Pagan (The Henchmen MC Book 8)

by Jessica Gadziala

  But Benny's boyfriend, the gentle giant he was, came in one day with a cheap system he bought at Costco and told us it was always better to be safe than sorry. And while there was no one to call, no one watching them, the footage was stored in a cloud to be accessed at any time.

  I had him.

  "Then what is that?" I yelled, throwing an arm out to the corner where a small, much smaller than you would think and therefore not ugly and obtrusive, not something you would even notice until you looked for it, camera was located.

  His entire body stiffened as he looked at it.

  I didn't lay there.

  I didn't give it another second.

  I scrambled up, grabbing the chair for the reception, and turning the legs at him.

  "Get the fuck out of my store!" I roared as he slowly took his feet, realization an ugly thing on his face.

  "Kenny, baby, this was an obvious misunder..."

  "Out!" That was a scream. A scream like a D-actress in an F-horror movie.

  It hurt my own ears.

  And it shocked him backward a step before he moved for the door.

  I watched, aptly, as he got into his car and drove off, before the shock settled in and I slid to the ground. Every inch of my body was shaking, making my teeth rattle together. My stomach rolled, pitching hard enough that I was genuinely worried all of my dinner would make a reappearance.

  And then, of course, the sting started at the backs of my eyes.

  I blinked. Hard.

  I had to get up. I had to get my phone.

  I had to... I wasn't sure? Call the police? Call Benny?

  I had to call someone. I had to get out of the store where I was alone and vulnerable.

  I had just gotten to my feet when the door chimed, making my stomach drop, and my heart race.

  I whipped around, hand seeking the chair for defense again.

  But it wasn't Ethan.

  It was the last person in the world I expected to see right then.

  It was Pagan.

  The devilish smirk that was on his face as he stepped in dropped instantly at the sight of me, making everything in him go rigid. His jaw tensed hard enough to make a muscle twitch there. His hands curled into fists. His chest expanded.

  "Kennedy, what the fuck happened?" There was a guardedness in his tone, like he knew things had been bad, but he needed facts, not hysterics.

  And I was really, really teetering on the edge of hysterical right then, at seeing a, essentially, friendly face. At knowing I was safe.

  "Ethan..." I managed to choke out before the tears finally overflowed and my voice caught on a heinous sob, making me curl half-forward.

  Before I could even try to pull it together, arms closed around me, and I was crushed to a chest I was familiar with, a scent I found comforting. I turned my face into his neck, giving up on even the idea of trying to hold it together.

  I just broke.

  And I let him hold me together instead.

  ELEVEN

  Pagan

  I wasn't being a dick.

  About not calling Kennedy or showing back up.

  Alright, maybe for the first day, it was a conscious choice to put some space there, to let it rest. I wanted to say it was just for her, just because I didn't want her catching feelings and fucking up a good thing. But if I was being completely honest, it definitely was for myself as well. Not because I'd catch feelings. Fuck no. Not me. Just because this fuck buddy thing was out of my wheelhouse and after the disastrous after-fuck situation, I figured maybe it was good to give myself a day to clear my head.

  It was that simple.

  Until the next morning when I got woken up by Reign pounding on my door, dragging my ass out of bed at around ten, about an hour earlier than usual. What can I say, I stay up late. Mornings are for nine-to-fivers.

  "Get dressed," he barked. "Boots and cut too. The mother fucking Lebanese pushed up their ship date, and we need to hit the road now to make it. Normally, I'd tell 'em to go fuck themselves, that we had a deal, but this is a big shipment, these guys are a new contact. And we don't have any other buyers for these kinds of weapons. So you, me, Laz, Renny, Duke, and Wolf are hitting the road. Repo and Cash are hanging back to keep things under control here with all the new probies."

  "Just out of pure fucking curiosity," I said as I moved toward my dresser to grab jeans, "why the fuck me?"

  I mean, technically, Reeve was probably the better choice of probates to bring, next to Laz. Even Edison might have been a better choice, but with his mysterious past, I figured maybe there was a reason Reign didn't pick him. Cy, well, he was better at the compound, keeping the morale up.

  Reign shrugged. "Mood would be tense if I didn't throw you or Cy in the mix," he said, and that was true enough. Reign, Wolf, Duke, and Laz were all serious types. Renny was equal parts laid-back and freaky dark and ruthless. It just depended on the situation. Me, I guess I was the mood-elevator. "You'd both be good if shit came down to hand-to-hand, with Cy having his martial arts background, but you're more equipped to handle guns."

  "From what I hear," I said, pulling a shirt on, then sitting down to tie my boots, "your woman is doing her damnedest to teach Cy all about guns."

  To that, Reign exhaled hard enough to call it a sigh, raking a hand down his face. "That fucking woman," he said, shaking his head, but there was a smile pulling at his lips, a depth of meaning in his eyes. "Has she put any holes in anything?"

  I felt my lips twitch as I stuffed my shit into my pockets and grabbed my cut. "Just the side of one of Repo's cars."

  "At least it wasn't the side of the building this time," he said with a laugh, like it was some private joke I hadn't been around long enough to be privy to.

  After that, we hit the road.

  And I didn't have time to call or stop by.

  And I was gone for two days.

  I had literally just gotten in, had a shower and a square meal, and my next fucking move was to drive down to Kennedy's salon to see if I could catch her working late.

  The fact that my chest did this weird as shit thrill thing when I saw the light on inside as I parked, yeah, I had no fucking clue what that shit was about, but I was trying like hell to convince myself it was because I needed my cock buried inside her as soon as possible again.

  I walked in to see her standing there in a little black dress and I decided I couldn't wait to get her back to my place or the compound. I was going to fuck her right there in her goddamn shop.

  But then she turned.

  The bruise caught my eye first, foreign, completely out of place. It was a darkening blue and purple color spreading over the top of her cheekbone and out toward her hairline.

  My guts twisted, somehow knowing that it wasn't just something like she had been clumsy and whacked her face off something. And then my eyes drifted. And I saw the mother fucking rip of her dress.

  Rage, for me, was familiar.

  I lived for it in an odd way.

  I thrived on it.

  It built up into a heady cocktail that I used to fuel my fights every week.

  But because I only fought once a week, it was something that I could outwardly control, could keep up appearances of being collected even when my blood felt like gasoline that caught a spark.

  This rage though, the rage in seeing a woman I gave a shit about with a ripped dress, with haunted eyes and bruises? Yeah, it made every other kind I had ever known seem like mild annoyance.

  It was a mother fucking wildfire through my system.

  It burned through every single inch of me.

  But I couldn't flip.

  I couldn't rage out.

  I needed to keep the fuck calm.

  Whatever she had been through, she was barely holding it together, and I needed answers.

  When I spoke, my voice was almost foreign to my own ears, firm, but soft at the same time, not wanting to give her any indication of how worked up I was. "Kennedy, what the fuck happened?"

&n
bsp; She swallowed hard, looking like the action required genuine work.

  Then she got one word out.

  "Ethan."

  Her eyes instantly filled and overflowed down her cheeks as her voice caught, letting out a loud, pained-animal sound as she half-folded forward, holding her belly like she had been gutted.

  I wasn't what any woman would call an 'emotional support' kind of man.

  But there was no way I was going to stand five feet away from her while she sobbed her goddamn heart out.

  I walked toward her, arms folding around her, and pulling her to my chest.

  She didn't recoil like I had maybe been thinking she would.

  In fact, she melted into me. She turned her face into my neck. And she just... let it all out.

  Me, well, I felt completely mother fucking inept. I had no idea what I was supposed to say, so I didn't say anything. I held her. I rubbed my hands up and down her back, careful not to push too hard in case she was hurt anywhere else. I knew she needed to drain it out before I could ask those kinds of questions, get the answers I needed. There was no use even trying to ask when she was literally fucking falling apart in my arms.

  I wasn't sure how long I stood there holding her, but by the time the sobs became sniffles, the whole right side of my shirt covering my chest was wet through with her tears.

  "Sorry..." she mumbled as she pulled back slightly so she could wipe at her cheeks, eyes downcast.

  "Sorry?" I asked, jaw so tight there was a grinding pain in my back teeth. "You have fucking nothing to be sorry for."

  She shook her head, keeping her head down. "It's just... you're not..."

  She didn't finish that, but I got the gist. I wasn't her man. For some reason, that chafed. What? Because I hadn't given her flowers and candy, she thought I would have a problem holding her while she cried after being fucking attacked by some dickwad?

  "Hey," I said, taking a deep breath, trying to keep my tone calm. My hand reached out, snagging her chin gently, but pulling harder when she resisted raising her head. "Might not be your boyfriend, but I give a shit about you. And we're going to get back to that later, but right now, pet, I need you to tell me what happened tonight."

  Her eyes closed, like she couldn't look at me while she told it, like there was... I don't know... shame there? And that shit was so misplaced that more kindling was added to the fire inside me.

  "We had that meeting at Famiglia tonight," she told me, making me recall the day he came into her salon and pulled her into the back to talk to her. Had a bad vibe about him then. Maybe I should have taken it more seriously. "Then he drove me back here because I, ah, didn't want him to know where I was living. I turned away and he..." she swallowed hard, taking a second, but powering through. "He pushed me up against the desk. I think my ribs are... I don't know. They hurt," she said, shaking her head sadly and that teeth grinding thing got even more intense. "I tried to get away, but my heel twisted and I went down. Then he, um, he pushed me down." Her hand lifted, indicating her cheek. "He... he got behind me and I just..."

  Fuck.

  I knew she needed to get it out, she needed to purge it, but even just the thought inside my head was making it hard to breathe. I wasn't sure I would be able to hold it together when she gave me the details.

  "I knew I was just... screwed. But I threw myself onto my back so I could at least... try to fight back. But he's so much stronger..."

  I took a slow, deep breath, deep enough that it made my chest burn with it. Nothing, there was fucking nothing worse in the world than a man who used his power against someone weaker.

  "And I knew that no just... meant nothing to him. It was like he thought it was me pretending. So I just... I threatened him."

  I felt myself jerk back slightly, yanking her chin back up. And, this time, her eyes fluttered open. "You threatened him?"

  "I had sort of resigned myself to the fact that I couldn't... that he was going to..." she trailed off, not even able to say the word. I couldn't blame her. It was a fucking ugly word. "So I just wanted to make it clear that I wasn't going to let him get away with it. I told him I was going to call the cops and do a rape kit and give them the footage on my cameras. He was going to go down for it."

  Fucking spirit.

  I didn't think she had so much of it.

  I should have known with her kitty cat self-defense keychain that she wasn't the kind of woman who would go down without using whatever weapon was in her arsenal.

  "And that... got through, I guess. And he got off me and I got away and... I screamed at him until he left..."

  Jesus Christ.

  I think for maybe the first time in my life, I understood what true relief felt like. Sure, she had been roughed up, she had been scared out of her mind, she had been sure the worst was going to happen. And there were scars about that. There was going to be some emotional damage.

  But he hadn't raped her.

  He hadn't left her with those marks that might never heal.

  It didn't change anything in my mind.

  Because he would have done it.

  The only thing stopping him was repercussions.

  I guess he was counting on Kennedy rolling over and taking it.

  I guess he also didn't count on me.

  "Come on," I said, sliding my hand down her arm until my hand had hers, fingers slipping between. I was pretty sure it was the first time in my entire fucking life that I held a woman's hand. And somehow, it didn't feel weird or awkward like I thought it might.

  "Come where?" she asked, shaking her head, looking around. "I... I need to call..." then she trailed off, like she wasn't sure.

  Like maybe she was worrying about pressing charges.

  Because this bastard held her future in his hands.

  Oh yeah, that bullshit would not fucking stand.

  "You can call whoever you need to call once I get you back to the compound," I told her, pulling her with me, grabbing her purse off her desk as I brought her to the door, flicking off the lights, and locking up.

  "Pagan, I..." she started to object as I pulled her over to my car parked on the street. I had been on a bike for days straight. When I got back, the thought of getting on it again made my lip curl. So I brought the car to pick her up, something I was glad for at that moment.

  Because the hand in mine and the arm it was attached to and the body on from there, all of it was still trembling slightly. I wasn't sure I would trust her to be able to hold on tight enough to stay on the bike.

  "Sh, we'll talk when we get there, okay?"

  Because, quite frankly, I needed a minute.

  I needed to get my thoughts together.

  I needed to try to calm myself down a bit.

  Because that's what, whether or not she realized, she needed for me.

  She nodded as I pushed her into the passenger seat and stayed silent the very short drive down the street, as we parked, as I went around to take her hand again and lead her inside.

  The clubhouse was probie heaven that night.

  The men who had women, Laz and Renny included, were off with them, getting reunited.

  That left Cyrus, Reeve, Edison, Sugar, Virgin, Roan, and Roderick in the common room. As such, the TV was loud, liquor was around, and voices were somewhat raised and, until we stepped in, there were the upbeat sounds of laughter as they likely shared old war stories.

  But then I pulled the door open and we walked in, drawing all of their attention.

  And everything fell silent. Faces fell.

  Because there was only one explanation for a woman standing there with a busted face, a ripped dress, running makeup, and swollen, red-stained eyes.

  And the collective hardened reaction was exactly fucking why I loved my brotherhood, why I knew it was home when I came into the compound that night many months before. Because, quite frankly, it didn't matter that literally each and every one of them were criminals, that they all had taken lives, that they hurt people who deserved it. U
nder all that, they were good fucking men. They had moral compasses. There was a distinct line between wrong and right. They had a code.

  Hurting women, yeah, that shit was not fucking acceptable.

  There was a rumble, low, barely audible. I didn't even think Kennedy heard it, but I did and I recognized it. Maybe because I knew where it came from and why.

  It came from Edison.

  And while his past was mostly secret, one thing was clear, the man had a serious problem with men abusing women. He apparently had a reputation for beating the shit out of pimps who roughed up their whores. A couple months ago, when Bethany's past caught up with her, leaving her beat up, he had been fucking cold as ice, his anger running toward frigid.

  He slowly stood, unfolding like a cat, and I felt myself stiffen, knowing that Edison was intimidating on a normal day, but when he was pissed, he was going to scare the shit out of Kennedy.

  My hand squeezed hers tighter, but then saving the situation, Cyrus stood up, shoving a hand into Edison's chest, catching him off-guard enough to make him fall back into the couch.

  "I see why you're here," Cy said, giving her a sly smile. "You are finally reconsidering my marriage proposal. Well, Mrs. Harris, we can't get married with you in a torn dress now can we? Come on," he said as he moved close and I could literally feel some of the tension leaving Kennedy's body as he neared, "let's go get you something more comfortable to wear. I do believe I have a white t-shirt that could work as a gown. You would be stunning in a burlap sack," he added, taking her other hand in his, chattering away animatedly as only Cy could seem to do, and managing to lead her away.

  It was the first real breath I took as I stood there with my brothers, understanding a heady thing in the air.

  "Who?" Edison barked, standing again. In fact, everyone was standing suddenly. And every last one of them had matching masks of anger. They didn't even know her, they barely even knew me, but they wanted blood.

  See?

  Good fucking men.

  Sugar was the first to move, going behind the bar, getting a bottle of whiskey, and pouring me almost a full glass.