An Angel's Vice

Chapter 5 - Qué Lío!

South Beach, Miami

"Lo, I'm going to be real with you and hope you don't hold it against me or start trippin'. Don't get the wrong idea about me when I tell you this but...Chino was right. What are you doing in Miami if that's the way you wanna go about things? I did my thing and looked for guys to back you up, even the really good ones I could personally vouch for, and you know what they all told me? They won't follow someone who's in hiding, who is marked, abandoned her crew, and won't go out her way to do some dirt and put a motherfucker's lights out when they diss her. No one's gonna back you up because they think you're soft. And personally...I agree. I hate that I do but looking at you now...you're not the Lauren that is calling the shots or delivering them...you're the Lauren that is running and hiding from them. And I don't know what world you think you're tryna be a part of this time but that shit don't exist here. You're either in or you're out. And if you wanna be out, well then leave this city."

"You wanna protect Candy? You don't even have a crew to your name. And besides, even if you weren't around and you never came back to Miami, Candy would be just fine with who she got protecting her right now. So what can YOU do, honestly? What exactly are you bringing to the table? You wanna pull her out of that life and have her renounce everything she's worked hard for and earned—HER street cred and control? With all due respect, good luck to you, but that ain't happening neither. I'm coming to you with this shit out of love. You've always had my back and set me straight since day fucking one. Without you, I wouldn't be here. This is me returning the favour. Just listen to me, Lo. You gotta make a comeback."

Standing right across the street from the club formerly owned by Los Carnales, now shut down and under renovations for a new establishment, it's unpleasantly surreal to watch as locals and tourists pass through with clean slates and go as far as smiling, oblivious or indifferent to the horrifying crime scene that occurred here eight months ago. How anyone else can spend time around this block and not suffocate from the death that surrounds the air and strips away any element of life to give, or buckle at the knees and scream until their lungs gave in is a privilege they're unaware that they have. Because as Lauren stands there, chest rising rapidly in heaves, crushed by the weight of her past, puffy eyes brimming with tears, trembling fists clenched at her sides, numb with tingling sensations prickling at her skin from head to toe because she forgot how to breathe steadily, she sees everything unraveling before her eyes all over again.

She sees the blue mustang cruising down the street with its windows lowering, her crew blissfully hanging around one moment then anticipating an attack the next that even they could not have possibly foreseen going down the way it did, the spatters and bullet holes that redecorated the doors and the thick flood of crimson on the concrete ground. Lauren sees what she does almost every night of the week in her episodic terrors since that day: Aleesia's body spinning as an entire clip gets emptied into it and rips her apart before plunging to the ground, the look of denial as she she lay dying and the fight to stay here with Lauren in her eyes before they go blank.

It's going to happen again, that one familiar voice in her head tells her. You couldn't even protect Aleesia, you're not going to be able to protect Candy. And Candy is in more danger than Aleesia was—more at risk, has more enemies, and more eyes on her. It'll happen again and you can't stop it.

Once upon a time, on this very same strip on Ocean Drive, Lauren lingers in front of a lounge and slipped inside to see about one girl but ended up tangled in the gravity of another. She met that girl inside of one lounge and lost her outside of another. Lauren, despite her current emotional state, theorises that perhaps all will be lost in the same place it is found and next up must be the library with Candy, where all stories begin and end. Just maybe.