“—fallout from last night’s town hall is unprecedented as Vought faces pressure to address Stormfront’s rumored ties to th—”Eyes ragged with orange snapped open, TV volume clawing him out of sleep as Tito snapped himself upright. He blinked hard, breath coming heavy only to realize it was just some anchor running her mouth in the dark of the apartment, voice loud enough to scrape his skull on the way up.“—ime like this, how do we know any of this even re—”
A sound like gravel over concrete rolled out of him, Tito letting his eyes slide shut for a long second. …fuck.
No chance he was going back to sleep anytime soon, not with the smell of burnt carpet thick in his nose. That, and the other stink.
The one that came off his own skin these days, like pork left too long over coals mixed in with somebody’s crib after the firemen gave up and left.“—nverified, and nothing short of slander, rea—”One eye peeked open again, Tito hunting hard for the remote he swore he’d been holding before he’d knocked out. He knew he had it somewhere, right in his hand; he remembered that much at least.Of course, now it was gone. Of fucking course…
So for a second, he just sunk his shoulders deeper into the leather as the anchor's voice washed past him without a single word landing at all where it was supposed to.
"—Vought CEO Stan Edgar expected to issue a formal statement within the hour regarding Stormfront and h—"
A snort left him. Pendeja.
He didn't give a good goddamn what happened to the lightning bitch. So, she was some fucking Nazi or whatever? That was Vought business.
Not his fire to feed.A grunt still slipped out of him, though, the whole shitshow just a little bit funny; the new girl getting outed live in front of the whole damn country. It was one thing to see up close, but with a thousand cameras catching every second of her face folding in with nothing to hold it up?
That was comedy right there.
Ugly comedy, but still comedy.
Still, somebody else could mop that shit up.
Tito had his own mess.
Charcoal-black fingertips found the remote by feel, thumb hitting the power button through the couch cushions. All of a sudden, the room went dark and quiet.
Only thing bothering to break that up was the AC unit wheezing on like it had a chance of winning the war against the heat coming off his own skin.
With another grunt, Tito found his feet, leaving behind the leather sectional that had cost him as much as his mama’s old car. Brand new and imported, with some designer name the salesgirl said like he was supposed to know it.He only bought it cause she had an ass on her and opened those legs for him in her car.
Didn’t mean shit now anyway.
Not with the cushions already gone yellow-brown and warped where his body sat every night, a plastic tag still stuck to one armrest he'd never bothered peeling off.
This was his life now, Big Tito on the up-and-up over the last year; expensive furniture and floor-to-ceiling windows looking down over Washington Heights. Better than some below-ground spot by some piss-stinking alley, but it ain’t mean nothing.
Better didn’t mean clean.
Mostly it just meant he got to look at the same neighborhood from higher up.
Twelve steps took him to the kitchen, faint scorched prints behind him on the carpet same as always. Scorch marks fanning out across one wall slid past his eyes like they didn’t exist, Tito too used to them to even blink. The takeout boxes stacked three deep on marble counters were harder to ignore but he managed it.
Call Rico and his mama to come clean the shit up. That was the plan for later, anyway. Right now, he had more important shit to deal with.
The fridge door came open with a yank, copper-rimmed eyes staring at half the shelves gutted out and replaced with cheap medical racking; all of it jammed in right next to a case of Coronas he never drank anymore.
Shit didn’t matter either.
His eyes were locked dead on what did — six vials of the chunky red stuff lined up neat as little soldiers.
Behind them all sat one small half-empty vial — the rest of the original blue he’d kept for himself since the start. He hadn’t bothered touching anymore of it, not since Rico first put that first vial in his hand back in that basement. Two fingers did touch up against the glass sometimes.Only sometimes.After a hard day.
Or a bad fight with that fucker.
He ain’t really know why, either. Only thing he could compare it to was how he’d been taught to cross himself growing up, except Tito hadn't been to church since before any of this and didn't plan on going back.
The needle on the side of the fridge came out, same as a vial of Rojo. A few seconds later, Tito stood at the counter with only a full needle turning over and over his black fingers and cracked nails. A whole-ass vial.
A way higher dose than he’d started with months back, a dose higher than the shit that turned two of his own boys to jelly trying to do what he did.
Tito grit his teeth as the needle went in clean, a quick jab in the neck as hard as he could manage with no shake in his hand at all. His thumb came down hard.
The hit was no different.
Like somebody set a bomb off in his head and heart at the same time.A hand found the counter on instinct, granite cracking under his fingertips before he even realized he was gripping it at all. Everything went black for a loud heartbeat, then orange as bright as the sun, then a red so deep it was almost no different from the black.
Something in him was fighting, fighting hard — old blue against new red, somehow keeping him upright instead of tearing him clean apart the way it tore apart everybody else who went too hard on this shit — to lock down his body, to keep him strong as it always did.And, like always, it won that fight.
After what felt like an hour of explosions going off inside him, Tito let his head roll back with a long breath coming out through his nose. Twin tongues of orange burst out with it, licking a fresh black line into the ceiling paint. …heh.
“Yeah….” Joints popped down his back, the sound like firecrackers as he stretched with his mouth wide open, skin webbed with thin lines of orange where his veins should be glowing bright for a second before settling back into a deep bronze under the skin. “That's the shit right there.”He was stronger now.
He knew it, like he knew how many fingers he had without looking.
Stronger, tougher, faster probably. Not as fast as that fucker…
A hiss slid out of him as Tito grit his teeth, hands out to grip the counter again as his veins went brighter again for just a split-second. A-Train.
The name came up on its own, same as it always did right after a hit, uninvited and impossible to shake loose.
Fuckin’ A-Train. Yeah, he called him that.
Not like he gave two and a half shits what the news called him now; Blushift, Zoom, whatever…
Didn't matter none to Tito. All he cared about was the four warehouses hit this month, almost two dozen of his guys sitting in a hospital bed or a cell right this second, territory melting every damn week, and no matter how many times — every single time — Tito went at that macaco himself, he had to turn and run.
Each time, he dosed a little higher trying to close a gap that never once closed. His body kept the pace for him, at least; fingers going from soot-dusted to something more like pure coal, the orange in his veins showing through the seams more often than not.
He knew the side effects, though.
Replacing his furniture, being careful with metal…
Sometimes he’d even caught himself talking to the rest of that little blue vial out loud, more than once, before he could stop his own mouth from doing it.
His phone buzzed against the counter and those orange eyes slid shut as he remembered what today was supposed to be. Fuck.
Now, he needed to find a shirt that still fit.