The punks weren't actually afraid of Jim Thorne; they were terrified of the silent Adrian Hawthorne. That guy had been vicious just now, going for chokeholds and eye-gouging. Every single move was dirty. 'He's a real piece of work,' they thought.
"You're skilled. We can't beat you, so we admit defeat. We won't try to get money from you again."
The leader was surprisingly straightforward about it. A loss was a loss.
"How much do you make a month collecting protection fees?" Adrian Hawthorne suddenly asked.
The leader hesitated, then embellished the number a bit. "Not much. About seventy or eighty."
In reality, their highest-earning month had only been a little over sixty. Other times, it was typically forty or fifty. After splitting the money, each of them ended up with about ten, and they were already quite content with that. It was better than sitting at home being a freeloader.
"That's so little," Tang Xiao'nan said quietly as she walked over.
