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What we didn't know, of course, was that the cancer was growing while we went on with our lives. Giovanni seemed to be everywhere now, determined not to just have a finger in every pie, but his whole hand. He had become so involved in running the record label that Adonis had given him complete access to all checking and credit card accounts.
Honestly, it was probably Ellis Garrett, the young producer and vocalist who had been working with Adonis and his groups, who first started noticing something off with Giovanni. He would bring little things to Adonis's attention, examples of how Giovanni was manipulating people or trying to control too many aspects of the business.
Ellis told us that some of the other employees in the studios were having run-ins with Giovanni and were threatening to quit. "He's just real mean and controlling," he told Adonis. "There's a lot of tension at work. He yells at my writers and engineers and even at me. I don't think I can work under these conditions, man."
It was true that when Adonis first started the record label, he had some of his friends working for him. Giovanni had slowly gotten rid of all of Adonis's friends. Now, according to Ellis, Giovanni had also started telling people that they shouldn't call Adonis directly anymore-they should call him instead. He was acting more like Adonis's bodyguard than a personal assistant. When one of El's engineers went to Giovanni's house to pick something up, he had been startled to discover that the walls were covered with Adonis's photos.
"I just think it's kind of weird how Gio is trying to get in between you and everybody else," El told Adonis. "I for real think that he's obsessed with you, Adonis. And I'm not gonna lie, I'm a little scared of him."
El's concerns should have been a red flag for us. As always, though, Adonis and I were so busy that we overlooked all of the signs showing us that Giovanni was truly becoming unhinged. Truthfully, El was opinionated, like most artists, and we figured that like most artists he didn't want anyone telling him what to do. When it came to Giovanni and Ellis and their conflicts, we really didn't think there was anything going on beyond a couple of people having too much attitude and going at each other.
Adonis, meanwhile, still trusted Giovanni. In fact, he was glad to have Giovanni take calls and otherwise run interference for him at the studio. He even gave Giovanni a key to our house, which I wasn't a big fan of, but ended up just letting it go.
In addition to keeping up with his intense performance schedule, Adonis was becoming more and more determined to get his record label and studio up and running in Jamaica, and Giovanni was helping him. Since Giovanni was fluent in Spanish and Patwa (Jamaican Creole), he would go into business meetings in Jamaica with Adonis-something I would have been only somewhat helpful at, since I did speak Spanish fluently, but I knew nothing about Patwa and wasn't too keen on the business side of the music business.
Gradually, though, even Adonis and I started noticing that Giovanni was becoming clingier and odder. Whenever Adonis was in Hampton, Giovanni would try to insist on going everywhere with him. Or Giovanni would call Adonis at odd hours and tell him, "We gotta fly down to Montego Bay, because so-and-so wants us to have a meeting. We gotta go right now, man!" Then he would get irritated because Adonis wouldn't jump when he said "jump."
Adonis, though, was loyal-especially to anyone in his close circle of family and friends. He tried to shield Giovanni for a long time. When El said that certain employees were complaining about Giovanni, Adonis responded, "Man, they're probably just complaining because I made Gio the boss and they don't wanna listen to him. Oh, well, that's too fucking bad."
Besides, Giovanni always did everything in his power to make what seemed like his undying devotion to Adonis abundantly clear-especially when he gave Adonis a ring shaped like one of the rocks and minerals and gemstones that Adonis collected.
Yes, you read that correctly.
My hard, tough, quote unquote Boss Playa of a husband, Adonis Alexander Quiñones, was a rock collector. It was something he'd done since childhood, and somehow managed to keep up once he was busy on the road.
He had gotten his first official one-hundred piece box collection a couple of years earlier on one of our trips to Miami. We were staying in the Intercontinental Hotel there and, as always, Adonis insisted on going into the gift shop. There, he saw his first mineral-an obsidian rock. He fell in love with its smooth, surface and its rich, blackish green color. He said it went with his aesthetic.
For some reason, Adonis was fascinated by that rock, so I bought it for him. He loved it, and from then on, I continued to buy rocks and minerals, especially obsidian ones for him whenever I saw them. I think that he was intrigued because, to him, these rocks had to go through the hells of nature in order to get their final beautiful form. Adonis's rock collection became his pride and joy. He eventually started displaying the collection in our house, in glass-fronted cabinets-probably thirty or forty one-hundred piece boxes in all.
Giovanni knew this, of course, so when some of the staff members at the label wanted to pool their money to buy Adonis a gift for his 27th birthday, he told them to give the money to him and he would have a ring made that he knew Adonis would love. The ring was beautiful-it was gold, Adonis's favorite, with a huge diamond mixed with an obsidian rock in the middle. Fifty-two tiny, glittering diamonds were embedded in the rock; on the fourteen-karat band itself, the letters "AQ" were engraved three times.
"I bought this for you, man," Giovanni said, never mentioning how he had asked the other coworkers to contribute to the gift, or the fact that he had charged the $3,000 price for it on Adonis's corporate American Express account.
Adonis was psyched with the gift and started wearing it right away. "Look, baby!" he said when he showed it to me. "That shit is tight, Sel! Isn't it just amazing, baby? See how thoughtful Giovanni can be?"
