BLACK VOSS: ACT 1

10

The dining room was quiet, only filled with hushed looks and stares. The family sat around in anticipation, waiting for Lucio to speak, who sat at the head of the table.

A man scoffed, "Can you get on with it! Why are there other people in my house?"

Lucio's face twitched, "No hello, Dante?"

Said man just grunted, letting his long locs fall over his face. Despite living in the house, he had missed the opportunity to meet Andre and the message about them being guests. He was too caught up in his uncle's office to care for what his cousin had to say.

"What's going on, Lucio?" Isa changes the subject, hand folded on the glass table.

Lucio let out a sigh, "I may have gotten into some trouble."

"Trouble?" Tai huffed, "what trouble?"

"It's... DLG." Lucio's words shook the whole room, and clouds of fear and disappointment were in the air.

"What the fuck did you do!?" Dante screamed, his voice shaking the chandelier above.

Everyone else seemed to cower at his volume, his siblings mouths going shut. All but Lucio. He stood firm, his face unmoving.

"Don't blame me, blame DLG!" He spat at his cousin, "He was the one who broke the code."

"It's because of Andre, isn't it?" Isa mumbled, "he's involved."

The man answered their suspicions, "Yes."

Lucio knew he had to be honest with his family about affairs, especially with them being away from so long. But sometimes, he wishes he could lie. The Voss and Grants have been at a truce for over fifty years, being able to coexist together without incidents. But Lucio may have ruined it all in one day, over his own hubris.

Everyone at the table's face fell, they knew how powerful the other gang had become in recent years. Their territory is growing greater than theirs in the last few years.

"What happened?" Isa didn't want to argue, despite her being the youngest of them all, she was the most rational.

"It started four months ago," Lucio began, "I saw someone getting robbed so I interfered."

He wasn't going to tell the other about how they actually met, it would complicate things too much to know that Celia just wanted a playdate.

"So heroic..." Darren teased, even though it wasn't the right moment.

"So, you save someone from getting robbed, how does this involve DLG?" Tai scoffed, her brow knitted together.

"They robbers must have been DLG, I didn't know they were at the time," Lucio tried to defend, "All I saw was assault, it was on common ground so I had the right to interfere if it was a stranger."

"I still don't understand why a random person is in our house!" Dante was getting impatient, his cousin was not answering the questions he wanted. "None the less with his children."

Lucio paid him no mind, "I took him in."

Isia mumbled, "So?"

Lucio looked down, "His place was trashed by DLG, an order that had to have come from its leader. It was clear Andre was being targeted."

"Well, that explains nothing," Darren blurted out, "Why would the truce be broken?"

"I don't know..." he hated to say this, "he's starting some war over some petty contract."

"Contract?" It was Xavion who spoke this time, making Lucio freeze.

"I was making a deal at a club in neutral territory," he said, "Andre worked there and as a joke I had him look over the contract. But he found some discrepancies, so I canceled the deal."