Page 1 of Lesson on Depravity

Chapter One

Alistair

“You’re not worried about your little Coco?”

The beer bottle in my hand lands on the table. My eyes slowly drag to the man in front of me. His grin is crooked; he has precise features of a criminal with his cunning expression and inked skin.

“Should I be?” I calmly lean back against my chair.

He rolls his eyes, swinging his beer and swallowing the rest down his throat. “Being seasoned degenerates, everyone in here knows your little pet has better treatment than any living fucking soul.”

I clearly remember Tito said he was a businessman with a background in bookkeeping, and it explains why his speech development is better than the roaming bastards in this sleazy bar.

“She is special,” I admit, unashamed to let everyone know that my little Coco stands above them despite not having any rank in this rotten place.

Coco is mine, and my status is hers.

“People are talking,” he begins with a grin, arms around a woman on his lap as she giggles at his wandering hands.

“Javier is back on the streets again.”

My body doesn’t convey anything; I’m not worried that he would try to come into my territory, and I sure as hell not concerned about him exacting vengeance.

He’s already dead.

My hands still have his blood, and it had been fun torturing him. When I was done with him, he was beyond recognizable as no one had anything to identify him with. Javier had been pulverized, soaked in chemicals to break down every piece of him that had been run through a meat grinder, and he had been dissolved into nothing.

I would have left him alone since we had an agreement to stay out of each other’s business. He ran his drugs, and I ran my guns. We’re incompatible like oil and water. That was until he tried to put his hands on my little Coco.

His death matters little to his goons. Someone already has replaced him. This is the way of life on these dangerous streets, no one has an everlasting effect on anyone, and it’s a carnivorous world.

I hum, listening with my left ear and discharging useless information with my right ear as my eyes focus on my phone. The active movements of the tracking device I have on Coco sharply turn in corners.

She’s a smart girl with experience on running away; she moves through alleyways and avoids massive traffic areas as if it’s her own backyard. I should praise her for knowing the little niches as she had been a street rat just mere months ago before I picked her tiny little ass up into my arms.

Nonetheless, I’m not happy about it. I’m disappointed that she doesn’t listen to me when I specifically tell her to avoid dark alleys and unpopulated areas because not everyone on my territory is as morally gray as I am.

Some of the assholes are plain criminals. They see anything remotely moving with two legs, and they will attack, especially those who have been accustomed to prison life.

My little Coco is a dainty girl. Her brown hair is thick, and that makes it easy to grab, her big green eyes are a rarity in this filthy place and perfect for organ traffickers. Her small body calls for the predatory side of men.

I saved her from her dangerous homeless life, but she doesn’t tell me about her home life before she became a wandering rat. I hate to call her that, but that is what she was before she became my princess.

More of a pet, but she doesn’t know that as I make sure she knows that she’s Daddy’s princess first.

“People are talking; they saw Javier coming into our territory.” Tito inhales a long breath of smoke before puffing it out against the woman’s face.

She obviously puts up with that behavior for the sake of protection from Tito. Whether he knows or not is a matter of unimportance, but I do not want him to play too much and focus on his role in this gang of a sort.

Organized crime, a gang, or upcoming mafia—the cops can call us whatever they want, but they can’t do shit to stop this massive gun-running business that I have.

“He lost his place,” I remind Tito, but my eyes are on my phone to see the blinking dot coming closer to this bar.

I bite back a grin. Little Coco knows that Daddy is the only safe place in the world. I crave for the moment she comes crying into my arms because she’s terrified of the dangers lurking in her own shadows.

If she isn’t crying, then I will make her. I find that she is the prettiest when she cries from my cruel doings, and I’m not picky to choose between pleasure and fear. Either of them works for me and having both at the same time tends to stay in my heart forever.

It’s an addiction to make her green eyes water with tears through pleasure and in fear, knowing I can drop her out of my life in a snap of a finger.

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