Page 30 of The Impact (Parachutes #3)

Vin gulped. He and Munch fronted $17,500 per pharmacy or doctor for 50,000 pills.

Whether M Box, K9, whatever. It was lab-created heroin that doctors prescribed for prime pain management.

Those same 50,000 pills sold at $30 a pill, street value, and that was a competitive price.

It was how Vin turned $17,500 to $1.5 million, monthly…

and that was times three labs. Vin was working on a fourth before he would walk away.

Tahli was pregnant and he’d made her a promise in return for her promising herself to him.

Just imagining the willpower it was going to take to walk away from the profitable business that he orchestrated made Vin physically nauseous.

He would have to be regular. Would have to go blindly into the legit landscaping business passed down from his father and still give Tahli the life she deserved.

She was the only person breathing he’d do it for, besides the one growing in her womb.

“Come on, tell me. Five dollars a pop? Ten? If so, you’re making a good penny.”

‘Try tripling that,’ Vin didn’t say. Instead…

“Something like that.”

Days later, Vin sat on a stool inside the walk-in safe he’d built behind the ‘his’ of their his and hers deluxe closets. New home. New wife. New child on the cusp. New secret room for his stash.

“Viiiiiiiiinnnn! You want Alfredo or scampi for the shrimp?! ‘Cause I kinda want scampi. Alfredo is making me sick!” Tahli called out from a distance as Vin tried not to lose count. 55, 56, 57…

“Do the scampi, baby love!”

58, 59…

64, 65, 66….

72, 81…104…

“I said—”

Vin flinched. Swiftly hid the straps of money in his hands behind his back, as if it made a difference. Like three out of the four walls weren’t stacked floor-to-ceiling. He watched her discovery.

Fuck.

Tahli’s lips parted, as her rapt eyes crept along the walls.

“I said scampi,” he tried to break her trance. Finally, she brought watery eyes to him.

“Dalvin,” she uttered. He gulped.

“Why?” she asked, shaking her head in visible disbelief.

Vin got it. He lived below his means, and even that was extremely comfortable.

He had one luxury car, one ordinary. Tahli had her luxury car.

They lived in a house in a great neighborhood, but not a mansion.

He dressed average, had some quality jewelry pieces but didn’t light up like a Christmas tree whenever he left the house.

The most he blew money on was a blackjack table.

And even that…Tahli had regulated. So, he got it.

Nothing about him screamed ‘I have a hidden room behind my closet with more money than a bank reserve’.

“Why do you have so much money?” Tahli asked a stupid, understandable question. Vin only looked off.

Of course, it was scary for her. Seeing this amount of money and being Black, had to feel like someone was coming to bust down their door soon.

“I mean, why… if you have this much…why can’t you stop now? Vin, this is…this is a lot of fucking money.”

He nodded, standing to cup her face in his big hands.

“It’s not enough. Not yet.”

Tahli scoffed like he was ridiculous.

“I know it sounds outrageous.”

“Oh, it is fucking outrageous,” Tahli agreed.

“I know. But I got one more thing.” One more Ohio-based lab. Vin was setting it up before handing it over to Munch.

“Then it’ll be enough.”

“Enough? Enough for what?” Tahli pushed, scouring the money again. Stacked and banded. Old faces and new.

“Enough for up to five kids to go to five Ivy League schools if they want to. Enough for those five kids to own five properties by the time they’re twenty-one.

Enough to maintain five two-million-dollar life insurance policies for them to pass down to their children.

Enough to pay off this house and buy the beach house you want.

And most important? Enough to maintain this lifestyle on a bare-minimum income if my pop’s business fails.

Enough for you to never have to worry. Enough for our children, and their children, to never have to worry.

Enough for me to die today…and none of you ever… ever…have to worry, Tahli.”

Tahli was a statue. “And I thought I was the planner.”

“I learned from the best,” he joked, giving her more credit than he should. Vin wasn’t dumb. Just reserved.

Still seemingly stuck, she shook her face.

“No other 25-year-old man thinks like you,” she muttered.

“No other 25-year-old man has you to think about,” he let her know. She sighed, eyes roaming the money again.

“Do you trust me?” He tested.

“This…isn’t about trust, Dalvin. This is about safety. We’re about to have a baby–”

“It’s always about trust. Do you trust me?”

“Yes,” she breathed, doubtless, and he pecked her lips.

“Go lie down. I’ll cook the scampi.”

Tahli shook her head. “I’m too hungry to let you fuck up my food. My job is to cook. Your job is to eat.”

Vin smirked. “That’s an order I can get behind. Come ‘ere.”

Tahli pinched her lip between her teeth, and when she stepped in front of him, Vin lowered the waistband of the knit shorts she liked to cook in.

“Babe, I have to cook,” Tahli moaned when he nibbled her stomach, and Vin could tell she was more starved for his touch than her next meal.

“I won’t be long.” He placed one leg over his shoulder, splitting her pussy lips with his tongue. Felt her stomach clench against his forehead as her body wriggled in his hands. “Time me.”

“Vin,” Tahli sputtered. Her body tensed, then slackened when he circled her bulb.

Tugging it between his lips, Vin flicked her button with pressure.

With two hands on his head, Tahli bucked her fleshy fruit into his mouth and Vin massaged her ass cheeks, bathing every crevice of her sweetness with his tongue.

She didn’t have to say it; her cries alone told Vin that getting her pussy devoured in a room full of money did something to Tahli.

“Fucking. Daddy. God!” She shrilled in the only way she would declare him as such. When he ate or fucked that shit out of her.

Vin double-palm slapped her soft ass, angling his head to consume her fully.

Snaking two hands under her t-shirt, his fingertips fondled her beaded nipples, as her clit skipped in his mouth.

Snuck two fingers into her tightness, and felt her hot walls clutch them greedily.

Didn’t stop until her honey coated his throat.

When her shorts were back on and she wobbled off to prepare dinner, Vin restarted his count with Tahli’s aftertaste lingering on his tongue. 107…108…123…

Vin cracked his knuckles and rang the bell.

Tahli’s little house was about an eight-minute drive from the one double its size that he’d gifted her fifteen Christmases ago.

The one they’d brought three babies back to from the hospital.

The ones they’d christened every inch of with rabid lovemaking.

The one he was preserving like a Gilded Age historic landmark, hoping she’d return someday.

“Hey,” she blew out like she’d jogged to the door. She didn’t need to jog to the door. She could crawl like a fucking turtle through these shorts halls, and it still wouldn’t take long.

“I’m still confused by your choice of housing.”

“I like it. It has character. It’s me.”

“But it’s not just you. It’s them. You considered what they had to adjust to?” Vin motioned his head behind him to the kids still gathering themselves from the car.

“Oh, our poor privileged children. They lost a thousand square feet that they didn’t need. Vin…this is a million-dollar home. It’s not a shack.”

Vin licked his lips, eyes scanning Tahli in the tiny knit shorts she always changed into to cook, paired with a wrinkled tee that her melon tits rose high enough for him to glimpse her belly button.

“Hi.” Vin finally pierced his eyes into hers. She didn’t participate in their thing . Only smiled past him.

“Go ahead. Wash your hands. Dinner’s on the stove.” She rubbed Milo’s head as he passed, and Dali breezed by.

“Bye, Daddy,” his baby Terran said again. Vin leaned down, kissing her pillowed cheek long and hard. Then again, when he thought about how much he’d miss her in an hour.

“Bye, baby. I’ll see you tomorrow at your recital.”

“Okay. Hi, Mommy.”

Tahli smiled. “Hi, munchkin.” When the kids were inside, Tahli met his waiting stare.

“T might not eat a lot. I fed her before we left.”

“I told you I was cooking them dinner, Vin. Why would you feed her?”

“She said she was hungry,” he shrugged. “I’m not letting my baby girl leave me hungry.”

“And you know if you hadn’t told me, she wouldn’t. She would have eaten twice.”

Vin snorted. “That’s cool. I told you, I was a chubby, greedy-ass kid. She’ll be alright. She’s perfect. How can she not be? Look where she came from.” Tahli shifted her weight.

“Can you stop?”

“Stop what?”

“Looking at me like I’m naked.”

Vin’s gaze trekked down the road before locking on her again.

“Tahli, it’s been 140 days since I’ve slept in the bed next to you. 139 days since you kissed me goodbye. Baby love…” Vin shook his head with a scoff. “You gotta give me something. I can’t look at you?”

“I don’t have to give you shit, Dalvin.”

“I know. But it’d be appreciated. Especially given the circumstances.”

Her eyes rolled like she didn’t want to address the punk-ass pretty-boy elephant in the room.

“Is that why you sent Vanessa and Abby to the door the last two times I came to drop the kids? So, I couldn’t look at you?”

She fired those slanted eyes his way, and Vin’s dick jumped. “That’s smothered chicken I smell?” He squinted at the aroma of one of his favorites, and Tahli’s mouth buttoned.

“Every time that I think I can be cordial with you, you say something that diminishes the gravity of what you’ve done, and I just hate you all over again.

” Tahli had always been expressive and emotionally intelligent…

to an extent. “And I don’t want to hate you, Dalvin. You’re the father of my children.”