Beauty and the Beasts

“Because we were unwilling to divulge your identity, they kicked us out. They’ve also forbidden us from hanging out around that area. You can’t leave us be,” the tall guy said with snot and tears running down his face.

The other young men also put on a pitiful front, looking troubled.

Winston tore open the lid of the can and thought about it while eating. He understood that they probably lived at the edges of the world’s rules.

He wasn’t averse to people like these. Rules were all decided by those in power to maintain order. As long as these people had their principles and did not break the greater order while finding a way to survive, they’d be successful.

Therefore, Winston nodded and said, “Alright.”

The ruffians were elated. They suddenly felt that this guy wasn’t really that scary, and only now did they dare to look him in the eye.

Once they did that, they were stunned. Could someone tell them that they were seeing it wrong? How could their boss possibly be eating a can of dog food so happily?

The fatty even rubbed his eyes.

Winston asked, “How do you guys earn money?”

This was the reason he had decided to show benevolence and agreed to take them in under his protection. He wanted to learn how to survive from them.

They didn’t dare to doubt their boss’s preferences and chose to pretend that they hadn’t seen anything. Hearing his question, the fatty quickly said, “On the open, we get protection fees from the residents in the old and small districts. However, they’re not allowing us to do this anymore. For ourselves, we just steal and snatch things. Just small things.”

Winston felt a little disappointed, and the fatty could tell that. He immediately said, “Ah, there’s also the option of being a loan shark, but this would require a certain amount of capital. We’re all penniless.”

“Loan shark?” Winston asked.

The fatty’s eyes gleamed. “Are you interested? You must have just come to this place, right? Why don’t we start at the loan shark business?”

Winston stared at him.

The tall guy rolled his eyes at the fatty, secretly scolding him for being a fool, then once again explained things, “Brother Leopard and the others have channels. They’d loan out money at the casinos, and as the interest rolled, they’d squeeze them dry and not leave them with a single cent.”

Winston’s interest was piqued, and he couldn’t help but look in the direction Parker left in, asking, “Then, what happens if they don’t pay up?”

The tall guy smirked. “Don’t pay up?”

He did a gesture of slicing his neck as if he had done it countless times. He then continued, “Then, we can only resolve it with violence. I’ve seen Brother Leopard dealing with a debtor before. He chopped off the guy’s right hand.”

Winston frowned. Chopping off someone’s hand was the equivalent of depriving them of a means of making a living. It was more brutal than killing them directly.

“Let’s do this, then,” Winston said.

The fatty rubbed his hands together excitedly and said, “This is good. We can get a lot of profit from this. Boss, how much money can you put into this? Just leave the rest of the work to us.”

“Who says that I’m going to be lending money?” Winston asked.

Both the fatty and the tall guy were stunned. The fatty asked, “Then, you were saying…”

Winston said each word clearly, “Send out the news and get those debtors to come to us. We’ll take in a certain amount of money based on the amount of debt they owed. In exchange, we’ll protect their safety and help them to… repay the debt at a fair interest rate.”

“Huh?”

The ruffians were all stunned.

“This would be going up against Brother Leopard!” the fatty said, feeling horrified.

Winston’s lips curled up coldly. The scar on his face moved, and his savageness was revealed. “So what?”

It wasn’t that he was underestimating the opponent. It was just that humans were really far too weak in his eyes.