Page 36 of King of Cruelty

He squeezed my wrist—a quick and comforting gesture before returning to stirring the rice.

“Can I ask you something?” I heard myself say.

“Always.”

“What’s your plan, River? Long term,” I clarified. “I know most of the crew are living in the Leighbridge shelters, and you’re living there and running them now, but do you think you’ll ever settle down? Have a home? A family?”

“Stop being the Rat King, you mean.” River flashed me a wry grin. “I’ve thought about that a lot over the years. Thought about it even more after falling in love with you.”

I flushed to hear him say that so easily. With another unhappy reunion with Damien on the horizon, I couldn’t help looking back on our relationship more and more. And right then, I was thinking how rushed and thrown-away all of hisI love youswere. Nothing like the sweet, honest, sincereI love yousfrom the man next to me.

“If I set up in a real house with a real job, a bank account, a mortgage, credit, and all that shit, well then, just like that, everything changes. I go from the Artful Dodger to the Fagin, and when that happens, my crew—the people who’ve been on my side and watching my back for years—will have nothing to do with me.”

“You won’t be the Fagin,” I cried. “Fagin was a greedy miser who hoarded the wealth he forced children to steal for him—letting them live in squalor while he went all Smeagol over his gold.”

River barked a laugh. “Smeagol?”

“Hey, if you can make literary references, so can I.” We laughed again, but I sobered quickly. “It’s not the same, River. You would never use and abuse your friends like that. You’d never stuff your face with everything while they sat at your feet begging for scraps of anything.”

“I know I wouldn’t. Of course I’d still look out for them, but—it’s like—” He blew a breath, shaking his head. “Okay, it’s like this. You know this theory you guys have about the leaders of the Brotherhood really being a rich prick, or a group of rich pricks, who’s hiding in the shadows while letting their army of lower-class rent-a-thugs do all the dirty work?”

“Yeah,” I said slowly. “What about them?”

“Well, if that’s true, and to be honest, I’m betting that is true, then, it’s a problem. A big fat fucking problem that this Brotherhood can’t fucking see yet, or they never would’ve built their gang this way.”

I could only listen and watch as River slathered the shrimp in seasoned butter, then tipped them into the sizzling pan.

“They’ve created a huge imbalance within the core of their gang. Anus versus themdistrust that will always be there no matter how scared the lower members are, or how much they’re paid.”

“Why would there be distrust?”

“Because they’re not fighting the same fight, Kenzie.” He trapped my gaze in his enigmatic pools. “On the surface it’s ‘Merchants’ this and ‘take the city back’ that, but underneath, they have these two groups of people who don’t face the same issues, so how can they be fighting for the same cause?

“Madison James wanted to keep preying on abused and trafficked mothers so that she could get rich selling their children.” He scoffed, lips twisting. “For all that she told herself she wassavingthose kids, notice that she squeezed fifty thousand dollars each for herheroicsinstead of presenting herself as a foster care agency and adopting those kids out for free.”

I blinked. “My goodness, I never thought of it like that, but you’re right. I mean, if you’re going to set up a fake fucking agency anyway, it could’ve just as easily been a fake government foster care agency that didn’t extract a year’s salary from everyone who came through the door.”

“But she didn’t,” River continued, “because in the end, it’s all about the money. With soulless roaches like that, it’ll always be about the money. In the meantime, Joe Nobody at the bottom rung of the Brotherhood is probably the father of one of those kidnapped kids, and he joined to make enough money and get enough help on his side to track down his missing daughter.

“The very daughter taken by a fellow member he doesn’t even know, because she’s too good to go near the likes of him.”

Even as my stomach heaved, I nodded. “I understand.”

River came to me, positioning between my legs and grasping my hips. “I’m not going to pretend like every gang out there is some fairy-tale vision of camaraderie and brotherhood, but the ones that don’t implode from the inside last because everyone is the same. They live in the same neighborhood, they hate thesame people, or they’re the same kind of scared and alone, so they’re banding in with people like them to feel tough and safe.

“As weird as it is to pay him a compliment, Sunny went out and built the kind of gang that lasts, and he did it quicker and better than any of his siblings. Even better than his parents,” he confessed. “Everyone in the Sons of Saint is the same. They’re on the same level—man and woman. Art thief and forger. They’re even on the same level as Sunny.

“Sunny may be the leader, and he may have more money than Midas, but at the end of the day, they want the same things and they’re fighting for the same things. And when that fight gets dirty, Sunny will drop down in the mud right alongside them and take all the same risks.

“The minute I’m the guy in the mansion while my people are sleeping in the shelters...” He shrugged. “We won’t be fighting the same fight anymore, Kenzie. And I won’t be able to pretend otherwise even though I’ll want to.”

“River,” I whispered, stroking his cheek. “I truly do understand. You wouldn’t be able to lead them anymore. You’d become an outsider looking in on your family and... and no one wants that.”

“They certainly don’t want that twice.”

I pressed my forehead to his, sighing. “So you won’t move in with me,” I said, saying clearly the topic we’d been dancing around the whole conversation.

“I want to,” he ground out, holding me close. “You have no idea how much I want to go to sleep next to you every night, and wake up next to you every morning, but my crew was who I had when I had no one. They stuck with me through things that would break other people in half. I can’t turn my back on them to run off with my hot-ass sugar mama.”

---