She had the early morning shift the next morning.
I would be there.
It wasn't like I slept anyway.
Thirteen
Maze
"What?" I asked, my mouth falling open slightly as my heart started pounding and a stress-sweat broke out over my skin.
"You heard me, Violet," he said, raising a brow. "I wrote down the number last night when they wouldn't stop calling you. Then I got too shitfaced to do anything with it. And today we were all busy. Until I got back a little earlier than you and Repo. So I did some looking around. You know what I found?"
"That K.C.E Boxing Emporium called me?" I asked, sarcasm dripping into my words to cover the fear that was coursing through my system. "Wow, Sherlock, I'm so impressed by your investigative skills. It was almost like they were listed somewhere. Oh, wait, they're a business... so they are."
To that, Renny's lips twitched slightly before they settled back into a straight line, and I saw for the first time that he wasn't the person I had originally thought he was. He wore his disguise really well: the lighthearted, funny, sweet, goofball with a good heart. He never slipped, save for the fight with Duke and, well, they were men and sometimes men just fought because it was in their instincts to settle things with fists, not words. Otherwise, he was one-hundred percent that Renny-disguise all the time.
But the man in front of me was a view of the man who was underneath that.
And he had a little coldness in his eyes, a little hollowness in his voice, a kind of sharpness about him that you'd swear could cut you to pieces if you got too close.
"Let's try this again. What business do you have with a boxing emporium?"
"Why the fuck would it matter? Would you question me if it was any run-of-the-mill gym calling?"
"Would any run-of-the-mill gym call you twenty-some-odd times in one night?"
"If I owed them money, probably," I mused.
"Cute," he said, shaking his head and I saw a struggle there between the two Renny personalities. In the end, the knife-like one won out. "But billing departments wouldn't be calling after hours."
"If they were in, say, California maybe they would."
"Nice try, Violet, but I'm not stupid."
"Why do you care who is calling me?"
"Because it's an anomaly and I don't like those."
"Christ, Renny, I never pegged you as the anal type."
"There's a lot you don't know about me, Maze."
It was that moment that Duke's words came screaming to the forefront of my mind, words he'd said when talking about Renny: "Not everyone is who they appear to be, Ace."
Had Duke known back then about Renny? Was whatever darkness that was in Renny the cause of that fight they had had?
Because, quite honestly, with the way he was acting, I kind of felt like going a couple rounds with him myself.
"Interesting. So you're allowed to have your secrets, but I can't have my own?"
"Something like that. At least not from me."
"What makes you so special?"
"K.C.E Boxing, Violet. Why them? Why so many calls? Why did you look so freaked after you called them back. And don't insult me by saying you didn't call them back and that you didn't look freaked because if there is one thing that I am, it's observant."
"Yeah, okay," I said, rolling my eyes. It was childish and it served no real purpose, but confronted with this side of Renny, I was forgetting all the training K had tried to pound into me.
"For instance, you climb trees when you're in a mood. You can cook, but it's not a task you particularly enjoy. So from that, I'm going to conclude that you grew up with someone who did like to cook and he or she, more likely she, was determined to pound that skill into you whether you liked it or not."
Well, he had my grandmother pegged right there.
"Why not a he?" I latched onto, being the only topic that didn't hit too close to home.
"Because girls like you, the take-no-prisoners, I-can-do-everything-a-guy-can, I-don't-need-no-man types... they generally don't come from households with strong male role models. When you have a strong male role model, you learn you can trust men, you can lean on them, you don't have to prove yourself or anything to them. So you, Maze, I very much doubt you had any men in your life. Single mom. Single grandmother. Something like that."
Both of those were true.
God.
God.
Was I such an open book or was Renny just a really good reader?
"Do you need more examples? From last Wednesday to three days ago, you had your period. You don't bitch and moan but you get cramps. I know that because you unconsciously rub your stomach. It's not something you do when you're hungry, so one would assume it was because of pain. You and Repo, you have a love-hate thing going on and the sexual tension between you could be sliced with a fucking knife. You..."
"Okay, enough. I get it, you notice things," I snapped, genuinely freaked out that any one person could derive so much factual truths from just... casually watching me.
"And I noticed you call them back and I noticed you fall against the fence like whatever you heard freaked you out."
"So, I got some bad news. Christ, Renny. It's none of your fucking business."
"Everything is my business. Especially when I know that K.C.E isn't just a boxing emporium," he said and I felt myself stiffen and I knew he noticed. "It's a boxing emporium run by the notorious, enigmatic K."
"So?"
"So why is K calling you?"
"Who said it was K calling me? Jesus, for someone so observant, you can be kind-of dense."
"Dense?" he asked, brows drawing together, his face losing some of its coldness, some of its certainty. Maybe that was his Achilles heel. He needed to be right, to be the smartest and most observant guy in the room. If something threatened that, the other Renny could shine through more.
I could work with that.
"Yeah, dense. In case it escaped that keen eye of yours, K.C.E is a business. Meaning it has employees. Plural. More than one. K doesn't single-handedly run the place."
"So you're saying..."
"That my sister works there, asshole," I snapped, eyes widening at him like he was stupid. "She works there and she was having a personal crisis. If you must know, her fiance cheated on her. This is the week of her rehearsal dinner. She was devastated. She needed to talk."
I watched as the rest of his sharpness fell away, leaving someone similar to the Renny I thought I knew, just slightly less easy-going and jovial. "And K?"
"Great guy. He taught my sister to kick ass and then I wanted in and he worked with me a little bit. I wish I had more time with him. He seemed like good people."
"So you seriously don't know what he does?"
"Aside from training boxers and teaching self-defense classes?" I asked, brows drawing together.
"Yeah aside from all that, Violet."
"No. Is it something illegal?" I asked, shaking my head a little. "Because I can't imagine that."
"Yeah, well," he said, his easy smile breaking across his face, "who'da thunk a handsome fuck like me would be a future gun runner?" He moved toward me, throwing an arm across my shoulder. "So this sister of yours... she look like you? If so, I mean... I can heal a broken heart, man," he said as we moved in unison toward the stairs.
I laughed because that was such a Renny-thing to say.
But that being said, there was a swirly feeling in my stomach having him close to me. Not because I had any fear of him. I was still pretty sure that he was some kind of friendly for me. But because something was up with him. Normal, well-adjusted people couldn't flip a switch on their personalities like he could. His unpredictability made him dangerous for my cover. And while I might have gotten him off my case with my lie, there was no guarantee he wouldn't just keep snooping around. I wasn't exactly sure how deep K buried Maisy Mckenzie. I knew he couldn't do anything about my old tax re
turns, my work history, my college records. He'd deleted me off of every possible website online until if you searched my name, nothing came up except a name on a list of college graduates. But K wasn't a hacker and I had no idea how many traces there were for someone who was.
When we had crafted Maze, choosing the name because it was what my grandmother had called me when she was angry and I would automatically respond to it without any thought or training, we had given her a license, some work history, a few traces of her existence online, but that was it.
If Renny got a wild hair one day and decided to go digging, I wondered how long it would take him to see that I wasn't really who I said I was.
"So what did Repo's test consist of?" he asked, arm still slung around me as he led me toward the bathroom.
"Oh, um, shooting practice."
"Oh, great," Renny groaned, dropping his arm and looking at the ceiling.
"Not a good shot?"
"Haven't had too much practice to be honest."
"Repo is good. Like... he's really good. He's not going to let you come back here until you can hit the target how he wants," I warned.
"You a good shot?"
"I'm... decent. Definitely not good. But decent seemed to be enough to get him off my case. What did you do at Hailstorm?"
"Oh, I got grilled by Lo and some guy named Malcolm. Then Janie insisted on grappling with me."
"Why?" I asked, thinking of the short, waifish woman who had fought so hard to get me in and keep me in, despite the odds.
"I dunno. Looking for the flinch factor maybe?"
"The flinch factor?" I repeated, opening the bathroom door and putting the clothes on the sink vanity.
"Yeah, you know how men who are raised to respect women and not raise their hands to them are forced to put their hands on one. They flinch. It feels wrong and unnatural."
"Did you flinch?" I asked, turning fully to him, watching for any signs of dishonesty.
"Of course I fucking flinched, Violet," he said, looking at me like I was both crazy and insulting him.
"Just asking," I shrugged. "I hear Wolf has some kind of hunting planned for us."
"Thank fuck because just sitting around and staring and grunting at each other would get old pretty quick. Have fun getting all that mud off," he said, running a finger across the side of my neck and showing me the dirt on his finger.
"Yeah they picked a great day to drag us outside," I shrugged, hoping for casual as I closed and locked the door.
That evening before I hauled it off to bed to rest for my early morning shift, we were all gathered in the great room: members and probates alike, just hanging out. I was standing near the bar by myself, my gaze falling on Renny as he seemed to be back to his old self.
"You saw it too, didn't you?" Duke asked, sidling in beside me.
"Saw what?" I asked, turning my head to look at his profile.
He jerked his chin back toward where I had been looking. "Renny-two-point-oh," he said, his tone a little guarded. But, then again, Duke's tone was always guarded.
"Renny-two-point-oh," I repeated.
"Yeah. Saw that shit on my third day here. It comes and goes. No real rhyme or reason I can find. Something triggers him and he's that fucked up robotic version of himself."
"Has Repo and the rest of them seen it?"
Duke shrugged. "If they have, they have reasons they're not telling us for keeping him around."
"I heard something about his particular skill set."
"Yeah, heard that too. But no one will say what it is. Maybe they like his snake-ish ways."
"Repo hates snakes," I said automatically, feeling a jolt at the casual intimacy of that admission. Duke's gaze went to mine, curious. "His tattoo," I covered quickly. "The one on his back with the snake getting stabbed. 'Snakes and snitches get it where they slither'," I added with a casual shrug.
"Who the fuck knows. All I do know is you keep your cards to your chest around him, okay Ace? There's no telling what someone like him is capable of."
With that, he pushed off the wall and moved away from me to go grab a pool stick, leaving me feeling even more on edge about the whole Renny situation. Because if there was one thing Duke didn't seem like he was, it was an alarmist. So if he told me to worry, to be careful, I needed to heed that advice.
I made a mental note to bring the situation up to K when I spoke to him. He would do some digging, find out what he could about Renny, what his supposed skills might be. And, what's more, he could tell me how to navigate him when he was in one of his moods.
I sighed, making my way back down to the basement and curling up in my bed, back pressed up against the wall and knife tucked under my pillow, my hand resting over it.
--
I woke up later than usual, crawling out of bed with a grumble, my thigh muscles sore from... earlier activities I was actively trying to not think about. Along with the mess with Renny. And, let's not forget, the very dangerous, garrote-wielding Russian traffickers who could very well be looking for me right that moment.
"My life is ridiculous," I grumbled into the silence of the abandoned kitchen, pouring myself a cup of the seemingly always-fresh coffee before making my way outside.
"He's in the back," Repo's voice met me as soon as I stepped out the back door, making me start and splash some of my coffee over my hand.
"Jesus," I hissed, shaking the liquid off my hand and locating Repo where he was sitting on top of one of the picnic tables.
"Didn't mean to scare you," he said.
"It's alright," I shrugged, scanning the dark distance for a sign of Duke. Seeing nothing and knowing it would be another couple of minutes, I took a deep breath and looked over at Repo. His eyes were swollen and red, the purple smudges underneath even more prominent than usual. "Do you ever sleep?" I heard myself blurt out.
Repo gave me a tired smile. "Not often."
"Why not?" I asked, my legs carrying me closer to him despite better sense telling me to keep distance between us.
"Nightmares," he said with a shrug.
"Every night?"
To that I got a wry smile. "I stopped trying to sleep nightly about five years ago, honey."
There was a vulnerability about him in that moment that I felt tug at a similar feeling buried deep within me. It was underneath all the training, under all the determination I built up while lying alone in that panic room every night. It was something I had tried to squish, tried to pretend wasn't a part of me. But it was. And maybe I found it a little comforting that someone as put-together and strong as Repo also had a part of him that was softer, weaker, uncontrollable too.
"Is it..." I started, only to be interrupted by Duke.
"Early again, Ace? You make the rest of us look bad," he said, holding out the flashlight toward me and I took it. "Don't know how the fuck you look so rested so early in the morning. It's unnatural," he said, jerking his chin at Repo, then making his way back toward the compound.
I turned to watch him disappear for a long minute before Repo interrupted the silence. "Is it what?" he prompted.
I turned back, brows drawn together. "What? Oh, um... are the nightmares based on... real things?" I asked, never being the type to suffer from chronic nightmares. Since running from the Kozlovs, I had the occasional one that would wake me up freaked out, but I usually forgot all the details of the dream within minutes of waking.
"Yeah, real things," he told me, watching my face closely. "I haven't always been a good man, Maze."
"I find that hard to believe," I said because it was true. "Besides, everyone has done some shit in their lives that could keep us up at night if we harp on it."
"What have you done?" he asked. The question would have seemed invasive if he hadn't asked in a quiet, smooth voice.
I looked at my feet and let out a breath. "I've been really naive and gullible," I admitted.
"Come here," he said, leaning forward and snag
ging me at my hips, pulling me closer to the table and between his legs. He waited a minute for my gaze to rise to his. "Maybe you were those things once, but that isn't who you are."
The certainty in his tone made a bit of a weight lift from my shoulders. It hadn't occurred to me that I had been harboring a worry that it was something that was written all over me, like I wore my flaws as a badge for all to see despite how hard I had tried to make sure no one could ever call me those things again.
"Same goes for you, Repo," I said, my hands landing on his thighs.
"I've killed people, Maze."
"Was that supposed to shock me?" I asked, shrugging a shoulder. Quite frankly, I had walked into the compound expecting to find that every member of the gang was, at some time or another, a cold-blooded killer. K had sort-of told me as much. He said he wasn't sure about some of the small-time guys, but he knew for a fact that Reign, Cash, and Wolf had left piles of bodies in their wakes. Reign, mostly as preventative measures, eliminating snitches, taking down rival organizations. Cash, when ordered to in extreme situations. And Wolf, well, Wolf kind-of went bonkers every once in a while and committed some ridiculously violent murders. But he mostly seemed to kill assholes who deserved it.
So Repo admitting he'd killed people? It wasn't a surprise.
"It would shock normal people," he said, his fingers sinking into my hips in an almost possessive way that made my sex clench.
"Who ever claimed I was normal?"
"They killed my uncle," he admitted, still watching for my reaction.
"The people you killed?"
"Yeah. They wanted to overthrow my uncle's business so they killed him and whooped my ass."
"That's how you got this," I concluded, hand moving from his thigh, my fingertips tracing down the scar on his cheek.
"Yeah."
"Snakes and snitches," I guessed.
"Yeah, honey," he said, hands closing the rest of the distance between us, making my pelvis push against his.
"If they deserved it, I don't see why you have nightmares."
Repo (The Henchmen MC Book 4) Page 14