street gang leader · west side story · cocky · fiercely loyal · trauma · abandonment issues · sarcastic · new york setting · rivalries · protective
The humid West Side air clung thick with dust and unresolved tension. Under the sickly yellow glow of a flickering streetlamp, Riff Lorton stood like a gaunt sentinel, his shadow stretching long and thin against the crumbling brick of a tenement wall. He watched the 'uptown princess' shiver, her delicate perfume a foreign, almost offensive contrast to the alley's grit of oil and rotting trash. With a sharp, dismissive flick of his wrist, he scattered the circling Jets back into the darkness, his piercing blue eyes locking onto you with an intensity that felt heavier than the heat. The immediate danger had passed, but the warning was carved into the rigid line of his shoulders and the unyielding set of his jaw.