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Misha, hair pulled back in a sleek ponytail, wore a black, strapless, Calvin Klein column dress with spike-heeledManolo Blahnik sandals. As always, she produced a diva’s attitude to match her drop-dead gorgeous look and worked a calculated, feline, almost sexual strut like nobody’s business.

    An assortment of exotic sports cars, Range Rovers, and limousines crowded the valet lanes. Jermaine Dupri, Damon Dash of Roc-A-Fella Entertainment, Nas and Kelis, Xhibit, Lisa Raye, Alicia Keys, virtually all of the artists on the LTL label, Jamie Foxx, Jay-Z, Snoop Dogg and his sizeable entourage, Will Smith and Jada Pinkett-Smith, Queen Latifah, LL Cool J, Fat Joe and members of Terror Squad, and a host of Los Angeles Lakers and Clippers were spotted in the incoming crowd. Keshari paused and smiled for the cameras, causing the cluster of photographers who’d received access passes to shoot the event to flash shot after shot in a frenzy, knowing that it was a rare opportunity to get her to pose for pictures.
    The media, as well as the public, were completely mesmerized by Keshari Mitchell’s mystique. She remained something of an enigma in the industry. In a business where entertainers and record executives thrived on feeding their huge egos by being seen, Keshari seemed most content steering clear of a lot of personal media attention. She promoted her artists and her record label through an extremely competent executive team, she allowed a magazine or television exclusive from time to time that depicted her meteoric rise to professional success, her attorneys sending a very specificlist of topics and questions to the interviewer’s network or magazine in advance that Keshari absolutely would not discuss, and she worked to keep the rest of her life entirely private, which only made the media and the public hungrier to find out more about who she was.
    In the beginning, as Keshari and her newcomer record label began to rapidly achieve success, a few rumors circulated that the beautiful, Wharton-educated record mogul might have an organizedcrime affiliation. Keshari’s attorneys and public relations team threatened multimillion-dollar libel suits against virtually every form of entertainment media on the market before a story could ever be fully researched and drafted to reach the public and, thus far, no other renegade journalist had ever ventured into that territory again. Keshari was bound and determined that Larger Than Lyfe Entertainment would only be seen as the completely legitimate business enterprise that it was and anything else about her life that was not associated with her record label would never get the opportunity to be served up for public consumption.
    A handful of rappers in the industry did know that Keshari was connected…very connected…and it was a subject that none of them dared to touch. One of the biggest codes of the streets was SILENCE and they knew that talking too much could very easily jeopardize their lives. It wasn’t just about exposing Keshari Mitchell. Exposing her also, ultimately, exposed her very dangerous business allies.
    An elevator arrived at lobby level and whisked Keshari, Misha and Keshari’s bodyguards to the rooftop’s ultra-chic Skybar. The record label had booked Skybar, the outdoor living room and the pool area for their party that night and a remixed track by Rasheed the Refugee had the heads of the men bobbing back and forth and the women swiveling their hips to the beat as bottles of Cristal and Courvoisier circulated. Waiters passed through the crowd with appetizers and decadent, miniature desserts. Gift bags containing shiny, platinum-colored iPod minis, programmed with tracks from Rasheed the Refugee’s debut and sophomore albums, along with tracks from his now certified platinum third CD, were passed out to the VIP guests as they arrived at the party.
    “Girl-l-l,” Misha grinned, “you do know how to represent your label’s name. Who put this