Repo (The Henchmen MC 4)

In return, we were given no softness.

I learned to love the sandpaper sensation of his words.

Because I learned what they were doing. They were scraping away the me I used to be: weak, naive, gullible, clueless and replacing it with the woman I needed to be to survive.

"Okay K. I have to get back. We all have a meeting with Repo in about fifteen and I'm clear across town."

"I want an update in two days. Then we will set up a new system."

"Got it. Thanks, K," I said, feeling the gratitude down to my bones. But K wasn't the touchy-feely kind of guy and I knew that if I went and got all gushy on him, he would make me start repeating my mantras.

"Stay safe and kick ass," he said before the silence told me he hung up.

I slung my bag over my shoulder, feeling the weight of it. Not just the clothes and books, but the fact that it was literally all I had in the world anymore. I had a bug-out bag stashed in a locker at a train station in Pennsylvania in case something happened and I needed to get out of town with nothing but the clothes on my back.

There were no more mementos. I didn't have any of the furniture I had spent months online pinning and un-pinning and re-pinning on Pinterest before finally purchasing. I didn't have the funky street art I had bought when I was walking one evening on my way home from work. I would never see the pair of pearl earrings that had been on my nightstand, a gift from my grandmother on my seventeenth birthday, again.

Ignoring the stabbing sensation in my chest and the burning behind my eyes that threatened tears, I ran across the parking lot and threw myself on my loathed motorcycle and made my way back toward The Henchmen compound.

My home.

"Augh," I growled at the idea as I pulled up to the gates, parked, and went inside.

"Just like a chick to be late," Moose grumbled as I walked past.

"I still have ten minutes, jackass," I said, swinging into the seat between him and Duke, 'accidentally' hitting Moose as hard as possible with my bag. "Oops," I said, hoping I looked genuinely apologetic.

From the smirk that Repo was giving me from across the room, though, I was pretty sure I failed. But whatever. No where in the 'outlaw MC handbook' did it say we had to get along with fellow probates. If anything, we were encouraged to fight, to show the patched members what we were made of.

No one wanted a new member who was all sugar and honey.

They wanted piss and vinegar.

So that was what they were going to get from me.

"Alright, let's get this over with," Repo said, pushing off the wall and moving toward where we were sitting at the bar. "New work assignments. Moose and Fox, you're on the gates in the afternoons. Duke and Renny, you'll do alternating overnights. Maze, you relieve Duke and Renny at four. That's not a problem, is it?"

"Nope." If anything, it was the ideal assignment. I was part of that point-zero-zero-one percent of the population that was a die-hard morning person. The sun started peeking through the sky and I was wide awake. I was half-afraid he would have stuck me with the overnights.

"She gets to patrol alone?" Moose asked, sounding dangerously close to whining.

"Is that... safe?" Fox asked and I heard, for the first time, a hint of malice there. Maybe he wasn't unlike his brother after all.

"Any of you want to get up and do a four A.M. patrol is welcome to join her. Otherwise shut your fucking mouths and do as you're told."

With that, he left, moving out the back doors and across the field to where three different cars were in various stages of disrepair.

"Fucking bullshit," Moose growled, jumping out of his chair.

"That you're still here after talking back like that? I agree. Bullshit," I said, pushing away from the bar and moving off toward the basement.--I went to bed early. For one, because I needed to be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed to do my patrol. But also because it saved me from having to deal with Moose and Fox without Renny as a buffer. Duke didn't seem overly fond of the two either, but he didn't seem overly inclined to help me deal with them. Not that I blamed him. It was an 'every man for himself' kind of situation and, well, you couldn't exactly expect bikers to be the warm and mushy type.

My alarm beeped once before I shot up and shut it off, looking around wildly, praying it hadn't woken anyone up. Across from me, Moose and Fox were both still passed out. I wiped the sleep out of my eyes and climbed down from the top bunk. My feet had just settled on the ground when I felt a big hand close around my right calf. I opened my mouth to scream, but clamped it shut at the last possible second, spinning with raised fists to find Duke sitting off the edge of his bed, watching me with a tilted head.