Kali queen, p.1
Kali Queen, page 1
Kali Queen
Bo Reid
For those that encouraged this journey.
Your story is finally here.
Contents
Prologue
1. Alcohol
2. Ayahuasca
3. Methamphetamine
4. Mescaline (Peyote)
5. Cocaine
6. Psilocybin
7. Kratom
8. MDMA (Ecstasy/Molly)
9. Marijuana (Cannabis)
10. LSD
11. Khat
12. Ketamine
13. Salvia
14. Heroin
15. Hallucinogens
16. GHB
17. DMT
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Other Books By Bo Reid
Copyright © 2023 by Bo Reid
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the authors imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Edited by Leanne Robinson
Cover designed by Graveyard Formatting Design
Formatting by Graveyard Formatting and Design
Created with Vellum
Prologue
When I was little, he was my hero, my idol, my everything, until the day he wasn’t.
He always wanted me to be just like him.
I’ve been groomed from day one to take over the family business.
But it was never something I wanted.
Until the day he took everything from me.
A king who’s built an empire on top of the bones of those that got in his way.
He’s a killer.
And now, I’m just like him.
I was six years old when I saw my first murder.
It’s one of the few that I can vividly remember. All the others over the years seem to have just blurred together. The smell of rust and gunpowder permeating my nostrils made me want to vomit as the acid and bile climbed up my throat. He begged for his life, yet I couldn't even tell you his name, or what he did to deserve the punishment he received, but I knew in some way, he had crossed my father.
Andrew Kane is not someone you cross if you value your life.
I wasn’t supposed to be in the warehouse that day, but I was home sick from school and my mother couldn’t watch me. So, my bodyguard brought me along when he received a call to go to the warehouse.
It wasn’t unusual for me to go along with my father or his many employees to do their jobs. Always in the car, riding along to do things no child should be involved in. That's the mob life though. I didn’t realize it at the time, but the amount of cocaine and illegal guns I was around by age five was more than most people would see in their lifetime.
I can still remember the twisting feeling in my gut when we pulled up to the warehouse that day. Something wasn’t right. Even at six, I could feel the pressure of death in the air; it was suffocating. I didn’t know it then, but it wouldn’t be the last time I would feel the crushing weight of death in the air. And no one could have prepared me for the lives I would take, the bodies I would have to bury, or the kill orders I would one day give.
No one can prepare you to become a monster.
My bodyguard, Denny, brought me into my father’s office and tucked me in to sleep on the couch. I always liked to be with him the most, he was an older man and his wife would bake me cookies. I would realize later that she took me under her wing in order to distract and protect me from the things my father and her husband were involved in. Denny would take me out to ice cream after school and even help with my homework. He taught me things like long division when my dad taught me how to fire a gun. Turns out both are useful skills for a drug lord.
When I woke up to loud voices, the shouting was coming from downstairs. I knew it wasn’t my father, he never shouted. Real power, true evil, never had to raise its voice to be heard, it was simply felt like energy.
I knew I shouldn’t leave the office. I felt it in my bones, that whatever was happening wasn’t something I wanted to know about. But something pulled me towards the shouting like a magnet. I left the office and crept down the hall. Even as a child, I knew when my presence would be detrimental to my well being. Sometimes hiding in the shadows is where you’re safest. Sometimes monsters are the best company. When I got to the stairs, I couldn’t bring myself to go down them, but I looked over the railing. The scene before me is one that I would witness many times in the years to come.
It was a turning point in my life, although I didn’t realize it at the time.
I didn’t understand how this one moment would start to shape the very fabric of my being. But I can honestly say that the downfall of my humanity and rise to power simultaneously started that day. Right there, in a cold, dirty warehouse, in the middle of the day when I should have been coloring with other kids, I watched a man die instead.
There was a man on his knees on the ground, he looked like he had been in a car accident. His clothes were torn from his body, there was blood everywhere. I think he was crying, but his eyes were so swollen shut that I couldn’t be sure. He was yelling, screaming, begging my father for his life as blood dripped from his wounds and saliva poured from his mouth. He begged for mercy he wouldn’t be awarded.
My father was composed, his knuckles were red, and raw. The chunky silver rings he wore on both hands were coated in a thick layer of blood, but he was calm. Not a single wrinkle in his custom-tailored suit, the picture of a king confident in his power.
He casually removed the Glock .40 from his holster and put a single round in the chamber. My father held his gun to the man’s head, and, with a smirk on his face and a steady hand, he pulled the trigger.
He didn't flinch. He didn’t blink. He was the eye in the hurricane, calm while chaos surrounded him.
It was the first time I looked at my father and didn’t see the hero who tucked me in at night, instead I saw the devil within his soul.
He glanced toward the top of the stairs, his gaze connecting with mine and I was frozen in place. Instead of rushing to my side, trying to shield me from the horrors I just saw, he turned his back on me for the first time and walked away.
I wish I could say that was the last time he would ever turn his back on me.
I was ten when I helped bury my first body.
I grew up exploring the woods behind my father’s club. I had always thought they smelled like pine and fresh rain, no matter the season. Now, all I can smell when I enter the woods is rust and rot. Whether the rot comes from the thick coating of fallen leaves or the many dead bodies buried here, I’m not sure.
It was late in the fall, most of the leaves covered the ground already and there was a chill floating through the air. I carried the shovels and my father had the tarp-wrapped body draped over his shoulder. I watched as blood dripped onto the forest floor.
We seemed to walk for hours, but it was probably just a few minutes. The trees were so thick, it was easy to feel like we were a world away. When we finally stopped, my father dropped the body with a thud and reached out his hand for one of the shovels I was carrying.
“Do you know how deep to dig, Amber?” he asked this question like he was asking what I had learned in school that day.
“No, Sir.”
“Since there aren’t many animals in these woods, we don’t have to go so deep. But we have to make sure we go deep enough that the smell doesn’t travel when the wind picks up.” He looked at me and smiled so large that I thought his face might split in half.
He looked like such a proud father in that moment, sharing a trade secret with his daughter. Except most proud fathers who share trade secrets don't have secrets that involve where the bodies are buried.
We dug in silence, until the hole was deep enough, and my arms shook from working so hard. My father tossed the body in and began to cover it with the dirt. “Come on now, Amber, get to it. It’ll be light soon and we’re meeting your mother for breakfast.”
We worked to cover the body of a man who’s name I still don’t know. I can’t tell you what he looked like, why he died, or how. But I could show you where his unmarked grave is. I might not remember their faces but their graves are ingrained into my memory.
I was twelve when I lost my mother.
The men came in wearing masks. They broke into our house and dragged my mother away kicking and screaming. I was in shock, unable to move my feet, or look away. It was like a car crash on the highway, you know you shouldn’t look, that you can’t help them but you stare anyways.
She screamed and she fought. I should have done something but what I’m not sure. When one of the masked men bent down in front of me, gently cupping my cheek, I tore my eyes away from my mother as they hauled her into a dark van.
“It’ll be okay, sweet girl. They won't touch you,” he said in a soft whisper.
I cocked my head, looking into his kind honey colored eyes. Eyes filled with so much sadness, his pain broke my heart; almost as much as losing my mother did.
I knew I would never see her again, and if I did, she wouldn’t be the same person she was before she left. Although, it's almost better if they don't come back at all, because if t hey do they aren't the same, and it’s like losing them all over again.
“You’re going to kill my mama,” I told him.
He looked away from me, unable to keep eye contact and that’s when I knew. “Just don’t think about it too much, sweet girl.” He stood up, turning to walk toward the door. “Your father knows why this happened.”
“I’ll find you,” I said, glaring at his back until he turned around to face me. “I’ll find you, and I’ll kill you for taking her from me. She’s innocent. If you wanted to hold someone responsible, you should take me. I have more sins than her,” I say as I nod toward the van.
“That’s not how this works, sweet girl. But I’ll be waiting for you if you ever decide to come for me. I’ll welcome the bullet,” he said before turning around and closing my door.
I raced to the phone to dial my father's number, explaining everything in a voice too calm to be my own. When did I become this person? And how much worse will I get? I never saw my mother alive again. We buried her body, and never spoke of her again.
After that day, things would never be the same.
I was fourteen when I first fell in love and I was sixteen when my father took everything from me.
He moved in next door when I was fourteen. By that time, I was a perfect shot with nearly every gun on the market, legal and otherwise. I could take a life and hide the body without leaving a trace of evidence.
I knew what to bury, what to burn, and what could be cleaned. Ordering things like bleach and acid in bulk for my father. I could edit the books at all my father’s clubs to hide the dirty money.
I didn’t have many friends at school considering my whole life outside of those four walls revolved around homicide, money laundering, cocaine distribution, and gun running, I didn’t have much in common with other kids my age.
The day Dylan moved in was the first time I ever wanted to get to know anyone my age. I wanted him in my life, I felt a pull toward him. As if he was someone my heart couldn’t live without.
My father was all about welcoming new neighbors, keeping up appearances and all that. So he sent me over to their house with a plate of cookies; the kind you buy from the store and pretend you baked them yourself. When Dylan opened the door with a bright smile on his face, I couldn’t help but match his grin. He wasn’t hardened by life yet, not like I was.
He was taller than me by a few inches, not a hard feat to accomplish as I’ve always been the smallest in my grade. He had long dirty blonde hair that fell nearly to his shoulders and blue eyes like the ocean on a summer day. He was the typical California surfer guy with his tan skin and laid-back attitude. It was his smile though. It was warm and inviting; he smiled without restraint like he wasn’t weighed down by his actions and choices. My smile didn’t come easily anymore.
“Hi, I’m Amber Kane, we live next door. My dad sent me over with these to welcome you guys to town.”
He reached out for the plate, brushing his hand on mine as he took it. “Hey, I’m Dylan Bennet. Thanks, my dad will be excited to see these. My mom doesn’t let him have many sweets, but I doubt even she can tell him no if they’re a gift from you guys. Where do you go to school?”
“I’m a freshman at Applevalley Academy, the private high school on the other side of town. Where will you be going?” I ask even though I knew there was only one logical place for him to go, the public high school.
“Private academy, huh? You must be pretty smart to get in there. I start at Hillsdale High on Monday. I’m a freshman too.”
I couldn’t help but laugh at his insinuation of my intelligence, but he did just move here so I doubt he knew what being a Kane truly meant in this town. Give it a week, he’ll learn fast.
“Applevalley has better security than the public high, that’s why I go there. My dad is, umm, well, he just likes knowing I’m safe. And he’ll pay any price to ensure my safety,” I said with a shrug.
From that day on, we were inseparable for two years. We did everything together, and I confided in him how badly I didn’t want to run the family business. It didn’t take him long in a town this size to realize that the family business wasn’t the night clubs and bars my father owned in the city.
Dylan came up with a plan for us to leave as soon as we graduated. We’d run away the night of graduation and never come back. He worked during the summers and saved every dime he made. I stashed all the money I could from what I made doing jobs for my father. It wasn’t what I wanted. I was running drug buys, hiding bodies, paying off the local cops, and going on gun runs up north with the guys. Unfortunately, getting a minimum wage job down at the local gas station wasn’t just not a family option, it wouldn’t get us the money we needed to start a life together away from here.
I had so much blood on my hands, I wasn’t sure I could ever actually make it out of this hell, but Dylan didn’t care, he loved me. He hated what I had to do, but swore it wasn’t who I was. Every night after I took a life, I would sneak into his bedroom window. He never asked questions, he never made me relive what I did. He would just hold me, tell me he loved me, and remind me that we were getting out of here. He promised to drag me from the pits of my own personal hell. The problem was I was so far in that he couldn’t drag me out, all I did was pull him in.
I’m not sure how my father found out that I wanted to leave. That I had a plan, and it and a life outside of this hell hinged on Dylan. I made the money, I had the better car, and all the connections we’d need to disappear. But somehow, my father knew that if I didn’t have Dylan to pull me from hell, that I would never make it out on my own.
When I walked into the backroom of my father’s main club, with gunpowder on my hands, blood spattered across my dark clothes, and a body in the trunk of my car I had no idea what was in store for the night.
I just stopped by to get the shovels, then I was going to finish my job, and climb into Dylan’s window and let him hold me 'til I forgot her face, and the sound of her begging for her life. Cries and pleads that didn’t matter because I had a job to do and it was her or me.
I walked into the backroom and headed straight for the closet that held what I needed. I was in a trance, the same one I went into in order to complete a job, I saw nothing but my end game and my endgame was Dylan.
“Ahh, there she is. Amber, we’ve been waiting for you. I expected you back hours ago,” my father said.
I stopped mid stride, to anyone else he would have sounded normal, cheerful even, but I knew every aspect of my father, and I felt the chill in his words down to my bones. I turned to face him and what I saw made me catch my breath. Dylan was here, in the backroom of my father’s club, sitting across from the devil himself. There was my .9mm on my dad’s desk, a gift for my fourteenth birthday. It was solid black, with a custom onyx hilt, inlaid with rubies and blood diamonds. Clearly every fourteen year old girls' dream.
“The job was a bit harder to track down than originally anticipated, Sir, but I got it handled, nothing to worry about. I just came by to grab something to finish up.”
“Oh yeah? She give you some trouble? Why don’t you tell me all about it,” he said with an easy smile that I knew wasn’t showing how he truly felt in this moment.
It was all a show, a manipulation. I didn’t know how to respond with Dylan sitting there, he knew what I did, maybe not all the details but he knew, but my father didn’t know that Dylan knew this side of my life. If he had known that I told Dylan the truth about our family, he would have seen him as a security risk and found a way to eliminate him from my life. I had to tread carefully, he couldn’t know how much Dylan knew. So, I tried my best to ignore that he was even in the room. I wasn’t sure if my father knew the depths of our relationship or if he thought he was just the boy next door, I hoped that’s all he saw.
