STACCATO

SAGA 4

The Adelove family had their hands in every pocket. The king’s & the people’s, and they have maintained that status quo for 2 centuries, spanning four generations. Their ancestors have been some of the early slave emancipators of the 19th century and they had formed the first network of black drug peddlers across Europe, promising freedom and livelihood to former slaves and uninformed slaves.

A business of blood, bones and grit, cocaine was a strictly white business & commodity, while Mexicans and Italians controlled the supply and distribution. The highest position a black man could be then was that of user, thus there were no precedents to the bold business model of the early Adeloves.

The entire family history had been based on pioneering and breaking new bounds. In the year 1841, Adolph Addey had been the first white man in London to marry a black woman, a former slave, named “Loveth.” He needed to make a statement of the spectacle as evidence of a new era in civilization, thus, he changed the family name to “Adelove”. A significant point that gave impetus to a bloodline of industry giants and earth movers.

The drug game had boomed with black men in the employ. They brought the same energy that was characteristic of their field plowing days, and the pay was substantially significant compared to their wages when in bondage. The Adeloves were the first to pay a person of color more than a cent in those days, and by 1890, an average black man earned a dollar in the narcotics empire.

The initial fortune had been made in dealings with tyrants and warlords, slave owners and monarchs from Africa. The white dominated drug industry didn’t allow for much flexibility, so Adolph had been forced to venture out of the box, where he discovered an untapped ready market within the market.

African Kings needed to get high too, and the miracle of opium had yet been untangled then in their locality, thus the mystery substance was the gold of any merchant who had it in supply to befuddle the rigid and largely uneducated minds of the African elites, who were mostly dictators or slave traders.

Some slave owners initially frowned at the idea of using black couriers to deliver the white merchandise. They felt it made it appear too ordinary, too common place, too ‘un-white’. Adolph Adelove didn’t care, he would even take his wife on some business trips abroad, though such instances were few and far between. Her physical and especially mental safety were still very much matters of general concern in those days.

The family’s fortune continued to improve over the next 50 years and by then, inter racial marriage was almost a tradition in the family. You could encounter a white Adelove in the town square and come across a black one downtown, and you had to accord the same degree of respect for the latter, as to the tune of the former.

However, it wasn’t until BGM’S grandfather, Lawrence Adelove, discovered oil in the dark murky creeks of Libya in 1901, that the family name became a metaphor. The fortune quad-rippled and they became the news.

They built schools, churches, factories, town halls and even sponsored elections to basically every position in government. If you didn’t know the Adeloves, you were new in the world and not for long. They became leaders of thought, crisscrossing across industries for the most unassuming reasons and in the most flexible manners.

Sometimes, you might even forget that they were the Mafia. It was the Adeloves and everybody else, including the Italians, Colombians, even the ruthless Mexicans and unpredictable Russians.

Lawrence Adelove, of a darker hue than the usual white or light skin of his progenitors had been a little more conservative that the others. A tad less tolerant of the excesses and allowances of the new world order. A bold critic of the alternative lifestyle, he had several times given the men on his payroll hazing tests and checks to ascertain their masculinity. Anyone who failed, died.

A billionaire mafia Boss who had once orchestrated the impeachment of a UK prime minister in 1919, after the first world war. He maintained a sure & steady alliance with the shadows, patronized a lot of proxies, but always showed up where needed the most.

His son Richard had taken a different path, choosing instead a simple pastor’s life, but Kerri, his grandson however, had basically fed at his feet, learning everything he knew from the old man in his hey days.

Kerri became the ideal 21st century tycoon, controlling the global oil game and by extension many other industries. He could determine who would become the president of OPEC for the next 20 years at least, and he didn’t have to be alive in those years for that to happen.

He was in bed with the European Union, the United nations and NATO. Spending billions in different countries to further consummate the commercial control. Lawrence had taught him that anything one could afford was no longer expensive, and the price of power had to be viewed in such manner.

BLACK GOLD MAFIA came from a dream he had when he was 25, about seeing an oil well burning behind his backyard, the fire was fierce and fiery but he and the house weren’t burnt, instead the oil transformed into gold, and the fire died down, then he rose from the ashes, with the whole world bowing at his feet, and gold dripping from his body. His father had married a white southern American country girl from Kansas.

So he wasn’t even dark skinned, he actually passed for white but he was the BLACK GOLD MAFIA.

With a knack for pioneering like his fore-bearers, BGM had married a lawyer from Southwest Nigeria, making him the first in the family to tie the knot with a pure African descendant. Color was as far as his ancestors went in the race barter, he took it a notch higher to Culture & tradition. Even allowed his wife to dub the children with very African names in their contemporary world.

BGM was fearless. Anyone who didn’t like his choices could keep their opinions to themselves. No one dared question his decisions as pertaining his family. And he made corresponding moves to further amplify his stance.

He had sponsored the 1999 elections in his wife’s country, and had previously funded the National Democratic Alliance (NADECO), in a bid to usher in a fresh era of democratic governance. In reality, The NADECO leader had been his wife’s Uncle and when the latter had asked for help, BGM had not hesitated partly out of a burning desire to blaze on the family reputation of breaking boundaries, partly out of a need to control the still very young oil business in the country as of the time, and partly to spite his enemies and dazzle-on the onlookers. Just to have been able to say “ I DID IT”.

BGM was like that, he would carefully put apart pieces and perhaps put them back in place, just to make a point. Plot coups in countries to solidify a thought process or orchestrate a grand scheme that’ll take years to materialize, in his bid to prove someone wrong, or himself right.

However, it was a single outstanding event that turned BGM into a beast. An occurrence that changed the shape of his heart, changed the color of his mind and altered the pattern of his family. Even BGM couldn’t tell you the story, anyone who desires to know will have to be shown…