What was it that had driven her to sell her body when she’d had a paying job working in his home?
“I’m following her,” he said to Beast, already half to the door.“Don’t try to stop me.”
“I wouldn’t dare,” Beast said.
They both knew that was a lie.Beast was quite likely the only man in this city who didn’t fear him.
Of course, Beast was also the only man who might be able to take him in a fight.
King bounded down the stairs, Beast not far behind him.King lifted a hand.“Stay here.Protect what’s mine.”
Beast didn’t argue, even if he didn’t like the order.
King spotted her slipping out of Loula’s back door, Tracker right behind her.She said something to Tracker, but he shook his head, sticking close to her as she went to walk away.
She’d tried to tell him to stay behind, that much King surmised.
Good man, he thought as Tracker did what he did best.He slipped along the shadows behind Kitty, making sure she got home safe.
King had no doubt that Tracker was aware of him trailing their footsteps, but he didn’t say a word.
Kitty led them both straight out of Vestry Lane and through the slums that bordered their neighborhood on the east.She picked her way through the back alleys and the twisted lanes with ease.
Of course she knew her way home.
But the closer they drew to the docks, the more his gut churned with unease.
Vestry Lane and the surrounding ghettos might be filled with vice and demons, but there was law and order.Or rather, there was King—and he made sure there was order.
But out here by the docks it was a constant battle.Power struggles occurred often, and hell came to those on the wrong side of the war.
Was this her home?Was this where she’d been raised?
He hated all the questions.Hated more that they weren’t his right to ask.
Tracker paused at the end of a dead-end alley.Neither of them took their eyes off Kitty as she stopped in front of a ramshackle home.
He had a hunch Tracker didn’t miss the way she hesitated in front of a dark door as if summoning up her nerve before knocking.
She was knocking…on her own door?
“Don’t think she’s home, King,” Tracker murmured, his voice blending into the night air.
King’s chest filled with a sensation he knew well—the tension that comes before action.That unnameable sixth sense that something bad was coming.
When the door opened, he almost lunged for her.Risks be damned.But a cool head prevailed even as the muscle in his jaw ticked with impatience as he watched his girl—
No, nothisgirl.
Thegirl.The girl he shouldn’t think twice about as she spoke with a man twice her size.He was hidden in the darkness of the shadows, but the fact that he was a big bruiser was clear.
He watched her talk.No…beg, by the looks of it.Her words were muffled but the tone was high and beseeching.His lips curled up in a sneer and his hands fisted at the sound.
Kitty should beg no man.
“Want me to get closer?”Tracker asked.
But just as King opened his mouth to respond—it happened.