Lazarus (The Henchmen MC Book 7)

by Jessica Gadziala

  An MC, I guessed.

  Just as I thought that, I could see a small group of them in leather cuts move out of the building.

  I wasn't sure if the decision had been made subliminally or if it was truly happenstance, but I found myself down a side street on my third night staring at a building that looked abandoned - long and low and flat-roofed like maybe it had been some sort of school at some point in time. The bricks were filthy. The windows were boarded. The asphalt was all chewed up.

  But it couldn't have been abandoned.

  Because it was 98 Roosevelt.

  It was the address that was on Ross Ward's business card.

  I wasn't sure how long I stood there, but however long it was, it was long enough for a car to purr up beside me. I didn't have to look to know.

  So I wasn't the least bit startled to hear Ross Ward's voice address me. "Finally desperate enough?" he asked, the engine cutting and the door slamming. I didn't answer, not sure how I would even go about doing that. He sidled in beside me. "Come on," he said, jerking his head toward the building and then moving around toward the back.

  Quite frankly, I had nothing to lose.

  I followed.

  We went in a back door, finding nothing interesting- dirt, grime, darkness. But there was an oddly clean, well-worn path across the floor to the side which we followed until we hit a huge, wide staircase, confirming my ideas about the place having been a school at some point.

  When we hit the bottom landing and Ross slammed open the metal bar on the door, I realized two things:

  Ross Ward ran an underground fighting ring.

  And Ross Ward was doing very, very fucking well for himself.

  No wonder he liked desperation.

  You'd have to be desperate to be a human fighting dog.

  And he was right too; I was just about desperate enough.

  The room itself wasn't exactly a room- it was the entire basement of the building. It was massive. And unlike the top floors, it was clean and decorated.

  The floor was a deep, almost black hardwood.

  The ring itself was in the center. But 'ring' wasn't the right phrase. It was a cage. It was raised off the ground by a good three feet and then was a hexagonal fenced shape with padded floor. There were no chairs around it, people expected to stand to get a good view. But off to the right side of the room was a long, sprawling bar with a back bar packed with every bottle imaginable.

  Another fucking temptation.

  There were tables around the bar and even intimate sections with couches and coffee tables. Like the place was some kind of social club instead of an underground fighting ring.

  I turned back to Ross, finding him watching me look around.

  Catching my gaze, he spread his arms out.

  "Welcome to Hex," he said. "You fight tomorrow night."

  And I did.

  ONE

  Lazarus

  "I'm not defending myself any more about it," Cyrus said, clearly a mix of frustrated and embarrassed. The blond-haired and bearded biker had just come in from a gig at She's Bean Around, doing his guitar thing because, apparently, it got him up to his ears in tail.

  But his brother, Reeve, wasn't exactly in a 'letting it go' mood. He rarely was when it came to ribbing his little brother. "Michael Bublé, bro. Fucking Michael Bublé. You're lucky I didn't fucking disown you right then and there."

  "I got her number, didn't I?" Cyrus asked, meaning the number of a very stacked, very hot woman who had requested the song.

  "Yeah, but you had to trade your balls in for it so I think it was sort-of a wash," Reeve went on, grabbing another round of beers.

  It didn't bother me.

  The drinking.

  I was used to it.

  Reign had a strict 'no drugs' rule for members, so the booze was the only test to my sobriety.

  The only part that nagged at me was the being able to share a drink with your brothers, the custom of it all. That being said, all my brothers knew I was clean and never made a big deal out of it.

  So I kicked back with my coffee I got to go, knowing they would be throwing back a few, and enjoyed their company.

  Most of the older members were gone. Reign was at home with Summer and their kids as was Repo. Cash was with Lo at his place. Duke and Penny were at their place. Renny was the one who was around the most along with Wolf who was stuck at the compound because Janie didn't trust him back at their house in the woods where he might get it in his mind to chop down a tree or some shit.

  He was mostly recovered, it being a good four months since he left the hospital. But since he put the fear of a lifetime into his woman by being unconscious for so long, he had decided to oblige her on the small concession. He was off in the glass room, keeping an eye on things since Malc was asleep and Janie was off at the gym teaching a class.

  "Come on, I got to have an ally here," Cyrus said, looking around. "Edison, be real. You do what it takes."

  Edison's smirk moved up slow, giving him an almost sinister look, something that seemed to fit him, yet not. I still couldn't quite get a clear read on him. I knew Wolf had a deep respect for him though since we were all still lowly probates, we weren't privy to knowing why and Edison was closed-lipped about his past.

  Aside from knowing he was Romani and really hated pimps, we didn't know much about the deep-voiced new addition.

  "Not if what it takes is turning you into a woman yourself," he said in that gravel-tone of his that almost made him hard to understand. It was less of a voice and more of a rumble of sounds.

  "Oh, fuck off," Cyrus declared, smiling, not offended. "Let's just see what Addison thinks of my performance," he said, reaching for his phone and scrolling through his contacts- something that took a long fucking time since he got numbers the way most people got junk emails. There was something boyishly charming about him to women- a lightness that none of the rest of us had. So when we hit the town, he was usually the first to pick up a woman.

  That being said, I had learned as we started getting tested by the patched members that where me and Edison were trained fighters of the street variety, fucking Cyrus was trained. Of all people. Apparently, his mother had tried to pour his child and adolescent over-abundance of energy into martial arts classes. It was a skill set Reign was happy to have in the clubhouse.

  It was no secret in Navesink Bank that Reign had been picky about members since he took his father's place. In his time in power, he had only fully patched in a small handful of people and only them because they had something to offer the club- not just numbers and testosterone, but a skill.

  Repo was the best shot in the club.

  Duke was a powerhouse.

  Renny could just... read you.

  I had my fighting.

  Edison has his fighting and whatever else he had that made Wolf like him so much.

  Cyrus had his martial arts and much needed extrovert personality.

  Reeve had something. Again, I didn't know what. But there was darkness there, the kind that got under the skin and sank into the bones. He had seen some shit. He had done some shit. And he had somehow done it under the radar because when I looked into him, I couldn't find a record.

  But even with the numbers so decimated, Reign wasn't just accepting any who came knocking. And several had.

  He was vetting us extensively.

  So far, we were the only five deemed worthy of his trust and respect. That said something.

  "Angel," Cyrus said into the phone, shooting his brother a brow-raise that relayed some sort of message only brothers could understand. "You liked that, did you?" he asked, smirking at Edison. "Yeah, baby. Why don't I come over and show you some other things you will like a whole fuckuva lot more?" he offered, standing. "Ever been gone down on by a guy with a beard?" he asked as he walked past.

  "That's about enough for me," I said with a smile as I stood.

  "You walkin'?" Edison asked, knowing that was my MO.

  There was hardly a
night in the past three years that I didn't take a walk. Some were longer than others. Some went for only ten minutes- killing some urges before I hit the sack. Others went from sundown until sunrise. Some of it, after all the time, was habit. My addiction was no longer a daily struggle. It was just a part of who I was. There were some times when the urges would come up- when I was stressed out or around the anniversary of my mother's death, sometimes around holidays for the same reason. But most of the walking was just cathartic- head clearing.

  "Yeah," I agreed, grabbing my coffee cup and tossing it.

  "Long one?" he went on. I got the impression at times that Edison was keeping an eye on me. Not because he didn't trust me, but to make sure I stayed on the straight and narrow. But he never elaborated so I could never ask why, ask if he knew an addict who ate that bullet like I had almost done.

  "Eh," I said, shrugging. "It's cold. I doubt it," I said, throwing a wave at them and then heading out the front door toward the gates, nodding at one of Lo's guys who was stationed there. She had convinced Reign to keep on at least one or two of her people until our numbers were back up. The threat was neutralized- viciously if the stories Duke, Repo, Reign, and Cash told were anything to go by and the details Edison had let us all in on when he was literally stepping over bodies while they dragged him out of the basement.

  Better safe than sorry though.

  The Henchmen couldn't take another hit that was for damn sure.

  "You walking or heading home?" Leo, the guy at the gate, asked.

  "Dunno yet," I said, slapping a hand on his shoulder as I passed him and moved onto the sidewalk, taking a deep breath.

  Three years.

  I could walk the streets of Navesink Bank blindfolded and ear-plugged. I could walk it in my sleep.

  But sometimes, it still felt new. It still felt like I was fresh off the train.

  It was a Thursday and, aside from the very newly twenty-one year olds hitting up Chaz's for "Thirsty Thursday", things were quiet. I passed a few people walking their dogs and a couple guys I knew as dealers though I never associated with them. It was easy to get to know the faces of Third Street when my window looked right at their front stoop to their building.

  They had been a weak, pathetic organization for years that, I learned, had been because of one too many changes of leadership and a lot of arrests. But they were building up again under a new leader and their numbers were growing. Didn't matter what time I took a walk, I saw Third Street dealers everywhere.

  Heroin.

  If it wasn't willpower to walk by them daily and not get a hit of the shit that used to make my life seem like the most amazing thing in the world, I didn't know what was.

  An hour later, hands numb from the cold, I jumped over a small wall in the alley on the side of Chaz's, trying to make a shortcut back to the compound for a cup of something hot and a hot shower to get some feeling back in my extremities.

  I was halfway down the alley before I saw it.

  Her.

  I saw her.

  This wasn't some meet-cute.

  This wasn't some cheesy as fuck love at first sight.

  This was the familiar, ice cold sensation of dread filling my veins as my stomach plummeted.

  This wasn't pretty.

  This wasn't the stuff of fairy tales.

  This was me realizing that the girl face down on the filthy cement with her body writhing was OD'ing.

  This was my old demons staring me in the face.

  This was me seeing it from the outside for the first time.

  And it was ugly.

  It was so ugly that almost everything in me was screaming at me to go- to run- to leave her there.

  Almost everything.

  The other part of me knew that she would die before someone else found her.

  And that part of me shocked me out of my stupor and had me running down the alley, dropping down onto my knees and reaching for her, turning her onto her side, smelling booze. Jostling her body made her hand visible- a orange prescription bottle nestled in her palm, top gone.

  I reached for it, finding 30's and feeling my guts twist again.

  "Fuck," I growled, grabbing the sides of her face roughly to pinch her mouth open then shoving my fingers inside until her throat clenched and she started gagging.

  As soon as I heard it, I yanked her upward so that she was sitting mostly on my lap but hunched forward as she started vomiting into the alley.

  "Alright," I said, trying to keep my tone calm despite my swirling rush of feelings at the whole situation. "It's alright. You got to get it out," I told her as her sobs met her heaves.

  "No!" she shrieked when I grabbed her face again and shoved my fingers inside.

  But there wasn't time to coddle her.

  There was no way I could justify taking the extra minute to explain that what she puked up was not nearly enough. She needed to be empty and even then, it could be bad.

  She was choking before she could even take another breath, another rush of vomit meeting the ground.

  "Alright," I said, voice calmer, more satisfied when, disgusting as it was to do, I looked down at the vomit and realized most of the pills hadn't even dissolved yet. "Come on," I added, hand going around her center and holding her to me as I got to my feet. "We have to get you to the hospital," I added, pulling her down the alley with me.

  Her feet planted and her whole body went rigid. "No," she said, her head shaking almost violently. "No," she added again, more hysterically.

  "Sweetheart, you just swallowed..."

  "Not the hospital. Anywhere but the hospital," she added and I exhaled hard.

  Anywhere but the hospital.

  Right then.

  That only meant one place.

  "Alright, let's go," I said, half-pulling, half- carrying her to the street where two cabs were waiting outside of Chaz's, knowing some idiot would be getting too drunk to drive. I opened the back door to the front one, pushed the girl in, and called out my address.

  Before we even pulled away from the curb, she was mostly-unconscious against me, making my muscles tense up, worried that not taking her to the hospital, even against her will, was the right call.

  But before I could make up my mind, we were pulling up to my building and she was breathing fine and her pulse was a bit slow, but steady. So I paid the driver and got out, reaching inside to grab her and pull her up against my chest to carry her inside.

  "Girlfriend had a bit too much, huh?" the driver said, trying to, I imagine, make the whole interaction a little less awkward.

  A bit too much.

  He had no idea.

  "Yeah. Thanks, man. Drive safe," I said, kicking the door closed and going around the back of the building.

  I settled her on my leg as I unlocked the door, almost sighing in relief when I didn't smell smoke in the common room. As much as I liked Barney, it was not the night that I wanted to answer questions.

  I carried her up the stairs and into my apartment, straight through to my bathroom, dropping her down in the tub. I reached for her wallet which was looped around her wrist and tossed it out into the other room as I took her cell out of her pocket and did the same.

  Then I reached for the water and turned it on- cold.

  Until I was sure she was in the clear, I wanted her awake. If that meant she was raging at me about the ice cold water, then so be it. At least she was alive.

  "What the..." she yelped, jumping as the water started to soak through her jeans and long-sleeve tee.

  Her head twisted and her eyes found my face.

  And it was the first good look I really got of her.

  She was too fucking pretty to be OD'ing in a goddamn alley somewhere.

  I knew from holding her that she was thin- a bit too thin actually. Which wasn't exactly uncommon for an addict. The face, though, fuck. She was delicate, all porcelain and there was a small, very understated smattering of freckles over the bridge of her knows. Her eyes were dark and fram
ed with a ton of lashes, black, matching her brows and the hair that she kept short, just barely chin-length. And the chin, fucking cutest part of all, had a strong cleft in it- giving her an almost sweet overall look despite the shitty situation.

  "What are you doing to me?" she asked, lips trembling slightly but she made no move to sit up or get away from the water.

  "Trying to make sure you don't die," I answered honestly as I stooped down beside the tub and reached for her wrist. She didn't even try to pull away when I pressed my fingers in to feel for her pulse- finding it a little stronger. "How many 30s were in that bottle?"

  She didn't answer right away and my eyes slid to hers, finding her watching me intently, her eyes sad. Her shoulder shrugged. "Ten?" she half-asked, obviously unsure.

  There were at least eight undissolved pills in her vomit. So if there were only two in her system, my stomach could settle down. She would be fine.

  "And booze?"

  She looked away then, embarrassed. "I stopped counting after five."

  And the bartender would have cut her off around then too. Chaz's while just your average everyday bar, had strict rules about how much they served. Especially to women who were alone and high.

  I nodded, standing again and moving toward the linen cabinet, grabbing a toothbrush, mouthwash, and a spare towel and piling them on the sink cabinet.

  I walked back into my room, digging out a tee and dropping it with the rest.

  "Ever OD before?" I asked, leaning back against the doorjamb as she reached to shut off the water, her whole body shaking violently from the cold.

  "No."

  Shit.

  I had OD'd at least four times before I got clean. I knew the different severity levels, when I needed outside help or when I could just puke and sleep and move on. She didn't. And I was no doctor.

  "I think you got it all out so if you want to take a shower, brush your teeth, and then come back out, you should be fine. I'll stay close by in case you're not and you pass out or something," I offered, backing out of the doorway and pulling the door closed.