❝Morrison is my archenemy and he only dies with my hands wrapped around his neck...❞
Carl John Morrison has never met any man who surpasses Aiden Black. He's a stuck-up prick. Easy on the eye. A lethal weapon.
And Carl has a weakness for him.
A tr...
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Ch. 7: After hours
After the late night clubs had closed, when the last revelers had struggled their way back home and the streets lay empty and dark, Aiden went out for a long drive. No particular destination in mind, just rolling away.
The streets remained largely empty with little to zero traffic, few buses, just occasional pedestrian along the way. Streets were lit only by the moon or an odd streetlight. The landscape had acquired some sorts of hyperrealism; roads turning into licorice black, golf club fields stretching broader, flatter than in day hours, the sky looked inkier, and on the verges, the leaves hung more gracefully and greener, glassier, too. He wound down his car window, welcoming the night-time in, and letting the air carry all that damp green rawness.
It seemed the night enhanced simple pleasure of solitude, and the quietness of an empty car made him focus on the pressure of his steering wheel beneath his fingertips, the pull between a clutch and accelerator, the glide from third to fourth. Driving always helped to free his mind.
Aiden’s love for late night driving began in his teens first as a passenger, riding to the coasts with Takashi and other Asian mafia members to receive Shishio Seoul-Oh’s shipment: usually drugs, firearms and sometimes illegally imported Japanese sports cars. Aiden had met Seoul-Oh senior in a distinctive kind of way.
When war in Iraq hit its peak, Aiden’s parents wanted one thing for their children—safety. Organizing forged American passports and a one way ticket to the country was something they had to do. However, the whole plan of escaping to America as a family went south at the airport when Aiden’s parents got captured by a group of solitary inmates who had broken out of prison with a sole purpose of taking over the Iraqi government. No one was to leave the airport for any reason.
Fourteen year old Aiden saw an opening and dragged his sister, Yasmin, to hitchhike a private jet which was about to take off when he saw how shit had hit the fan. Fortunately for them, the pilot was nice enough to let them board with him abroad.
“Welcome to America kids,” the good pilot stated, he was Arab. “This is where we go on our separate ways. Good luck.”
“We don’t have anywhere else to go.” Aiden pleaded pathetically. “Please take us with you.”
The pilot glanced at the two siblings with a look of pity in his eyes. “I’m sorry but there’s nothing else I can do for you two. Here, its twenty dollars and that’s all I have on me.”
“Please sir we don’t know anyone here.” Yasmin was crying and that was the pilot’s cue to leave quickly.
For two weeks and half, Aiden and Yasmin stayed in one of the busiest airport in the world, LAX—hoping and praying their parents would come find them. It was wishful of them but it kept the two Khalid siblings eager despite their disappointment every single day of witnessing a plane landing from wherever without their parents.
