Los Carnales

Chapter 7: The Perfect Set-Up

A/N: Hope y'all don't mind it changed the dates and set the story in 2006. The song playing later is You by Lloyd. It fits with the moment, so listen if you want to.

Ariel and Joel visual:

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May 23rd, 2006
Friday, 9:31pm - West Kendall, Miami, Florida

Being a gang leader (or a gang banger) wasn't all it was cracked up to be. Anyone in a gang who tells you they aren't afraid of anything is a big liar. When part of this lifestyle, you spend majority of it living in constant fear and paranoia. You spend a majority of it pretending: pretending to not care about anything or anyone, pretending to care about your homies, pretending you're not scared for your life and for your loved ones as well, pretending to be strong even in the times you are not, pretending to love and embrace this coldness and hard mentality you've trained yourself to have. There is a lot of suppressed trauma, too, and desensitization happening all over the communities. Witnessing somebody getting murdered or being around open fire would normally affect someone, but if you're from the hood it becomes an exciting topic to talk about—you're shocked but you're not really affected by it. It's nothing new to you.

After the death of her and Chris's parents, Lauren took the fearless and cold route. Lauren was chaotic and arrogant, Chris was sensible and calm. Her older brother valued family and looking out for one another; he taught Lauren that, as she didn't always value that before evolving into a better boss. True, she was fearless—most of the time at least. Lauren was still scared of a lot of things and cared very much about her gang family—those constantly around her and would lay down their life for her. She didn't wanna love anybody too much out of fear of losing them, she didn't want to give too much love out of fear of betrayal. Betrayal was VERY common in this world, she wouldn't put it past anyone. And so she made her members fear her with her loaded threats, lessons taught, and the way she reacted to anyone getting on her bad side. Los Carnales members feared Lauren more than they loved her; Lauren saw it better this way. Everybody listened, she hasn't been betrayed...not yet.

In order to be taken seriously, she had to earn a lot of street credit very young. She wasn't that bad of a kid, but she enjoyed petty crimes and fucking with people on occasion. Her big brother was always there to set her straight. He earned most of his street cred by following her, as he had no idea how to do it on his own in the beginning. Lauren was highly intelligent outside of school. She knew that the biggest rival gang was the government; she knew that both of them were running a parallel government, only they had bigger territory, a bigger army, bigger bosses, got away with more illegal shit, and was socially acceptable. Leading meant knowing the government and knowing the way the world works. She couldn't afford to be clueless. Lauren also couldn't afford to be scared of facing life in prison, poverty, or dying; something most government officials didn't have to worry about the way gangbangers had to.