Kings of Chaos (Dirty Broken Savages #1)(95)

I look at Ash and Priest, who are both standing in the kitchen with us. Neither of them have said anything about coming home to find out River had already left. Like they don’t even care.

Ash is doing his fiddly shit, like fucking always, turning a coin over and over again in his fingers. Priest just stands there, arms folded, looking like a piece of wood for all the feeling I can read from him.

“Are you two good with this?” I ask them, trying to get them talking, at least. See where their heads are at.

Ash shrugs, flipping the coin faster. He doesn’t look happy, but he’s not going to say anything about it in front of Gage, apparently. “Gage isn’t wrong. The problem is solved, and that was always the arrangement.”

“I know what the fucking arrangement was, Ash,” I snap.

He just shrugs again, clamming up. However he feels, I’m not getting anything else out of him.

There’s nothing from Priest at all, who’s locked down so tight that nothing’s coming through. He looks at me like he couldn’t give less of a shit and doesn’t say a fucking word.

Now the restless, unsatisfied feeling in me turns to anger. No one seems to give a fuck that River’s gone. Like it didn’t even matter that she was there in the first place.

I want to hit someone or break something, but I settle for kicking over one of kitchen chairs, letting it crash to the floor with a loud clatter.

“What the fuck, Knox?” Gage snaps, but I turn and storm out, hands fisted at my sides.

“Where the hell are you going?” he calls after me.

“To find someone to fuck up,” I snarl back.

“Why?”

“Because I fucking feel like it.”

I let the front door slam behind me, not giving a shit what that looks like or sounds like to our neighbors. That putting on a good front shit is all Gage, and I’m too keyed up to care right now.

My momentum carries me all the way to my car, and I get in, slamming that door too. The window rattles, and it feels good to make noise and give something physical to the whirlwind of emotions in me right now.

I jam the key in the ignition and peel out, heading out of the quiet little neighborhood we live in. There’s always somewhere to go to find a fight in the heart of Detroit. Assholes hanging around street corners, hopped up on drugs and looking for violence, bars packed with people who won’t turn down a good brawl. I crack my knuckles after having them so tight on the steering wheel that they were turning white.

As I drive deeper into the city, I weigh my options. I could pick a spot, cause some chaos, and then get out. Or find someone to piss off and then make them give me a reason to fuck them up. I don’t need to take them back to the house to make them wish they’d never messed with me.

I lose track of the time, just driving, my thoughts churning.

I keep thinking about Gage saying that this was the arrangement, and the arrangement is over now. I keep thinking about how River looked when she was fucking with Ivan, making sure he knew why she was doing this to him.

It wasn’t the long, drawn out torture he deserved, but it was something close enough. He knew when he died why he was dying and that there was nothing he could do to stop it.

I wanted to get in there and help her. Get my hands bloody with hers, help her take her vengeance. But I knew it was hers to take, and that she’d earned it. Done all the leg work, hunted him down for as long as it took. It was her moment.

I was just happy to be a part of it.

Afterward, I wanted to talk to her about it, tell her how fucking hot she looked, making him pay for everything he’d done to her, but then she was gone. She was gone, and we’re just supposed to be done with her, according to Gage. Which sounds like bullshit to me.

Thinking about her changes my direction. Instead of going to find a bar or a street corner to start trouble at, I drive to River’s apartment building. I still remember how to get there from following her that first time. The feeling is definitely different now, though.

Her car isn’t in the rough looking parking lot off to one side when I pull up, but it only takes a few minutes for her to drive into the lot. The dog is in the back seat, and as soon as she parks and gets out, he stands up on the back seat, wagging his tail like mad.

He hops out of the car like he’s the king of the goddamn world about to accept an award or something, trotting up toward the front door of the apartment building while River gets her bag from the back.

Her silver hair is pulled back into a messy bun, and she’s got on low-slung jeans and a thin t-shirt. She looks comfortable.

She looks good.

She always looks good, but there’s something different about her now. That pinched look she used to have all the time when she was mad at Gage or feeling frustrated is mostly gone, but there’s something else that looks like it’s weighing her down now.

She takes her bag and slings it over her shoulder, then sighs, walking up to the door of the building.

I noticed before that it’s basically a shit hole. A couple steps above a slum, but not by much. The paint on the outside probably used to be white, but now it’s a dingy grayish beige and peeling. The short set of cement stairs that lead up to the entryway are crumbling at the corners, and the metal rail is so rusted that it would probably snap if someone actually leaned on it.

River walks up the steps, then looks at Dog, who’s still wagging his tail like a weed whacker.