Red

CHAPTER 50.

Lorenzo

The blunt sits between my fingers, the Cuban paper warm against my skin, the engine from the Roll Royce phantom rumbled softly beneath the paper, beaneath me.

My grip sink into the weight of the weed packed under the thin wrap. Heat throbs through it, slow and pulsing. What did they say about power...ahhh it was ruthless, darkened to ruin, ruin to change.

My lips parted, puff of gray coil drifted out, power thrumming through me, a change so inevitable that darkness crawled over my face, settled into me like it had always belonged there and it did.

I was seated in the dark corner of the phantom, swallowed by shadow, consumed by pitch black. Smoke cut through the air, drifting, and curling. The car lacked light. No head lights. No roof glow. Nothing to announce us. Only the blur of Spain road beneath the car as it sped up.

The phantom silver-metallic floor a large space before me, easy to swallow away blood and dirt. Axel pop a blunt into his mouth and lit it in smoke.

His large muscular dark skin frame dressed in a double breasted suit, designed with one side in white while the other side was gray, matcing his eyes.

His hair was cut into a fade and a wave length. With black rings on his fingers.

Cirano sped up the car, the wind whipping past the opened door, driving us through a back road in Madrid in Spain towards a gala event that I wasn't invited to but accepted the invitation all the same.

Fire's large back sharpen, copper red hair cut into a low fade buzz, a zig-zag neatly cut at the side of his head. His strands fluttered wildly as the wind slammed into the vehicle.

Flickering streetlights pop in and out without warning, crawled over his side profile, sharpening his jaw, the muscles straining underneath as he chuckled.

He wore a double breasted dark green suit with a white shirt underneath, his hands clenching, fingers tightening around the ankles of the man who was hanging half way out the open door. Only the man's lower body lay down on the cold metallic floor.

His upper body dragged just below the car, shoulders skimming on the asphalt, his neck straining, his hands flaired around to steady himself uselessly as the road slammed into the side of his face, bursting his left ear.

The ear was torn ragged at the edges, blood seeped into the folds of the cartilage. Tiny flecks of tissue clung to the ragged rim where his ear used to be.

Blood splattered across his face, mouth yanked wide open, stained with snot and crawling spit, the world behind him moving fast, his black-gray hair whipping across his pale green watery eyes.

He screamed.

I drew the blunt to my lips, and stretch my left leg, just the tip of my Sinatra black shoe emerging through the darkness. Just to let my presence known.

"You think he's loyal?" I asked with my mouth puffing clouds of smoke, the air powdery ash, as the darkness masked my frame.

Fire chuckled, letting go of Santo's ankle. Artem's logistics lieutenant. Santo Calderon was responsible for the movement of everything illegal from routes, shipments, drop times and the man assigned to protect them. Drugs, weapons, trafficked bodies nothing moved without Santo signing off on it.

Santo was the movement and Xavi was the one who moves the money and image. Without these two, Artem becomes exposed and vulnerable.

Showing up at my enemies gala function was a warning disguise as vulnerability. Over the past seven months since Red vanished, Artem hadn't rushed to destroy me, he took his time to rotted me.