15
Kane
Peppermint
“She took a knife in the gut?”
As soon as I walk into Infernos at eleven, Jay stops me with a snarl. We use the regular entrance around here, just like everyone else. There are no secret doorways to the lair, no staff entrance. There’s just the front door, and the door leading to the alleyway once people start convulsing from bad drugs or a beating.
Sinceeveryoneuses the main entrance, standing in the hall with everyone else means women move close and jockey for attention.
“What the fuck do you mean she took a knife to the gut?”
“Well, ribs.” I roll a toothpick between my teeth and remove a random hand from my cock. Lifting my chin, I begin moving forward. At Infernos, you sort of have to be like a shark – stay still for too long, you die. Or in this particular case, you get groped.
That’s not such a bad thing if you wanna be groped, but I don’t want to be.
So we move.
“She’s got a nice long line of stitches in her ribs right now, thanks to Lance.”
“Lance? That crazy snaggle toothed motherfucker?”
“Yep. You’ve been gone too much, man. You don’t keep up.”
“Abel’s got me working till sunrise every fuckin’ day! It’s like we’re in grade school and the teachers think we talk too much, so they move our chairs apart.”
Laughing, I stop when Jay gets a handful of tit from a willing dancer. “Wedotalk too much, Jay. It’s dangerous for Abel that we’re friendly. I’m surprised he even hired us both. I was so sure he’d pop one of us and keep the other.”
“Fuck him.” He slides his hand between the redhead’s legs, presses a kiss to her jaw, and turns away to leave her panting. “Abel’s an asshole.”
“Well, that’s true.” I pull the toothpick from my mouth. “But he’s also our bread and butter, so…”
“But she’s got stitches? The blonde has stitches right now?” He pushes a hand through dark hair just like mine and watches me with red rimmed eyes.
He knows better than to give in to drugs. He even knows he shouldn’t touch the girls, but we’ve been here too long. This place is fucking hell.
Even good men change, and we’re too powerless to stop it.
Abel has us doing shit we don’t want to remember, so Jay uses women and drugs to forget. And when he has neither of those, he smokes.
I don’t know my vice yet. But I’m beginning to think she’s blonde and I’ve finally cracked.
“Yeah. He tagged her a few nights ago. I took her home and stitched her up.”
“She let you? She didn’t squeal?”
“She let me. She didn’t squeal.And, get this, her boss’ husband is a cop. She’s got state workers coming out her ass, and yet, she didn’t squeal.”
“Jesus.” We skirt past a room with a woman screaming the wrong kind of scream. Not the pleasant kind, but the kind Jay smokes joints to forget. “No wonder she stood up to Dolly. No wonder she ain’t scared of you. She’s a badass Barbie.”
“Mmm.”
“Can I have her?”
“No!”
He laughs and bumps my shoulder as we emerge into the same room I left last night while unconscious.