Interlude: Gloria and V

Gloria trembled as she watched the news on Juan's TV. She'd called him for on the sly repeat performances three nights out of the seven since they'd met, and when the big man showed up unannounced after David got home from school and told them to pack their things for a week long vacation she'd assumed the worst and thought he'd come by to make them disappear. Make it look like they skipped town.

Dating in Night City was risky biz after all.

This, what she saw on the news, was almost worse. The media choppers showed live coverage of the absolute carnage left after an early morning gang war that burned across all of Santo Domingo. No one knew how many people were hurt, but the bodies in the street were everywhere along with destroyed vehicles and homes. Thousands of masked Valentinos were looting the area, and the mayor's office declared a state of emergency and immediate lockdown of the city, but the police locked themselves down too rather than try to fight this red and gold tidal wave of crime.

Not that they'd ever truly policed Santo Domingo. Not in as long as she could remember, but to let something like this happen was cowardly beyond words.

Juan had gotten them out before this happened, meaning he was high up in the gang enough to have the privilege of putting something like this at risk by getting people out of the area ahead of time. He'd seemed pretty high up the night of the club shooting, but it hadn't really sunk in at the time or since.

Now she got it. She'd been fucking one of the big men in the barrio. The kind of man that the guys she'd be afraid to date are afraid of.

Gloria almost jumped out of her skin when she heard the front door of Juan's backstreets home slam shut, but rather than the huge brown skinned man it was a woman of similar build and coloring to her.

"Hey there…" the other woman waved awkwardly when she saw Gloria sitting on the couch, "Is… ah… Juan back yet?"

Both women turned their heads when the sound of the microwave went off and her ten year old son pulled a plate of cheese enchiladas out. One benefit of her not-kidnapping was the refrigerator full of enough premade meals to feed five full grown men for a week. Or Juan apparently. They were even better than anything she could cook and half the takeout options in Santo Domingo.

"Oh sweet, are there any more in the fridge?" the woman asked her son, "I swear half of the girls Juan gets with are after his enchiladas and the other half want him to fix something."

David nodded slowly at the woman and sat back at the countertop on a barstool.

"Preem!" the woman squealed and dug into the refrigerator to pull out a sealed bag for herself.

"Who are you?" Gloria asked as the woman got the food heating.

"Shouldn't I be asking you that?" she chuckled, "I pretty much live here half the time."

Gloria chided herself about that, having noticed a few things around the bathroom, but in her defense her neighborhood was being raided on live TV.

"I'm Gloria, and that's my son, David." she introduced herself.

"V." the other woman grinned, "Juan's lover." she declared as she wiggled her eyebrows and fingers suggestively.

Gloria wanted to ask which half V fell under, food or repairs, but knew better than to antagonize a stranger. Plus it was super convenient how Juan just seemed to fix things whenever his hands were idle. The guy would go off to take a piss and come back five minutes later, having relieved himself and got the sink to stop leaking.

"So you're the milf that's got the Big Man all hot and bothered." V deduced, "Guy definitely has a type."

The pair of women looked fairly similar, not enough to be sisters, but easily cousins. Wide hips, round breasts, firm asses and thighs. If the younger woman got an auburn dye job people might easily mistake them from behind.

V pulled her enchiladas from the microwave and sat down next to David with a view of the TV.

She whistled in awe at the images broadcasted on the news, "Big Man never does anything small."

Gloria hesitated, but asked anyway, "How much of this was he responsible for?"

"I don't know all the deets, but it sounds like the Big Man pulled in all the info, made the plan, and had a big role kicking things off. Led the charge against some 6th Street shot caller or something like that." V answered between bites of cheesy enchilada.

Gloria put her face in her hands at the knowledge that her new lover was a criminal mastermind ghetto warlord. Turns out she had a type too.

V weighed and measured Gloria in her mind and smiled. Her and Juan had played with a lot of girls since they'd got together, leaving a trail of fucked silly bitches in their wake. This poor little milf wasn't ready for what was coming her way. No one ever was.

Though seeing the kind of carnage Juan gets up too might tip her off. Honestly V never felt like she was ready for the Big Man's moves either. The guy was a living legend to anyone who actually knew all the details, the incredulous nature of his feats served as a smokescreen for him that was slowly fading away. Soon enough they'd all know that Big Juan D. Welles was badder than Smasher nd could do things with his hands that would have Johnny and Morgan change their names.

And damn... his enchiladas are good.

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Someone mentioned I could hold off and do a double release on the 5th to make up for it. But I did a double release today to more fully establish my Chad authorship. Plus the interludes are typically quite short so it wasn't much skin off my back to do this on such a rainy day. It's amazing what I can do in a day when I don't get to spend two hours at the park with my sons.

You can support me and my family at

ko - fi . com / jmanm