Kings of Chaos (Dirty Broken Savages #1)(71)

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” he demands.

“Who the fuck are you talking to?” I snap back.

“You, bitch,” he snarls. “Get the fuck out of here. You’re fucking with my business.”

“Your business? Are you the one going out there making money? Or are you just harassing girls into doing it for you?” I fucking hate guys like him. Assholes who abuse and use women for their own pleasure and profit. Without them, he’d have nothing, but that doesn’t stop him from treating them like shit just because he can.

He’s in my face, acting like he owns the goddamn street, and I despise that shit.

“We were just talking,” one of the women says, speaking up. “She wasn’t bothering anything.”

The guy turns on her and backhands her across the face.

“Did I ask you shit?” he demands. “Did I tell you to talk back to me?”

It takes everything I have to keep from fucking this asshole up. I can feel the weight of the knife I keep on me at all times, and I want to lunge at this fucker and make him regret every woman he ever raised a fucking hand to.

The woman shrinks back, bringing a hand up to cradle her cheek. Her pimp turns back to me.

“Fucking get lost,” he snaps, and instead of letting him have it, I grit my teeth, then turn and walk away.

There’s a diner just down the street, a little hole-in-the-wall place where people go to get coffee and burgers that are more grease than anything else. I order a coffee and a piece of pie and take a seat by the window because it offers a great view of the street and the place where those two women wait to be picked up by their customers.

I watch as their pimp yells at them a bit more, but he doesn’t hit either one of them again. He leaves after he thinks he’s made his point, I guess, and they straighten themselves up, going back to work.

One of them walks a little bit farther down the street, leaving the one who got hit alone.

She doesn’t have long to wait before a car slows to a stop right in front of her. She puts on a smile and walks to the window, and after a minute or so of talking, she gets in the vehicle.

About an hour later, the same car drops her back off on the corner and then drives off into the night.

This plays out more than a few more times, and it’s kind of impressive the amount of business this woman is doing. I guess she probably has to work in volume to make up for whatever cut she has to give her shitty pimp, and I keep an eye out for him too. If I meet that fucker in a dark alley, it might be over for him, depending on the mood I’m in.

The evening goes on and then starts to wind down, and after being dropped off one last time, I can tell the girl is done for the night. She waves to her friend and then heads in the direction of the diner, about to walk home or something.

I get up quickly and slip outside, intercepting her before she can leave.

“Hey,” I say, flagging her down. “I just wanted to say sorry. For getting you in trouble with that asshole.”

“Oh.” She looks surprised to see me since the last time we spoke was several hours ago, and she glances around warily like she half expects her pimp to materialize out of the shadows and hit her again for talking to me. “It’s okay. It’s not your fault. He’s just… like that.”

“A raging piece of shit?”

She laughs a little, still looking nervous. “Something like that. He’ll be over it by tomorrow. I had a good night.”

“I could tell.”

“Were you watching me?”

“Not in a creepy way. I just wanted to talk, and I didn’t want to get you in trouble again.”

She gives me a cautious look and then smiles, still a little unsure. “Um, yeah, okay. We can talk.”

“I’m River.”

“Avalon. Did you try the pie?” She nods at the diner behind me. “It’s amazing.”

I nod. “Had a slice of the apple. It was good.”

“The blueberry is the best. Buy me a slice and we can talk about whatever you want to.”

As deals go, it’s not a bad one, so I agree, and we go into the diner. She settles in the booth at the window with me, and I order more coffee and a slice of the blueberry pie for Avalon.

Under the fluorescent lights inside the diner, she looks tired, slumping back against the shiny red cushioning of the booth. She kicks her heels off under the table and drums her fingers on the table.

“So is that standard around here?” I ask her. “Dickholes running the show while you do the real work?”

Avalon laughs. “For the most part, yeah. I wish I didn’t have to have a pimp, but around here, that’s the only way to make a living.”

I make a face, and she breathes another quiet laugh, although there’s not really any humor in it.

“It’s not always so bad, I guess,” she says with a shrug. Then her brows pull together. She has delicate, pixie-like features that give away more of her emotions than is probably good for her. “But I’m guessing you didn’t buy me pie just to talk about that.”

As if on cue, the waitress comes over and brings the coffee and pie, setting it on the table and moving away quickly. Maybe she’s used to people having clandestine conversations in the middle of the night at this place. It seems like the kind of establishment where that would happen.