Edison (The Henchmen MC Book 10)

by Jessica Gadziala

  I wasn't an automaton; I had urges and desires and wants. I didn't hate men, though you could say I leaned more heavily to that side than the other. But I simply haven't had time for one the last six months. And to invite one into my life when I was about to commit a capital offense was simply not a good move.

  "You're not a frigid bitch," Meryl surprised me by saying. He wasn't shy about using the b-word, though he generally did it teasingly. And, to be fair, when I totally deserved it. "And I never said you should change. Maybe though, you could find yourself a man who could... warm you up the old-fashioned way."

  With that, he was gone, leaving me to wonder if that was a remote possibility. Because I knew Meryl. He didn't mean that at face-value, meaning I could let a man warm me up by fucking me. He meant something deeper, something that I, well, had never allowed in my life. Easier to have a fling when I needed it, or a fuck-buddy situation, than catch feelings.

  Men, I had learned from a very, very young age, always left.

  And in leaving, they left the women who loved them as broken pieces scattered all around.

  Yeah, I decided as I shook off that train of thought, knowing it went nowhere I wanted to visit again, it was better to do my thing.

  I worked.

  I occasionally got wasted to get rid of some of the stress.

  I trained.

  I got stronger.

  I got more and more ready each day.

  Because the six-month mark was readily approaching.

  And there was a pit in my stomach that was telling me that the deal I made with the universe that night wasn't going to go the way I had been hoping in vain for.

  Things weren't going to get better.

  I was going to have to make the hardest decision of my life.

  Then after that, yeah, I was going to make the fucking easiest.

  I was going to kill a man.

  TWO

  Edison

  "I'm just saying, it's too quiet." That was Sugar.

  To be fair, he wasn't exactly wrong.

  This was a gun-running MC.

  Things were almost never supposed to be so still.

  If there was one thing I knew about stillness, it was that a raging storm always followed. Always.

  It had been the better part of a year since Richard Lyon was shot down, since someone did drive-bys, since Marco took over the cocaine trade.

  And nothing.

  No more shows of flexing. No more nothing.

  It didn't feel right.

  It felt like a storm was brewing.

  Though there was nothing to suggest that.

  It was just in the atmosphere.

  It was like I could tell the rain was coming by an ache in a badly healed tibia.

  I could feel trouble coming in my balls.

  It was coming.

  We just had no idea how, when, why, or by whom.

  Sugar and Virgin felt it.

  That was likely due to a lifetime in an MC, knowing the ebbs and flows like a sailor knew the seas.

  Roan sensed it too.

  You hardly ever caught him down from that fucking DARPA glass room on the roof. Though, to be fair, I suspected he wasn't watching out just for threats.

  He was looking for ghosts come back to haunt him.

  I didn't know the man. He wasn't the kind of man you could know. But I knew many men like him. The closed books. The rooms with locked doors. Men like Roan needed locks and keys sank at the bottom of the ocean. Men like Roan had done things that made it necessary.

  I knew this maybe because Roan and I, yeah, we were cut from the same cloth. We had paths that no one needed to know about, not in excruciating, brutal, cinematographic contrast - the deep blacks and grays making the bright, red of the blood stand out all the more.

  Men like us, yeah, we were covered in the shit. It just took others like us to be able to see it all.

  I saw it on Roan.

  He was soaked in it.

  No amount of scrubbing would get that off of him. But that was the job. You wanted to play one side against the other with you standing in the middle? Yeah, it was unavoidable.

  I had met a spy or two in my day, both, though, being Russian, so I didn't know much about American ones. I figured, though, that a spy was a spy was a spy. Maybe Russians spies had a certain style, but they all did the same sordid shit.

  "Been watching the Abruzzo place for almost a year," Roderick tried to reason, a man who liked the calm because it meant he could enjoy the perks that came from men draped in leather riding hogs. Drinking, respect, and women. No one could blame him either. He was the youngest of the group. He hadn't had as many years of hellraising as we did.

  "He's on the drug front," Sugar insisted, tipping back a beer. "That was a threat when it was a threat, and that shit with Summer's mother needs to be watched because it sounds like a holyshitbomb if she is still alive and gets free, but the chances of a threat coming from that direction - her aside - is low. It is more likely going to be the syndicates looking for the gun trade. Which, well, is half of them. Pretty much the only ones we don't have to sweat are the Italians. They are happy with what they have going. Guns are hard to hide. They are always being invaded by the Feds. They don't want the heat. But the Russians, Chinese, Irish, and even all the South American groups all would kill for a piece of what Reign and his dad before him have built here. The contacts are too good. The income is fucking insane. If there is going to be a storm, it is going to come from almost any direction except the Abruzzo compound."

  "Where you going?" Roderick asked when I moved to stand.

  "Got a shift," I told them, grabbing my phone, tucking it in my pocket.

  "Tell Jstorm I got a lead on that puppy thing," Sugar called, referencing one of Janie's endless crusades to right a wrong. In this case, though, I would be happy to string the fuck who tried to drown a litter of puppies in the Navesink my damn self. Luckily, someone had heard the yip, dove in, and saved the pups that were all happily living up on the Hailstorm compound, getting trained like all the rest.

  But Janie wouldn't rest - both literally and figuratively - until she found the prick who tried to kill them all.

  For reasons that weren't clear to me - and were frankly none of my business - she had tapped Sugar for help.

  I was glad he was coming through with something.

  "Will do."

  "Try not to get your ass kicked again," Pagan called as I headed out the door, referencing last week when one of the girls in my class - a woman who had been brutally raped by three men just two months before, there for free because Lo and Janie - and by extension, Cash - let women who had been attacked train for free - had gotten in her head during a hold and had slammed me so hard in the face that my nose bled for hours after.

  She hid in the bathroom for an hour once class was done, crying. Even when she came back out, she was shaking so hard that she looked like she was having a seizure. I took her to She's Bean Around for a coffee and talked about her form.

  Janie, Lo, and Cash weren't the only ones at the gym who had a soft spot for women who had been abused at the hands of men.

  I had been a champion for them almost as far back as I could remember.

  That was why I worked at the gym, even though I didn't need to, even though they didn't particularly need me either.

  I knew my life would change when I made the choice to join on with The Henchmen. The lifestyle I had always engaged in, where I could make a difference the way I had been doing for decades, was gone. But the urge to make an impact never went away.

  Doing classes at the gym helped.

  It wasn't the same, but it was something.

  They had been happy to have me, even though they didn't need me.

  Janie and Lo taught their Krav Maga. Malcolm from Hailstorm, along with a few of his other guys, taught LINE. Cyrus offered a Jiu Jitsu class twice a month. There was another guy who taught boxing.

  They had it covered.

&nb
sp; But they offered an ultimate package that cost a mint - unless you were one of the women already mentioned - which taught all of the above. And my class.

  Systema.

  Russian martial arts.

  I might have been born in Romania, but I spent a lot of my life kicking across eastern Europe, spending a good chunk of time in Russia.

  Systema was a specific fighting style that used an attacker's momentum against them, making it ideal to use for someone who was weaker than their opponent. Like women. It also focused on teaching things such as pressure points which, once you knew them, you could apply with almost no effort, but bring a man to his knees in pain.

  Systema was the last of all fighting styles to learn before you graduated out of the Ultimate Self-Defense Package.

  This meant that I usually had classes once a week for three months, then went several months again with no classes as I waited for the new classes to go through LINE, boxing, Jiu Jitsu, and Krav Maga.

  I was only three weeks into my newest class.

  I climbed on my bike, turning it over, feeling the vibration move through my body in a newly familiar way. Prior to joining The Henchmen, I had only had a handful of occasions to ride a bike, and usually in the kinds of situations where I needed to use them to get away and fast, and therefore didn't find a way to enjoy the experience.

  I had no idea what I was missing out on.

  The first few weeks that I spent at the compound, more prisoner than brother, I couldn't understand why the men had occasionally bitched about not being able to go out and ride.

  That was, of course, until I got a bike of my own and understood the freedom you got without steel walls holding you in.

  At first, I constantly found myself taking the long way back to the compound just to get a couple more minutes with the wind washing over me.

  The ride to the gym was too short. Really, I could have walked. If I were still in Europe, I would have walked. But this was America, and unless you lived in a major city, you drove everywhere.

  I parked in the lot out back, going in through the rear entrance, popping my head into the office to find the slight, raven-haired, tattoo-covered Krav Maga master, hacker extraordinaire, and explosives expert, Hailstorm's favorite daughter, Wolf's whole world, sitting there, chugging back an energy drink, shadows under her eyes, speaking of a sleeplessness she was known for.

  Once, she had been a woman who hadn't been able to protect herself, who had been made a victim, who had wished for death, who had begged for it instead of more abuse.

  She had almost not made it.

  Surely, she would have died if it weren't for Lo finding her, and Hailstorm nursing her, hardening her, teaching her to harness her rage into something useful.

  She did that.

  She became a goddamn prodigy.

  But the nightmares still came, unrelenting at times, even now, after her husband had viciously murdered the man who put those ugly memories in her head, they still came on occasion, leaving her up for days on end, plugging away at her laptop, trying to right some wrong or another.

  "Jstorm," I called, trying for a soft voice, but, well, I couldn't ever really do soft, making her jerk around in her swivel chair, having to slam her hands on her desk to stop the momentum.

  "Christ, stomp a little, would you?" she asked, rolling her eyes at me. "What's up?"

  "Sugar said to drop him a line when you have a minute. He thinks he might have a lead."

  "Finally," she declared, already reaching for her cell.

  I knew when I was being dismissed, walking down the hall, past the two locker rooms, then into the main area of the gym.

  It was a massive space the trio had gotten on a song thanks to it being too large to be anything other than maybe a factory and the unwillingness of the bank that had owned it to cut it up into more marketable pieces.

  This meant that the main room was the size of your average gym, complete with weights and a line of cardio equipment. But there were also speed bags, heavy bags, and, of course, a large, raised boxing ring.

  There was a reception desk inside the door to the right along with a line of water dispensers, a towel rack, and another of the half a dozen or so gray open-topped, black bag lined garbage pails that were placed sporadically around the room for the people who trained hard enough to vomit.

  Along the left side of the room were two large private rooms, one for classes, one for private lessons.

  The first one sounded already half-filled with my students for the day, voices lively enough to be heard across the room even over the metal Jstorm was known for blasting when she was in the office, and the sounds of fists hitting leather bags full of sand.

  I was still ten minutes early, and wanted to give anyone running a bit later a chance to show up before I greeted everyone, so I moved over toward the desk, jerking my head at Cary, another of Hailstorm's daughters, a short, slight, Asian girl with the shiniest hair I had ever seen, and a glare that could shrink a man's balls from twenty yards away. She didn't want a verbal greeting, and I didn't give her one, looking out across the gym at the various people training.

  There was a duo in the ring, what looked like an older and younger brother, the elder trying to teach the younger to distribute weight for an uppercut. There was a group of guys over by the weights, as there always seemed to be. I swear they did more bullshitting than a group of women at a coffee clutch, but who was I to judge? They paid their fifty bucks a week to sit and do their gabbing. That was all that really mattered.

  My focus drifted over them, not finding anything the least bit interesting to focus on.

  Until my eyes passed over her.

  You could call it superficial.

  And, sure, I did notice the way her long legs and high ass filled out her deep gray yoga pants and the way her black wifebeater was stretched over her long torso, sans bra because she likely felt like she didn't need one, without more than a small handful up top, but it also meant that you could faintly make out the peaks of her nipples through the fabric.

  Facing a heavy bag, I could only see her face in profile, but even so, there was no mistaking the perfect jawline, the straight nose, the generous lips, the heavily lashed dark eyes.

  Gorgeous.

  But that wasn't what held my gaze.

  Gorgeous women were everywhere.

  This was something else.

  This was in the small details.

  Like her medium brown hair with endless reddish and blonde highlights, made darker with sweat, and the way it was cut slightly shorter in the back then longer in the front to graze her clavicles that jutted out of her skin thanks to her slimness. It was how she didn't try to tie it back, just let it hang about her face, getting more and more drenched by the second, dripping salt water all over her clothes and the floor around her.

  It was in the way that she didn't look around her, didn't have earbuds stuck in her ears.

  Her focus was absolute.

  The walls could fall around her without her noticing.

  And then there was her dedication.

  Every strike was precise.

  Every twist of her body was purposeful, perfectly formed.

  Even her breathing was on-point.

  I had seen a lot of men and women in this gym - and in endless other gyms across several continents over decades.

  I had known amateurs and masters.

  I had never seen someone with her determination.

  That was what it was too.

  Determination.

  She was on a mission.

  She was a knife, sharpening herself for something.

  And I found myself wanting to know what that was.

  "Cary," I called, smiling at the genuine growl she gave me.

  "What?" she snapped, shuffling a stack of papers together with a thump on the surface of the desk it was clear she did not appreciate me sitting on.

  "The woman on the heavy," I said, looking over my shoulder at Cary.


  "What about her?" she asked, not bothering to look.

  "Who is she?"

  "Right, because I'm the type of person to hand out the personal information of clients."

  My lips twitched up at that. "Alright, I can respect that. Is she new?"

  "You're new," she countered. "She comes five days a week, every week for almost six months."

  "Classes?" I asked, not willing to believer her form could be so perfect without that.

  "Three classes with each of the instructors."

  "Cy?"

  "Yeah."

  "Why not me?" I asked, brows drawing together at Cary's shrug.

  "Maybe she missed the memo about Systema since you have yet to do a private lesson. We don't even have a rate for what you would charge for that."

  That was fair.

  And I planned to go back into the office and clear that up with Jstorm as soon as my class was over.

  Speaking of, it seemed like my last stragglers were in.

  It was time to start.

  But not just yet.

  There was just one thing I needed to do first.

  I hopped off the desk, moving toward the nameless woman, shifting to walk behind the heavy, grabbing it at the last second, right before she was going to strike, surprised when she managed to pull her momentum back at the last possible second so she didn't hurt her hand.

  Focused.

  Determined.

  And observant.

  The perfect weapon.

  "Are you trying to break my fucking hand?" she snapped, swiping sweaty hair out of her eyes so she could see, giving me an eyeful of her hands. She had chosen not to wrap them, to toughen the skin up, a choice I respected, maybe doubly so because even the most dedicated of my students chose to avoid callouses and bloody knuckles.

  She wasn't afraid to harden up.

  "I was checking to see if you're good enough."

  I hadn't been wrong to go the challenge route. This woman was not one to back down from one. And that, well, it was sexy as fuck. Her dark eyes got smaller; her chin raised slightly.