Larger Than Lyfe Read Free Page A

Keshari through college at UCLA, where she studied economics and accounting and graduated summa cum laude. Then Ricky pushed Keshari to continue her studies and acquire her MBA from the Wharton School of Business in Phila-delphia. All the while, she was flying back and forth to Los Angeles, earning her stripes in Ricky’s operations, The Consortium.
    “My organization will come to the table educated enough tomake dirty money clean,” Ricky had told her. “We’ll show the world that crime really does pay. We’ll know and be able to play corporate America’s game better than they do and we’ll build a billion-dollar empire without getting locked up in the process.”

    Richard Tresvant had seen something very special in Keshari Mitchell many years before, before she was even a woman, before she was capable of seeing anything special within herself; and he’d capitalized on and exploited all of her extraordinary qualities in more ways than one. Theirs was a very complex relationship. Love, business, control, and fear were intricately intertwined.

    “Bloomberg will be here in an hour. The assistant district attorney and the polygraphist appointed by the D.A.’s office are also coming. The D.A. wasn’t satisfied with the results of the lie detector test from the polygraphist I hired. For whatever reason, even though I hired a very highly qualified polygraphist with indisputable credentials, this asshole believes that the results were rigged…that I may have paid or coerced my polygraphist into rigging the results. I should sue this minimum wage-earning motherfucker for slander.”
    “How much longer is it now before the start of the trial?” Keshari asked.
    “Three more weeks. The D.A. has been pushing to move forward with the trial immediately. He’s feeling confident of a win, but Bloomberg secured a continuance for further development of my defense case. The legal team is viewing the situation from a lot of different angles. They’re telling me that there is a chance I may have to take a plea bargain. I am NOT going to jail for something that I didn’t do!”
    He broke off again. Fury over his predicament had him close to the edge of completely losing control.
    It was just too difficult for Keshari to understand how Ricky could continue to vehemently deny his guilt when his fingerprints were at the crime scene as well as on the murder weapon. True enough, the results of the first polygraph test he’d taken had gone solidly in his favor, but Ricky was a master of manipulation. What if he’d tricked the polygraph test?
    Ricky calmed down and promptly changed the subject.
    “How’d everything go the other night?” he asked, referring to the transaction in which Keshari had purchased seventy-five keys of cocaine from their new, Mexican supplier.
    “For the most part, everything went smoothly,” Keshari answered.
    “What do you mean ‘for the most part’?”
    “The Mexicans are very apprehensive about your current charges and the trial.”
    “I hope you assured them that they have nothing to worry about.”
    “I did,” Keshari responded, “but I’m left to wonder if you’re not being too cavalier about this situation. Despite your very powerful and well-placed allies, this is not your run-of-the-mill murder charge. This case is receiving a tremendous amount of media coverage. The Mexicans could issue hits on all of us to ensure that their interests are protected.”
    “Do you think that I would sit here and allow years of work and millions of dollars of my money to be jeopardized without taking preemptive measures to safeguard against situations like this? You know me much better than that, Keshari. You’re overreacting.”
    “You’re under-reacting. Federal authorities could indict all of us any day now while this spotlight is all over you, or all of us could be murdered without a moment’s notice; and I think thatthis murder charge has you too overwhelmed to see that that’s a greater