Fate

Chapter 1

PART ICHAPTER ONE

Vince

Then...

"Spread your feet, boy." The cop kicked Vince's legs open before he even had a chance to spread them.

Another cop car pulled up, joining the other three that were already there. Vince was not even supposed to be here tonight. He knew when the guys showed up riled up about what had happened at school earlier that day it was a bad idea to buy booze and hang out. He'd already said he was out but at the last minute decided to join them.

Sure enough, as soon as a few of them got buzzed, they started talking about walking the two blocks from the abandoned car lot where they'd been hanging out to their high school and crossing out the offending tags they were so pissed about.

Now here he was face down on the hood of a cop car as a cop frisked him roughly. Most likely, he would be thrown in jail for vandalism. He hadn't even been one of the ones doing the tagging. In fact, he'd been the one telling them they were stupid for doing it.

They didn't call themselves a gang, but they may as well have because they sure as fuck acted like stupid thugs sometimes—like tonight, for example. The guys were all pissed because someone had tagged several of the more noticeable walls at school with the word Basset: the city just over on the other side of their high school.

Alfonso, one of Vince's friends since childhood, had gotten in a fight over a girl with someone from a Basset gang not too long ago. They'd all been there at the party, so everyone took the tagging personally. Everyone agreed they had to cross the tag out. As stupid as Vince thought it was, he agreed to go out of loyalty to his friends, but he refused to do any tagging. It didn't matter now because they were all in trouble just the same.

"What's your name, boy?" The heavyset cop asked Vince from behind him as he handcuffed him.

"Vincent." He squeezed his eyes shut for a second and thought of how disappointed his parents would be. The cop turned him around so he could face him.

"Vincent what?"

"Moreno."

"How old are you, Moreno?"

"Sixteen."

"You in a gang?"

"No sir."

"You sure about that?" The cop asked gesturing toward his friends.

Vince glanced over at Alfonso who was now sitting on the curb handcuffed then at the rest of them who were still lying face down on the ground with their legs spread and their hands behind their heads. Not a gang his ass.

"Yeah, I'm sure."

"You were the only one without a marker in your possession or doing any tagging when I drove up. Why's that? You the look out, Moreno?"

"No sir."

The cop smiled, crossing his arms in front of him. "So you hang out with a bunch of punks who come and cross out another gang's tags, but you're not in a gang?"

"No, sir, I'm not." As stupid as that sounded, he was sticking to his story. The last thing he needed was to get labeled a gang member by the local authorities. For months he'd been trying to straighten his shit out.

After his brother Lorenzo had gotten caught shoplifting and his mother blamed Vince for being a bad influence even though he'd never stolen a thing in his life, he swore to her he'd straighten out.

Vince didn't even let Lorenzo hang out with him and the guys anymore if he even thought they'd be up to anything that smelled like trouble—like tonight. He was so glad now he'd refused to let Lorenzo tag along. Being arrested would be bad enough, but getting his younger brother swept up into this mess would've been a million times worse.