchanged reeked of goodbyes and they weren't blind. The men present were supposed to do everything in their power to make sure I didn't leave. And it would have been easy. Should have been. But I was their Madrina, and when I raised two fingers to my forehead as a salute, 53 arms followed my motion.
I tipped my fingers toward them, but lost focus of the view as my eyes were covered in a thin sheet of tears. I put my hand down and they again followed my movement like a band would their conductor. They knew who their true boss was. And with that I walked away, hopped in the whip and pulled off silently.
_________________________________
Chapter 25 - Part 1
Vanessa is done! She's ready to get the fuck! ASAP! After this shit!
The final goodbye was actually written a while back, I've had it in my mind for years and I just had to get it down.
A lot of politics coming your way, but I hope you understand it all. If not then please let me know so I can explain it.
We even got a callback to chapter 4. Those documents that raised her brows. Did they raise them for the reason you believed?
Do you think she'll be able to pull it off?
How do you think Angelo will react?
Find out soon, in the last chapter of AT WHAT COST?
Keep your eyes peeled babe, it'll be with you soon
LOVE YOU LONG TIME - DUCHESS 🤍🤍🤍