And as soon as he stepped in, I could see he was covered in blood.
Covered.
It didn't look like a drop of it was his own either.
FIFTEEN
Lazarus
"Did you at least tell her you were leaving?" Pagan asked when I walked out into the common room, carrying my boots because I didn't want to wake her with my stomping.
I knew I should have. That was the 'right' thing to do. But at the same time, it would only make things worse for her. If I snuck out while she was sleeping, it would give her a good six or eight hours of blissful unawareness where she wouldn't have to worry herself sick or be swarmed with guilt.
Her mind, her body, it needed a fucking break already.
A part of me wanted to put it off, to give her a couple days to heal up, to feel more comfortable at the compound and around my people before I disappeared on her.
But the other part of me was aware that it was just one night. I just needed one night away from her to handle the situation once and for all and then we could go right ahead and give our relationship a real try without those fuckwads hanging over our heads.
I was also pretty sure that if I didn't handle it right then, that Edison was going to go ahead and take matters into his own hands.
He was leaning against the wall beside the door, leg cocked up, head ducked down, seeming casual, but everything about him was tense. He wanted blood. So did I. And Pagan, well, he always wanted blood but especially so in this kind of situation.
"No." My tone was a bit clipped as I sat down to tie up my boots, my hands so tense that it took actual effort for such a mindless task.
I was angry, I realized.
I didn't do angry, almost as a rule.
I especially didn't do angry when I was entering a fight of some sort. It was a good way to guarantee fuck ups and failures.
It was one situation, however, where I didn't think it would matter how much time I would let pass, I would always be hot about it.
Bad enough that Sunny fuck hurt her in therapy on purpose and they all conspired to turn her into an addict, to blackmail her into working for them.
But then to show up and put their hands on her?
Yeah, not on my fucking watch. No way in hell were they going to be able to sleep through the night thinking they got away with that shit.
"The guys and girls know the deal," I added when all Pagan did was raise a brow as he opened and closed his fists, trying to loosen up the scabs on his knuckles from his last fight. "They'll keep an eye on her."
"Are we done chit-chatting?" Edison growled as I moved to stand, rolling some of the tension out of my shoulders. "We have some mother fucking hands to shatter into a thousand pieces."
"Just waiting for Janie to get back to me about some addresses. We're going to start with Chris then hit the father's house and leave the bastard who put his hands on her for last. So we can take our fucking time."
Fifteen minutes later, my phone vibrated in my pocket with three separate addresses and we all silently filed out into the garage, climbed into the SUV, and drove off.
It didn't surprise me that Chris and Mitchell lived in the same neighborhood of sprawling mini mansions that somehow had mostly-green lawns even in the dead of winter. Each house was set far back from the street, many with gated drives of expensive stone. All had impeccable evergreen landscaping, outdoor lighting, and expensive cars.
Chris lived on a corner lot. The house was on the smaller end for the street but was newer than many of the houses around it with its warm off-white stucco with stone accents, large picture window through which you could see a grand staircase with a chandelier that probably cost an entire year salary for someone working minimum wage. He didn't have a gate and there was a black, sleek Lexus parked in front of the two car garage.
We drove through the neighborhood, getting acclimated to the surroundings, passing by Mitchell's house as well.
His was almost twice the size of his son's which made sense since he was the one raking in five-hundred a month from each client. I was sure he had hundreds of them. It was a bit closer to the street with a curved stone driveway and gates. The house itself was two floors with a front of pristine deep red bricks with white stone accents. Through a window above the front door, you could see the sprawling horseshoe staircase leading up to the second floor.
"Living large on other peoples' misery," Edison's voice rumbled through the silent car as I drove it up a block and parked on the main drag beside a closed, but operational mechanic shop so that it wouldn't look suspicious to anyone around to see a strange car around.
"Alright." We all reached for our doors in unison, stepping out into the night air, feeling it bite at our exposed skin as we started the quick five minute walk toward Chris' house.
"No," Pagan said, shaking his head when we made a move toward the side door, pointing instead to an entrance that was through the side of the garage.
Edison reached into the back pocket of his jeans, producing what pretty much anyone would recognize as a lock pick set, bending down, and getting to work.
Having very little idea of his past, I was left to wonder if he had been someone who did B&E's. It didn't seem to fit his character. He seemed to have a pretty north-facing moral compass.
Maybe it was simply a skill he picked up so he could break into abusive pimps' houses and beat the ever-loving shit out of them.
That seemed to fit.
All of twenty seconds passed in tense silence, hyper aware to every night sound, alert for anything that might suggest someone had seen or heard us.
But then the door pushed open and Edison stepped inside, leaving me and Pagan with nothing to do but follow.
It was at least three in the morning and the house was silent as Edison worked the interior lock and let us into a hall with sleek dark hardwood floors, neutral wall color, and three doors off the sides. One was a half bath, another the laundry, and the third a utility space.
Edison fell back, recognizing that while we were on equal footing in the MC, this was my revenge and letting me know that he was happy to follow orders. Even if his bloodthirst was still a heady, palpable thing in the air around us.
I jerked my chin to the staircase, wincing a bit at the fact that it was all hardwood- no carpeting to muffle the pound of our boots on the surface. I prayed silently that Chris was a deep sleeper as we all moved up, the floorboards creaking our presence.
I was almost surprised when someone didn't come out waving a gun as we all stopped at the top landing, trying to decide which way to go. To the left was three doors. To the right, only two. Figuring two meant it was likely the master bedroom and maybe a closet, we moved in that direction.
My hand reached for the knob, cold to the touch, and I exhaled hard to settle my nerves as I finally pushed it open.
And there was Dr. Chris Andrews asleep on his king-sized bed in ridiculous as fuck blue and white striped silk pajamas. There was white noise from a Hepa machine to one side of the bed and mist from a humidifier at the other.
I almost wanted to laugh.
Yeah, some real hardened fucking criminal with a goddamn sinus problem and germ phobia.
"Pagan, this one is yours."
I had no interest in him. Yeah, he was part of an evil trifecta, but he was the least awful in my eyes.
"No." Edison's growl stopped Pagan halfway into a step forward, making him pivot and raise a brow at him. "That's the one who grabbed her at Hex. I want him."
To that, Pagan shrugged, happy to take Mitchell when I tossed him at him, not really caring who he got to pound into, just happy to do some beating.
It was right about that second too that Dr. Chris Andrews got startled awake by noises that weren't his stupid machines.
His eyes flew open, his body shooting upward on the bed. "What the..."
But he didn't get to finish his question.
One second, Edison was right by my side.
The next, he was
dragging the man off the bed and slamming him into the wall.
From there- he got what was coming to him.
Pagan moved away from me and out into the hall, making me follow him out, curious.
"Gonna cut the phone lines," he shrugged, producing a pocketknife from his boot and heading downstairs.
Because while we had the green light to exact some justice, we had no idea how far Reign would be okay with us taking it. A beating? An eye for an eye because they messed with what belonged to us? That would always fly. But murder? It was pushing it.
That being said, I was pretty sure all of them would be eating out of straws for a while.
It was a full ten minutes later before I finally had to step in and pull Edison back, knowing that the way he was going, he would end up beating the fuck to death without even meaning to- just too caught up in the moment.
Without Edison's hands holding him up, his body slumped to the floor- unconscious.
"He's got a basement," Pagan supplied and with that, Edison hauled the dead weight over his shoulder and carried him down two flights of stairs, locking him into a small room in the basement from the outside.
Then from there, we made our way to Mitchell's.
"Can't say I haven't been expecting this." That was how we were greeted when we walked into his main floor.
Mitchell stood in the doorway to his study, a gun raised in a steady hand. There was really no mistaking it then- the evil in his eye, the complete lack of remorse for what he had done to many people, including Bethany, for the monsters he had turned his sons into as well. "I guess I am to assume that is my son's blood all over you," he said, nodding his head toward Edison, not seeming the least bit worried. "Did he survive the beating or not?"
There was nothing in his tone. Just deadness. He didn't even give a fuck about his own son.
"Mine, right?" Pagan asked at my side.
I nodded a little tightly, not knowing why he was taking that moment to clear things up seeing as none of us had guns and he seemed like he would be a pretty decent shot judging by his stance and confident hold of the gun.
I really needed to learn to stop expecting sane behavior from Pagan.
As soon as he saw my nod, he was no longer at my side, but walking across the space toward Mitchell.
Yes, walking.
Fucking... swaggering.
He didn't even falter when the gun turned on him fully, when Mitchell's finger slid to the trigger.
"There's a little problem with this type of gun," Pagan said casually, making Mitchell's eyes go to the gun in question, seeming to worry if there were some kind of flaw with it, that it wouldn't protect him or might backfire or something. But the second his eyes were averted, Pagan's hand clamped down on the top of the gun as his fist pulled back then surged upward, landing a solid undercut to the man's chin. The crack was almost deafening in the giant, open space. "They only work when you aren't too much of a pussy to use it," he informed the man as he sank down onto his knees.
Pagan pulled the gun away, holding it out behind him and I moved forward to take it, moving over toward the curtain on the window and wiping all our prints and DNA off of it as Pagan snagged the back of Mitchell's collar and dragged him fully into his study.
"What do you want? The girl? Take her. Some two-bit junkie? Who the fuck needs her?"
There was a loud growling noise and I hadn't even been aware it came from me until Mitchell's eyes drifted over to mine, running me up and down, assessing me and, if his eye roll was anything to go by, finding me lacking.
"Might be a smart time to shut up, buddy," Pagan advised, looking down at the man in front of him.
"I'm just curious what the end game here is? I have no plans on stopping what I am doing. Neither of us want the cops in our lives. So if you're not going to kill me... what happens after your rabid dog gets done with me?"
He would go back to exactly what he had been doing. He would keep screwing over people. He would keep being responsible for people OD'ing on the streets.
But that being said, it wasn't our place to take him out.
Reign had turned a blind eye to V's organization for years until he came across Summer. He had a cocaine dealer as a father-in-law. He was friends with men who beat people for a living.
The strength of The Henchmen MC seemed to be knowing which fight was theirs and which wasn't then acting accordingly.
With our numbers still decimated, we couldn't be bringing any more heat down on ourselves.
So there was nothing we could do. I would get revenge for Bethany's pain. I would make sure they understood that they would never even speak her name again, not even in a whisper, that if they saw her out on the street, they would fucking turn and walk away.
"The end game is you forget Bethany existed. You don't even breathe in the vicinity of her. You stay the fuck away from my woman and you can go ahead and keep doing your dirtbag shit."
He actually nodded at that, accepting it as, well, fair.
It was right then that I knew he wasn't just a doctor. No normal person reacted like that to the situation. He must have come from crime, had parents involved in shit, grown up on the wrong side of the law.
It was the only explanation.
"Fair enough."
"Well, we'll see what Luce has to say about that."
That was the last thing Pagan said before he started swinging, before blood started flying every-fucking-where.
My eyes drifted over to Edison, my brows drawn together. But he had no answers for me either as he shrugged and shook his head.
It wasn't until twenty minutes later, Pagan being a little harder to pull away from the bloody, mangled mess that was his victim than Edison had been, that we walked back out to the street, moving fast because we only had so much time to get to Sunny before either his father or brother could warn him of us.
"Who the fuck is Luce?" Edison asked as soon as we were inside the SUV, me throwing it into reverse and heading down toward a crummier part of town that Sunny apparently liked to call home.
Pagan reached into his pocket, pulling out a cigarette and a lighter, rolling the window down slightly and taking a long pull before answering. "I guess the right term for him would be 'vigilante'," he said casually.
"Vigilante? In Navesink Bank? How has no one else heard of him?"
"Must be fucking deaf, man," he said, shrugging. "Jstorm and Alex talk about him. Them and their dark web shit. Apparently there is some underground fan club for him. Lucifer's Lovers or some stupid shit like that. Some crazy broad writes Luce fanfic porn. Kinda hot shit actually." He took another long drag of his cigarette as if that wasn't perhaps the most important news we had heard all day.
A vigilante in the area?
That was huge.
Reign needed to fucking know about that.
We didn't know what his opinions might be on arms dealers who supplied other big bad guys.
"Lucifer?" Edison scoffed.
"You talk like you know him," I added.
"I know enough."
That was the end of the conversation.
And it was wholly unlike Pagan.
He was always almost too open about everything.
It wasn't like him to clam up about something, especially such a juicy topic.
As soon as we were done with the Andrews family, as soon as I showed my woman that she was safe with me, that she was cherished, that I had every intention of being there for her for the foreseeable future, yeah, after all that... I needed to figure out who the fuck this Luce guy was.
Sunny's house was really just a step up from a shack size-wise. In fact, his goddamn detached garage was twice the size of the house itself.
"Weird," Pagan mumbled as we drove past, taking in the dark wood shakes, the dirty windows, the muscle car in the driveway that wasn't a driveway, but just a place he drove up on and wore down to dirt eventually.
We pulled up the next street and moved in from the back, a line of wood
s being the only thing behind the house.
"Something is odd here," Edison said, making me let out a sigh of relief.
I had thought I was being paranoid.
Something definitely felt off to me as well.
Pagan, being Pagan, didn't think of things like that as he would literally charge into a any damn situation without regard for the consequences.
"It's a three man organization. Not like you're walking into an ambush," Pagan reasoned though, shrugging.
And, well, that was true.
Maybe he had been tipped off.
Maybe he was waiting.
But it was still just him.
And there were three of us.
I also had the advantage of righteous anger on my side.
With that, we moved forward.
Pagan, sensing the pulsing anxiety between me and Edison, got there first and before Edison could even reach for his lock pick set, he landed a boot to the center of the door, making it explode inward. He moved back a step, extending one arm to the entrance and doing a small bow.
I almost wanted to laugh.
But my mind was on other things in that moment.
Like Bethany's perfect fucking face bruised and swollen. Like her blood-filled eye. Like the bands around her throat and the soreness I knew she felt there. Like the pain in her scalp.
Like the fear he instilled in her.
Like the fact that he had almost taken her away from me.
Rage was a hot thing, working through my veins and organs until I was sweating despite the cold weather as I stormed inside.
The blow to the back of my head was enough to make me double forward on a curse, my vision jumping in and out for one excruciating moment before I whirred around in time to catch sight of a fist before it landed a stroke to my temple that would have knocked me cold.
Sunny, unlike his father and brother, was a big guy. He had the typical gym-rat build, all shoulders and chest with neglected legs, giving him a triangular shape that was laughable to anyone who knew anything about fighting. And to me who knew just about everything about it, it was fucking hysterical.
There was no way he could take me even though he had a solid extra thirty pounds of muscle more than me.
Lazarus (The Henchmen MC Book 7) Page 20