Kings of Chaos (Dirty Broken Savages #1)(82)

She shakes her head. “It’s not a set schedule. He just reaches out when he… has the urge, I guess.” I can hear the disgust in her voice. “I don’t want to drag the other girls into this…”

“That’s okay. The fewer people who know, the better.”

“But if I hear anything, I can let you know. And if he needs a new girl, maybe I can volunteer.”

I feel a little sick at the thought of sending her to him, just so I can do my dirty work, but then a plan forms in my head. Maybe she doesn’t have to be in danger at all. After all, if I’m going to kill him, then I need to be the one to get the drop on him.

“I have an idea,” I tell Avalon. “And you won’t be in danger.”

She perks up at that. “Really?”

I nod. “You won’t even have to see him. He’ll never touch you.”

“I don’t want him to, but it’s my job…”

“Let me handle it. All I need you to do is call me and let me know when he’s looking for another girl. You volunteer to do it, and I’ll take it from there.”

Avalon has no real reason to trust me, but she nods and agrees all the same.

It’ll be different this time. I’m going to keep her safe, and I’m not going to miss my chance like I did at that restaurant. Ivan St. James will die, and the list will be completed.

One way or another.





34





GAGE





IT’S BEEN a few days since River came home in the middle of the night, practically morning, smiling with triumph and saying she had a plan.

There was something haunted in her eyes that night, like whatever she had to do to get this plan in place cost her something, but apparently it was worth it.

I asked her then what the plan was, but she told me she’d tell us in the morning, making me wait and grinning when I seemed pissed off about it. I watched her go up the stairs to her room with a bad feeling in my chest.

She laid it all out for us the next day. How she met one of the hookers from the red light district and talked to her. How Ivan has a fucking assault fetish and likes to make the girls he hires act it out. Just when I thought it wasn’t possible for me to hate that piece of shit more. It all comes together when River explains it. All she has to do is wait for this girl to call her, and then she’ll move in and do what she does best. What she’s been working toward all this time. She’ll take out the last fucker on her list.

But this isn’t like before, when she was going to shoot Ivan from across the street and be gone before anyone realized what happened. This is different.

She’ll be in the middle of it all. Right there, pretending to be some fucking helpless hooker for him to take advantage of.

It’s sick, just like Ivan himself, and just thinking about it makes me grind my teeth in irritation.

But of course, River doesn’t give a shit. She’s focused on the fact that this plan will work, and it’s the best shot she has. I know she wants him dead, more than she wants anything else, apparently, but it’s still a bad plan.

I didn’t like her plan when she first told it to us, and I don’t like it now. In fact, I fucking hate it.

I hate pretty much everything about this, starting with the night she killed someone outside our club.

She’s in our lives now. Deep in. Way too deep for only having been here a short while. Little signs of her are everywhere in the house. A bra slung over the back of a chair, a bottle of nail polish on the table, her brand of cigarettes on the counter.

Even her fucking dog is settling in, running all over the yard and sleeping under the kitchen table like he owns the place, and I’m not sure how to feel about that.

I can’t help but think about Priest’s warnings that first night, how we should just kill her and be done with it because she’s only going to bring trouble. He wasn’t wrong. She’s wormed her way into our lives and our home and our routines. At some point, I stopped thinking of the room she sleeps in as the guest room and started calling it her room. Like she lives here and isn’t just staying so we can keep an eye on her. Knox and Ash both pant after her like horny dogs, even Priest seems to have made some kind of peace with her, and I…

I wander into the library, unable to forget fucking River in here.

I think about how she worked herself back, taking every violent thrust with pleasure, demanding more all at the same time. She riled me up to a breaking point and then handled it completely when I unleashed on her.

I’m sure a lot of people would think it’s weird for there to be a full library in a house like this. They’d probably think the same thing about Priest’s piano.

But this is where I come to settle my mind when my demons scream too loudly. It’s peaceful and it’s mine. My father was a piece of shit who mocked me for not learning how to read for a long time, so I’ve made it a point to read everything I can since I learned. I find old books, the classics that all the stuffy intellectuals say you have to read if you want to be anybody, and I read them. I keep them, along with the notes I make in the margins. Like proof that I can do whatever the fuck I set my mind to without approval from anyone else. Nothing can hold me back.

I walk along the shelves, trailing my fingers over the place where River had her hands while I fucked her from behind. She wanted to touch herself, but I wouldn’t let her, keeping her hands right there, making her take it at my pace.