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"W-Whatever ya got with Daddy, he ain't gonna let ya walk outta here alive."

"Just do as I say and shut up."

The apartment was unfurnished and smelled like shit. No, a mixture of musk, shit and tobacco. Rather than keep standing and gripping the white feline hooker's arm, I let her sit beside me as I held my boot knife to her ribs and the gun pointed at the front door, now remaining ajar into the hallway. Shouting and other moans could be heard, but no footsteps.

The cat suddenly inhaled her stomach. "P-Please don't kill me..."

"I won't, if you don't try to do something idiotic," my voice remained firm, resilient and trained. "This is not about you, and I don't want to make tonight about you in the end."

I'd killed innocent men and women. I'd killed guilty men and women. Sometimes, I'd killed morally gray men and women. Yet whatever the difference would ever be, the last thing I wanted tonight was unnecessary blood drenching my paws.

"Wendy!" bellowed an all-too-familiar voice through the door. "Ya still alive in there!"

"D-Daddy!"

"I told you to keep quiet," I pressed the knife to her abdomen, close enough to remind her of how quickly I could spill her guts out with a sudden slice. My eyes remained trained on the door. "Desmond Sylvester?"

The door swung open to reveal a Bengal tiger wearing an orange-striped version of the same illegally 1970s suit I saw him in last time. This time though, he held a golden Desert Eagle in his trembling paws, pointed directly at me. Accompanying behind him stood the guard I injured (still cradling his wrist while giving me a venomous death glare) and a Great Dane who looked like he belonged more in a Roman arena, fighting gladiators his size.

"YOU."

"We need to talk, Sylvester."

"Talk? Talk?!" the tiger seemed to do his best at sounding tough, despite having some sense I was not the type of fur to fume at. "Ya-You come in here, sprain one of my men's wrists, put a knife to one of my girls all 'cause ya wanna T-TALK???"

"I needed to show I was serious. No fucking lies."

The Great Dane beside the Bengal, sporting a laughable excuse of a P99, took a step closer into the apartment before I cocked the gun in my paw. At the same time, I gripped the knife to the white cat and got a whimper from her.

"Shoot me, and my paw will puncture her right lung on reflex," I explained under each careful breath.

"Ya think you're pretty good with that knife there, mutt?" Sylvester seethed.

"I know I'm good with this knife," I explained furthermore, "Puncturing her lung will immediately cause hemopneumothorax. She'll be breathing her own blood before you can even get her off this floor, let alone a hospital. And imagine all the time spent getting rid of the stain."

'Wendy' started to whimper and squirm in my grasp.

"N-Now, let's not be rational here," the Bengal raised a steady paw. "Wendy and the rest of my girls ain't done nothing to you..."

My eyes narrowed warily. "Danny Mckenna and Harry Solomon."

"Who?" Sylvester had the balls to raise a confused eyebrow. "W-Wait, those two kids on the news?"

"The same ones who shot up that motel room. The Sunrise Inn," I added, then demanded to know, "Did you send them there to kill Cherry?"

"W-Wait, Cherry was in that room?" The tiger seemed to pale under his fur.

"So then," I readied to fire, "you knew he was there?"

"No!" he growled in alarm. "I didn't even know the cat was in the Sunrise!"

"Bullshit," I bared my fangs out. "Mckenna and Solomon were in debt and couldn't pay their rent when suddenly, their landlord is given enough money to pay off two years' worth of it if they can take out a hooker neither of them ever met. And who else has a grudge with the boy and can gather enough cash to discreetly pay them off?"

"Hey...I admit..." he sighed, "I admit I got some beef with Cher for not being under my payroll, but why would I fuck with him if that meant fucking with some mean motherfucker like you? P-Plus, I'd never send some wannabe hitmen to kill such a valuable ass like that!"

"That's awfully convenient, isn't it? Where were you then on that night?"

"What're you, a fucking cop now?" the tiger laughed. "Where do you think I was? I was fucking some bitch at one of my joints! It's kinda my thing!" When I raised my gun up in a more aimed position, Sylvester straightened up and added, "I didn't do it! Like I said before that Cher's a valuable piece of ocelot ass, and I don't fuck up the valuable ones! I-I already lost...one...wait a minute."

The feline gasped.

"What is it?" my voice turned into another growl. "What were you going to say?"

"Lower your weapons, boys," Sylvester ordered, like he suddenly remembered he left the stove on back in his rathole. Reluctantly, until the Bengal tiger turned to them, the goons complied for their boss. He then motioned to me and the white cat. "You can let her go now."

"Why should I?" I asked quizzically. "The moment I let her go, I die."

"Yeah, but it's like ya said," he chuckled. "It'll take forever to get the bloodstains out of this ugly carpet."

After a moment of contemplating whether this tiger pimp was lying or intended to back out of my deal, part of me wanted to hear him out. What did he mean by 'already lost one'?

"I'll only let her go if you tell your men to wait outside the door," I suggested to him.

He nodded once. "Deal..."

The knife slowly retracted away, I loosened my grip, and the white cat named Wendy cried her way out of the apartment, clutching her side to cover the miniscule cuts inflicted from my hovering weapon. Simple as that.

"T...Thank you, Daddy..."

"Fuck off and go to Gail," he growled at her. "Imma talk to this clown."

Desmond 'Daddy Stripes' Sylvester had the perfect opportunity. To my surprise, he didn't snatch it in his grasp.

"Boys," Sylvester barked to them, "if you so much as think ya hear a gunshot, torch this room. Got it?"

"Yessir," the Great Dane rumbled.

"Zack?"

"...yes sir."

"Good kid. Go to Gail now and get that fixed up."

He left the door open and turned back to me, placing his Desert Eagle in his back pocket before I reluctantly lowered my own pistol. Sylvester then slowly sat down onto a chair opposite the sofa, his eyes trained between me and the floor.

"Do you know Becky? 'Becky Babe' Mullin? This super-hot vixen?"

I only stared unsmiling at the Bengal.

"Right, right, you're a f...You're not into the ladies," he made the right choice not to call me a fucking faggot to my face. "Becky Babe. She is...no, was...one of my best girls. She could make any man cum in their pants just by walkin' into a room. The secrets she kept over so many furs could get any person killed...and a month ago, one of my men found her body in her room. According to my cleaners and a doc I got in my pocket, Becky chewed on one of those cyanide pills ya see spies use in black ops shit. Wasn't homemade either. It came from the Deep Web or black market."

"Say that I believe this...back-alley diagnosis," I proposed without peeling away the coldness in my voice. "What makes you think this girl wasn't just troubled and wanted out?"

"That's the thing, no--two actually!" he explained thoroughly, "Becky's been in the businesses for years, since she dropped outta high school. She'd been enjoying this for years, since it made better money than any mini-wage job out there. Sure, she had some issues, but who doesn't, am I right? You must have some issues too, ri--"

I snarled, "Get to the fucking point already."

"Anyway," he frowned, both at me and someone else, "several weeks back, Becky came into my office asking for bigger cuts in the profit she makes. Only said yes after she told me her mommy needed a kidney transplant. And the cash to pay for dialysis. I'm talking enough money to buy off the President himself. And guess what I find out just a few days after the bitch decided to off herself?"

He didn't need to tell me, but the Bengal tiger said it anyway.

"Her mother got that transplant."

Desmond Sylvester further went on to describe the impromptu 'investigation' he and his men discreetly did in their spare time. According to the doctors and a dirty cop also under the pimp's thumb, the money transferred to the mother's bank account was used in Bitcoin, basically making any tracing useless (though they still allowed her to get the operation). Becky's suicide occurred exactly one week before Cherry's attempted murder.

And mine, I noted, when I joined him in the motel room after that movie.

Sylvester and I came to a consensus these incidents were more than a mere coincidence. Someone out there paid Becky to kill herself in exchange for her mother getting the transplant, and seven days later, another mysterious benefactor paid off two deadbeats' rent if they could shoot up another prostitute , then get double their money if both escaped. Unfortunately for Harry and Danny, they crossed my path by targeting the ocelot.

Part of me regretted killing the two in their car in the heat of my adrenaline and anger. If I kept them alive, maybe they could've told us more. Then again, I hacked into the police reports following their deaths, and nothing they found at their apartment indicated they would've been hiding anything to answer my other questions. Not even foreign fingerprints or DNA from a third-party. The money sent to their account also came in untraceable cryptocurrency.

This 'benefactor' knew how to hide their tracks.

Reluctantly, I made a deal with Desmond Sylvester: we both wanted to find this possible serial killer, and the tiger held connections with many of the other pimps around Lakertown. In exchange for providing me information or possible leads or clues, Sylvester would have first blood on our 'Benefactor', as we started calling them.

"I wanna motherfucking kill this motherfucking killer myself," he told me.

As far as I was concerned, I was content the tiger would make sure he no longer harmed Cherry or any other fur out there. In any other circumstance, it didn't matter if another serial killer popped up in the world, but they decided to make it personal by targeting the ocelot I slowly began to care about. And whoever they were, they crossed the wrong furs.

Especially me.