Jose Fernandez hadn't believed that his business could move at such a fast pace the way it did. After he had supplied a man the drugs he had with him and the man had paid far more for it than Jose thought possible, his morale had been boosted. He had asked the smuggler to get him more drugs on loan with the promise he would pay for them as soon as he sold them out. Even though he had worried about who would buy a full bag of hard drugs from him, he still thought that he needed to try if he wanted to survive in the streets of America.
Lucky for him, the man who brought the previous one from him contacted him that he needed a half bag of the drugs. Jose had hurried up his smuggler supplier and quickly packaged the deal for the man who had requested it. Two days later, the man was back again. Jose began to wonder what he was doing with such large quantities of hard drugs, but since it wasn't his business to ask or even worry about such things, he had kept mute about his thoughts. Like Tata would always say, as long as they keep coming back for more and they pay, they don't bother about what they did with the goods.
The next supply Jose got, he increased to two bags. This same man whom Jose later knew his name to be Robert had bought the two bags from him in just a single day. The profit Jose made from it was even more than the capital he had begun with. When Robert had asked him for ten bags at a go, Jose found it to be eccentric. One doesn't just buy such bags of hard drugs for self-consumption. And even though he had tried to employ Tata's method of not asking questions, Jose became curious about what the man did with the drugs.
Still, he cut the curiosity out of his heart. As long as he was making enough profits to live on, he was content. He wasn't going to do something that would get his buyer angry with it, thereby stopping the order he was getting. He needed the money. Just last week after he had sold the two bags of hard drugs to Robert, he had moved out of his miserable tiny house and had gotten a bigger and better apartment. The next profit he made, Jose had furnished the room with the money and still got enough to get stuff for himself.
At six months of being a drug dealer, he was living better than most people on salary did in America. He was no longer a broke young man. The ladies flock around him like a pack of wolves. Even the dancer that had screamed at him back then had given him her words that she wouldn't mind having sex with him. What she hadn't realized was the fact that he was high on drugs. Jose had made her sign an agreement that states that he could have as many rounds of sex as he wanted with her for that day for a certain fee. She had gladly signed it without any hesitation whatsoever, probably with the thought that he couldn't go more than three or four rounds with her. Jose had made her regret her decision to scream at him the other day and the agreement she signed. After the fifth round in a row, she had begun to complain. Jose only smiled because he knew that he wasn't even half done with her yet. It got to a point where she started screaming for help and at a time, she couldn't even speak or do anything anymore. By the time he had thrown her out of the hotel room, he was sure she would be going straight to the hospital for a check-up. That would teach her never to cross paths with a drug dealer again.
Josh surveyed the environment and got another customer apart from Robert. This customer started with buying three bags from him at a time. Meanwhile, Robert kept increasing the number of bags he got every time he ordered. Before long, his other customer increased the bags too and even introduced another man to him. This other man got a large amount of hard drugs. In just seven months, he had three customers who were daily buyers. The minimum number of days they delayed from buying from him was either a day or two and they got a large number of hard drugs from him each time they did.
He was sure that the men had ready buyers and that was why they bought that much from him. Jose began to do market research. If there was a chance he could make more than he already was, he wanted to know. He would go to the big men club and survey them secretly. Sometimes, he was lucky and found another customer to make sales to. Twice in a row though, he had been unlucky and got rounded up by the police. The first time it happened, he had been arrested only after he had gotten the last of his drugs sold. So, they found him clean and had let him off with only social cleaning. The second time, however, he had been caught red-handed during the transaction. As a result, he got a jail term.
It was while in prison he got all the information he needed about his environment from an inmate. He had gotten to know that there were a lot of hard men and only a few suppliers of hard drugs in America. These suppliers bought hard drugs at the amount it was said to be sold and they made back twice as much as they spent when the drugs were sold to their main buyers who were usually the big shot. Jose got the confirmation of his newest friend's words when he hiked up the price of his drugs with the excuse that it was hard to supply drugs from prison walls. His customers had paid without even a slight hesitation.
He saw an opportunity in that and from the walls of the prison, he told the men that he would only sell drugs to those who pledged allegiance to him. Then, he promised to give a free bag of drugs to each person who brought another major buyer into his business. Jose used his three customers to build a chain of networks, even while in the prison. He began to make sales of nothing less than a hundred bags of hard drugs in a day. He made Robert his right-hand man when he could no longer take the stress on his own. But, one thing he didn't do was reveal his source to the man. He had learned lessons from the fate Tata had suffered from trusting a man too much.
"I see you are making a lot more sales here than when you were out." A voice said behind Jose. He turned to see his inmate standing by the iron door.
"Well, what can I say?" Jose said playfully and shrugged his left shoulder.
"I'm Dominic." The man said as an introduction.
"I'm Jose." He informed the other man.
The two men began to talk and share history. Jose noticed that the other man was secretive about himself to a fault, but he didn't mind. Because for all Jose knew, the man had been betrayed by someone he trusted in the past. Like Tata. The man could even be in jail right now because he got betrayed by a friend, Jose thought as he studied the man. The man had blue eyes, a pointed nose, and natural curvy lips which seemed to promise sexual sins to anyone who wanted one. His face was oval and sat on a body that belonged to an athlete. The man was a pure walking sin if Jose was totally honest and he sighed. It wasn't like him who women flowed around with just because of his money. Dominic would get sex for free no matter how broke the man was, his look was enough to ensure that.
Jose knew that the man was a little older than him too. He was about five to six years Jose senior. But that didn't affect their friendship and neither did his sales of hard drugs. In all, he and Dominic became very good friends. Every time he asked why the man had ended up in prison, he would just shrug it off. A year after Jose had gotten in, the man had finished serving his terms. Jose missed having the man around after he left.
Dominic Sanchez roamed around the street twice as he and his client had agreed on as the signal to give his presence. Before he could finish the second round, a short and sturdy man appeared out of nowhere. He passed over the envelope in his hands to the other man and walked away. This was why his customers loved him. He made sure he passed the drugs the safest way he could just as he did now with the short man. The payment would be made through another means he had chosen. That way, they were free of any suspicious look. He didn't want to go to prison for the second time, especially when he could get a longer jail term now that he was a fugitive. And, his customers kept increasing because of how conscious he was of their safety also.
He was however glad he had been caught the first time. Otherwise, he wouldn't have met that Jose man and learned a new strategy from him. He loved how the man had started a chain of command using the weakness of each man who worked for him. If he used the man's method, he could build an empire for himself as a drug lord, and no one else would rule in America except him. Plus, he already had a place ready for production. Very soon, he would stop smuggling drugs In to sell to his customers but he would become a major exporter of hard drugs. He would have the respect of most of the prominent men of the country, and more money than he could ever spend in his lifetime. Then, his next generation would not have to suffer the way he did. His children wouldn't have to stop their education midway through because they had no one to support them. They wouldn't get thrown out of the house one day because it was a rented place and the bills weren't coming in at the right time.
Jose paced about the jail he was in. For about a year and some months back, sales had been low. When Robert had first told him about the drop in sales, Jose had thought the man was scamming him. He had promised the man that he wouldn't live long to tell the tales of his duping skills. He had expected a change report from the man, but when he didn't get any, he worried about how true it was. He had called the smuggler and had sent the man to investigate the case for him. But when his smuggler said that the orders had indeed dropped, he knew that he had a lot to worry about. It was a good thing he was getting released today, he thought just as the jailer opened the door to his cell room.
"306, you are free to go." The jailer said.
Jose smiled as he walked out of the prison yard. He hadn't had a hard time at all during his stay with them, and he wasn't broke like most people were after they got out of prison. He was already a millionaire, thanks to his drug business. Thinking about that, he had to think about a solution to the problem at hand. He saw a car zoom in with Robert in the driver's seat and got in when the other man stopped. After exchanging greetings, he asked for the files he had asked the man to gather on all the other three customers. Robert pointed to the back seat of the car and Jose picked up the files resting on a seat there. He flipped the files for a few minutes before dropping them on his laps. Although he had a plan in mind, he still needed a secure place to carry out his operations.
"By the way, boss. The drug lord that had been ruling over America for a year now is a man named Dominic. You should know him. You both stayed in the same cell in the prison," Roberts explained.
So, Dominic was the ruling drug lord? No wonder the man had been so secretive about himself back then. He had been trying to protect himself from being stabbed in the back by his inmates while he slept. Jose should have guessed that the older man was an important personality from his behavior. It was the same way Tata did around strangers or people he wasn't sure where their loyalties were. And although Jose considered Dominic as somewhat of a friend, he was ready to do anything to take back power from the man since he wasn't ready to go back to being a nobody again. And for that not to happen, he had to cut off their friendship ties and turn the man into his rivals.
Together with Roberts, Jose searched the heart of America for the perfect location for his drugs business. He had decided in his mind to stop smuggling in the drugs and began to produce his directly from scratch and he needed a place for the underground production. He still has more than enough funds to get a place and set up productions. After searching for days, he found a place for himself in Los Angeles. It was an old warehouse and the owner had wanted to sell it off in a hurry. Robert got men and they began to build the underground sites. It took three months, but then everything was ready.
After that, Jose called his three major customers together for a meeting. He told them he was starting his cartel and he needed trustworthy men for the long journey ahead. The men had been quick to swear allegiance to him. Together, they called the place the Vermin Cartel. Two days later, Jose called together the prominent men who bought the drugs from his men after he had dug up the dirty facts about them. He reasoned with them that it would be in their best decisions to support him if they didn't want to get ruined.
"No one blackmails me and gets away with it." The mayor shouted, slammed his hands on the table, and went out.
Jose hadn't argued with the man. He had allowed him to live in peace also. In fact, he hadn't asked anyone to swear their loyalties to him that night either. By the next morning, he made sure the mayor was on every cover page of the newspapers, on every news channel, and radio station. He made sure he ruined the man beyond repair. By noon of the same day, every prominent man who had attended the meeting the previous day had begun to call and swear to support him all through his journey. In return, he had promised to keep their little dirty secrets safe with him. And that began the rivalry battle between him and Dominic.