Reign (The Henchmen MC 1)

Outside, I took a breath that I hadn't realized I had been holding.

“God damn it,” I said to the night as a whole.

Reign was probably shitting bricks on the road, pushing the bike as fast as it would go. And I knew why even if the stubborn fuck didn't know himself. He fell hard for Summer the first night he met her. It was pathetic storybook shit. But it was real. Every single second he could spare, he spent with her. I saw it. The men saw it. The bitches definitely saw it.

And fucking Summer looked at him like he hung the moon.

He would go on a suicide mission to get her back.

He would bring on a full-blown war to get her back.

And, for once, I wouldn't fight him on it.Twelve hours. Twelve fucking hours.

I was sitting on top of the bar, hand clenching at my gun, sick of inactivity. The men were everywhere. We'd found the hole. We'd found the tire tracks. Something heavy. Truck. SUV. That was it. No one knew shit. Repo was still unconscious in one of the bedrooms with Doc. Flee was still in surgery at the hospital with Q standing guard.

There was nothing to do.

Vin's eyes kept flashing to mine and I could feel the tension in his body match mine.

Then the door opened.

And Reign was there.

Twelve fucking hours.

I didn't even want to think of the speed he'd had to travel to make a day's journey in half the time.

He looked like hell. His entire body, head to feet, was tight. His face hard. His fists clenched. His eyes though, his eyes were burning.

Wolf came in hot on his heels and his eyes had that edge to them. That edge that said he was barely holding it together.

Hell, it looked like all the men had fallen for Summer.

“What do we know?” Reign asked through clenched teeth.

“Not much,” I started. “Hole in the fence. Tire tracks. Something heavy. Flee is in surgery. Repo is unconscious in one of the rooms. Signs of struggle out back. No witness. Nothing. We got shit, man.”

He nodded his head tightly. Then he turned to Wolf.

“Find something,” he demanded. The words were barely out of his mouth when Wolf nodded and took off.

“We'll get her back, man,” I said, attempting comfort.

“I told her she was safe here,” he said, staring off into the room. “I shouldn't have fucking left her.”

He was barely holding on.

I'd seen Reign in a lot of situations in our time together. I'd seen him leaning over our father's dead body, riddled with bullets. I'd seen the horror slowly getting replaced with a thirst for revenge. I'd seen him look into the eyes of traitors, the look of rage so strong it was catching.

But I'd never seen him like that before: utterly wrecked.

Vin was the one who broke the silence. “You had business,” he told Reign, subtly reminding him that club business trumps all.

On a normal day, that would have snapped Reign out of his inner struggles.

But on the day when the only bitch he ever gave a shit about in his entire life went missing, falling back into the hands of men who made her scream in her sleep every night... yeah... it only served to uncage everything he was keeping buried deep.

His hand reached for the closest thing, a stool my feet were resting on, picking it up, and hauling it at the flatscreen.

It shattered quickly, the metal stool slamming painfully loud back onto the ground.

Five men came running from different directions, guns at their sides, looking around for some kind of threat. Seeing Reign, they stood down, looking at the destruction, looking at their president, understanding coming over their faces.

Chuck, a man around the same age as Vin, stepped forward. “Go hit something,” he told him, clamping a hand on his shoulder. “Gotta run through this energy if you want to handle this clear-headed. Go hit something.”

Reign nodded stiffly, taking off toward the basement.

When he was gone, they all turned to me.

“We got shit,” I said, shrugging. “Wolf is out trying to find some.”

“Nothin' worse than nothing to do,” Chuck said, nodding.

“Should we be worried about our families?” one of the others asked.

I shook my head. “This is personal,” I decided to share. “Your women and kids are safe.”

“Someone is fucking with the prez and we ain't handling it?” Vin asked, looking a mix of confused and angry.

“He said it's personal. He ain't involving everyone in his shit.”

“That ain't how we handle things, man. Someone fucks with one of us, they fuck with all of us.”

I nodded. Because that was true. It was how it had always been.

That being said, the people who fucked with us in the past were nothing compared to V.

I shrugged a shoulder.

“He has his reasons. We'll all get more information when he's ready to give it. Right now he doesn't need us all sitting here acting like bitches 'cause you're feeling left out. Do your jobs and wait for orders.”

Their heads jerked back, surprised, chastened. Then they nodded, and filed back to whatever the fuck they had been doing.

Half a day in charge and I was feeling heavy. Physically, emotionally heavy. It was new, foreign. My life had always been different from Reign's. He got the burden, I got the fun. Booze and bitches and runs. I never had to deal with the weight of the men's questions, their anger, their nervousness.

Half a day.

And he had been dealing with the shit for years.

It was no wonder he needed to escape to his cabin, he needed to spend so much time on his bike alone, sorting through shit.

Fuck.

I hopped off the bar, making my way toward the basement where the chain was swinging viciously.

I stopped at the bottom step, watching him fly at the bag, his fists moving fast enough that they were hard to keep your eyes on. He had been down there for a good twenty minutes and he didn't seem any less tense. If anything, he seemed all the more worked up.