THE INMATE: Yard Debt (Ch.6)

** Sunday 13, 5:57 a.m. Abandoned warehouse. **

—Well, well, well... look who we have here...

Dante smoked calmly, sitting on a huge wooden crate.

He wore black pants with a belt and boots dirty with sand and lime. He was bare-chested, showing, to anyone who could see him, marked and bulging pecs with soft hair, worked abs, but with a bit of slight fat, and strong arms where violent veins stood out. He wore a silver chain around his neck matching a watch on his wrist. Despite being 38 years old, his hair dyed white and slicked back with gel made him look older. The scar on his eyebrow and his most striking feature, the heterochromia of his blue and black eyes, ended up giving him a violent but attractive air.

—I wasn't expecting us to meet again —Dante continued, smoking slowly—, but I won't deny that you've livened up my night. I was already bored of playing with the other toy...

Dante took another long drag and blew the smoke toward the man in front of him. The man, kneeling, with a black cloth bag over his head that prevented him from seeing where the smell of tobacco was coming from and with zip ties binding his wrists behind his back, tried to stay calm, although his heart was beating so hard that it was difficult to hide that he was scared shitless.

His mouth burned and bled, as did his ribs, which made it impossible for him to breathe normally. The blows had only been a warning. And to top it off, he felt the persistent pressure of a trigger pointing at his head.

Dante's right-hand man, Markus, a man tall as a strong cypress and with worked musculature, held without the slightest nerve a gun that was not the first time he had fired. His presence was the personified image of strength: dark skin with his hair in braids combed back, dark eyes, black hair, two-day beard, various tattoos, and to cover his perfect body, just jeans and black boots.

On the other side of the hooded man was Jairo. He was shorter, not reaching five foot nine. Handsome, with skin as dark as his companion, curly hair, and dressed in a T-shirt that, if not for the patches of sweat and yellowish dirt covering it, could be guessed to be white. He also wore navy blue jeans and sneakers. Despite his short stature, he was, perhaps, the most violent one in that abandoned warehouse.

His fists dripped with blood that was not his own, and that he had drawn by beating the hooded man.

The latter, with a cloth over his head that prevented him from seeing everything, was only capable of begging.

—Please, Dante, don't hurt me —he said between sobs, aware that the beating one of his henchmen had given him was only a fair welcome—. Listen to me, I have...

—SILENCE— Dante shouted —Pulga, bring the champagne. Let's celebrate the arrival of our friend —he said, referring to Jairo.

The henchman disappeared at the same time Dante jumped down from the crate he was on.