Angelica Cortez – Angel to her friends – is drop dead gorgeous. Long, brown hair, free flowing and wild, big doe eyes that sparkle with passion, and a curvaceous figure that turns heads wherever and whenever. To supplement her God-given physical attributes she wears tight, revealing clothes – faded blue jeans that look like they were sprayed on, white shirts knotted above her toned stomach to accentuate the swell of her breasts – amongst those girls that use their sexuality as a weapon, she’s the A-bomb.
So if you’re a red-blooded male, what’s wrong with this picture? There’s just one problem – Angel’s a gangbanger that runs with the Santa Ana Ghosts, which means she’s involved with all the drug dealing, duplicity, and casual violence that gang membership entails. Her significant other is the ominously named Lunatic, the boss of the Ghosts, and the two of them have a six-year old daughter called Gracie. Back in the day, when Hunter was still doing his whole protect and serve thing with the L.A.P.D., Angel was one of his paid informants, and when she finds herself in a desperate jam a few years later, she turns to him for help. Gracie’s gone missing and Lunatic knows more than he’s letting on. Gang tensions are spiralling out of control and the city’s about to go up in flames – can Hunter find Angel’s daughter in time to avert a gang war?
Stone doesn’t smile much as he hasn’t got much to smile about. First, he lost his job as a bouncer after punching out his boss, then he lost his apartment, then things really started turning to shit. Once he’d climbed back out of the bottle of whisky that he’d been slowly drowning in, he got back in shape and set out on the road to redemption.
Stone’s a proud member of the Apache race that’s well over six-foot tall and powerfully built. He has strong features, a weathered face, and long dark hair that he often ties back in a ponytail. His leather cowboy boots are scuffed and his jeans are old and frayed, while he rolls up the sleeves of his checked-shirts to let his biceps breathe. His only friends in the world are his two Akita dogs, Caleb and Joshua, one a pinto, the other pure white – powerful animals whose long snouts and pointed ears give them a passing resemblance to Huskies, while his favoured mode of transport is his Triumph Rocket III, a behemoth of a motorcycle that sports a 2.3 litre engine and enough chrome to outfit a small bar.
Stone is out to wreak vengeance and atone for his sins – he’s so driven he’s practically a machine. He takes no enjoyment from inflicting pain on others, but blood law governs his actions now
Cassius came into this world a loser and chances are that’s how he’s going out. His childhood was one shitty year after another – his old man was a drunk who’d taken his belt to him at the slightest provocation, and when Cass heard that he’d died during a bungled liquor store robbery, all he’d felt was relief, while his mom hadn’t won any parent of the year awards either, as her heroin addiction meant that his schooling was mostly comprised of lessons on how to score her next fix.
So family ties had never meant all that much to him, at least not until he was jumped in to the Imperial Knights at the age of nine, where he’d discovered family of a whole different kind. It had been the Knights that had given him a sense of belonging. The Knights that had shown him respect. The Knights that had shown him love. To be a pureblood Knight you had to hail from the Imperial Courts Housing Project, and once sworn in, you had to be ready to die for your turf. He’d passed every test with flying colours, standing firm with his brothers on the streets and keeping his game tight when he found himself locked down.
Cassius is short, skinny, and physically weak. His gang sign is tattooed on the back of his neck, while his skin is sallow and greasy. He’s a real motor-mouth that floats like a butterfly and stings like one too. He wears heavily starched, black Levis along with a XXL blue penitentiary shirt that he took to wearing when the leader of his gang, Dreadnought, was sent to prison, but now Dreadnought is out, and Cassius has a problem – the Knights are under attack, and if Dread finds out it was Cass’s fault, there’ll be hell to pay.
Dreadnought’s an OG, a real high roller, a man that commands total respect from those around him and has a presence that dominates a room. He grew up in the hood, and through a combination of his impressive physique, street-smarts, and ruthless personality, he quickly rose to become the boss of the Imperial Knights.
He’s tall, heavy set, and packed with muscle – his arms are thicker than most peoples’ legs and his hands look like they can crush walnuts. His head is shaven and he has three tattooed tears under his right eye to signify the three murders he committed while in prison, none of which were traced back to him, while his tailored suits hang well on his large frame, making him look more like a businessman than a banger.
Dread’s just got out of Pelican Bay after serving time for an assault beef, where he added some book smarts to his street smarts to become a self-styled ghetto intellectual. He knows that an OG’s life expectancy in the hood is limited as there’s always someone on the way up looking to make a rep, and with the black race in L.A fast becoming an island in a sea of Latinos, he’s looking for a way to make some quick cash and get the hell outta Dodge.