Knight (Unfinished Hero #1)(90)

Knight noticed everything. He noticed my hesitation.

I knew it when, his voice terse, tight, pained, he whispered, “Fuck me.”

We got to the top, his torso dipped and he opened the door. He carried me into the office, the door closed behind us and he gently set me on my feet.

Quickly, I took three steps away.

My heart clenched because he let me.

“Do you sell pu**y?” I whispered.

He closed his eyes slowly and my nose started stinging.

“Knight?” I prompted and his eyes opened.

“Got fifty-seven girls,” he stated immediately.

Oh God. God!

“And drugs?” I was still whispering, but it was around a clogged throat and sounded croaky.

His head jerked and he asked, “What?”

I lost it and my voice pitched high and loud when I snapped, “Do you sell drugs?”

“Fuck no,” he shot back.

I started breathing heavily.

Knight watched me do it.

Then I turned my head and looked to the window.

“Came home bleeding out the ass, from her pu**y. Not sometimes, often.” I heard him say and my startled gaze cut back to him. He kept talking and I knew it was about his mother. “Face busted up, lip torn open, eyes swollen shut. I cleaned that shit up. I was six.”

Oh.

My.

God.

My body locked and Knight kept at me.

“Johns did that shit to her but not only them. Her man did too. Her pimp. He got rough and his rough was ugly. And he availed himself often. Only thing could get him to go limp was a four year old in the room. He forgot and didn’t lock the door or lock me in my room, I walked in and I did it as often as I could. Learned to pick my own lock and hers so I could get to her. See him on her. Get him to stop raping her. Be her shield. Pickin’ locks. At four.”

All my innards had seized and squeezed and the pain was excruciating.

“Knight –” I wheezed.

“I told you my life was shit Anya and it f**kin’ was. Hers was worse. Her man, worst kinda human being there is. Kept his girls in blow, in smack, in crack, anything to keep them hooked to him. That’s all he gave them and that was no f**kin’ gift. No protection. He took his cut and it was a big one, babe. He got off usin’ their bodies. He put them on the street, worked them hard. But they turned a bad trick, he didn’t do shit. Johns learn. They know. They get a bitch they can’t play with like they like ‘cause their man pays them a visit, they move on. So they knew which women to pick up. And my mother was one of them.”

I pressed my lips together and rolled them.

Knight continued.

“I had no control. My first f**kin’ memory in this life is walkin’ into my Mom’s bedroom seein’ her in bed bleeding from every orifice. Her slitted, swollen eyes came to me, she smiled a smile she had to force through pain, stupid and hopin’ she was foolin’ me, unable to move a muscle except her mouth and she whispered, “Sweetie.” Blocked out the rest. Know, after that, not once but a lot of f**kin’ times, I found that, I cleaned her up. She was so jacked, by the time I’m f**kin’ six, she’s lettin’ me.”

I swallowed the pain and hurt I felt for him, and it stuck in my gullet because it was a lot, and he kept talking.

“I had no control. None. I was a f**kin’ kid. I could do what I could do and that was all I could do. She was good to me, Anya, she loved me. Not just because I was her shield but because I was her boy. Only good thing she ever did, she told me, was make me. She thought the sun rose and set in me and she still does. But I remembered that, as good as Carl gave it to her and me, I never f**kin’ forgot that feeling of being out-of-control, livin’ shit someone forced on me, and I became a man who never has to feel that shit again.”

“Okay, honey,” I whispered but Knight wasn’t finished explaining.

“Nair is an ass**le. And yeah, I took his stable and I still got it. And I’m gonna keep it, Anya. He had a girl, she worked the drags,” he moved to the chest at the wall and ran a finger down the carved, female torso, “she made that for me. Fuck, unbelievable what she could create outta a chunk of wood. An artist. A hooker. A junkie. She was Nair’s. She led me to him. He thought I was a shit-for-brains racer hooked on speed. Thought he could play me. She OD’ed. All that talent,” he jerked a finger at the torso, “vanished. The beauty she could bring into the world, lost. I let him think he could play me and I got in it to look after his girls. He was not like my mother’s man but he wasn’t about protection. He was about pu**y. Usin’ it to get rich. Usin’ it to get off. Made his girls service him, one, two, twenty. And I am not joking. Twenty bitches crawlin’ all over him. Insane. Made ‘em oil up and wrestle on his f**kin’ bed so he could watch and jack off. He did not keep them clean. And it was hit or miss, depending on how lazy he was feelin’, whether he’d send someone out to deliver a message, one of his girls got worked over. I spent a lotta time coverin’ a lotta asses which pissed him off. He wanted me not lookin’ after his pu**y but bein’ the face of this club. We clashed. I made moves. Got him out. Then rebuilt and grew his empire, such as it was. Girls that weren’t clean, I got them clean. Girls who didn’t wanna be in the life, I let them go. He had forty-two girls. I have more because they come to me. And they don’t got track marks or habits, I take them on. I take their backs. They take clients they wanna f**k, Rhashan and Kathleen make arrangements, they do what they want, only what they want and a man tries for more, we make certain he knows we’re not down with that and that message is delivered crystal clear. That is our reputation, I made it that way so that shit does not happen often and my girls go out safe.”