Repo (The Henchmen MC 4)

Nothing.

Because they had stuck to their guns.

I wasn't getting a patch.

I wasn't being allowed into The Henchmen MC.

I swear they picked this particular day to let me in on that fact because Janie was still off on her Honeymoon with Wolf, Lo was out of town on a job, Summer was down with morning sickness until well into the evening, and the rest of the girls club only happened over to the compound if they were called to. So there was no Alex or Amelia around either to pitch a fit with me.

I was, quite literally, completely and utterly alone.

Repo stood with his brothers.

I hadn't exactly thought it would be any other way when it came down to it. It wasn't that he was standing against me, he was just standing with the decision his boss had made. I understood it. But that didn't mean there wasn't a tiny little pit of resentment in my stomach over it, no matter how sad his eyes looked when my gaze slid to him.

He knew what it meant to me. He knew every little bit of torture I went through, how above and beyond I worked and trained to make myself an important member of the MC.

"Babe..."

"Don't," I snapped, loudly and without restraint. I wasn't a member and I wasn't a probate anymore. So talking back to Reign wasn't disloyal. It might have been a bit risky and stupid, but it wasn't against some code of conduct. "Don't you dare fucking 'babe' me," I yelled, crossing over toward him, watching Vin and Cash shrink away from his sides because, I imagined, they knew women well enough to know that when we got on a tear, we didn't give a good flying fuck in space about collateral damage.

"Maze this is for the..."

"Best?" I cut him off. "You know what... fuck that. And fuck you and your sexist bullshit. One day, Reign, Ferryn is going to be all grown up. And on that day, I'll be around and I won't hesitate to tell her what a chauvinistic pig her fucking father..." I started to punctuate each word with a shove to his massive chest, barely managing to make his body move at all.

"Maze..." he broke in, tone calm, not even mildly phased by my outburst. Possibly due to the fact that he was pretty much only ever surrounded by women who were in no way shy about sharing their thoughts and feelings.

"Take your half-assed explanations and go to hell," I spat, turning on my heel and moving across the field toward the front yard.

"Hey Maze, maybe you should shut the fuck up for a second and listen," Reign called. If I hadn't been seeing, hearing, and feeling red... I might have heard the humor in his tone. As it was, all I heard was 'shut the fuck up and listen' and, well, I had just about enough of him. I moved to spin around, almost crashing into Reign himself, not realizing he had followed me. "Stop," he said when I opened my mouth to spit more fire. "Listen," he said, ducking his head a little to look me in the eye. "Things are changing around here a little."

"Really? And how long before you come out of the seventeenth century gender-role wise?"

He ignored that completely. "Most prominently, Maze, the law is changing around here a little. There's a lot of new blood. There's no telling who might want to cut their teeth by trying to gnaw away at Henchmen business."

"And this matters to me, why? Remember? I'm not part of The Henchmen."

"It's a strategic move, babe. You are but you aren't, okay?"

My brows drew together and I sighed, feeling some of the anger fall away under a sea of questions. "Alright, explain."

"We have to start going part legit. Repo is going to open a garage, stop fucking around in the field when he feels like it and do some real business. Cash, Janie, and Lo are going to be opening a gym that focuses on martial arts and kickboxing..."

"Why are you telling me this?"

"Well, see, Maze... you have a particular set of skills the men and I decided might come in handy."

I felt myself straighten, knowing where he was going and not sure how I felt about it. "Go on."

"Well, see, babe. Took you years to sort out what was going on with the Kozlov books it was so well hidden. I was thinking maybe you could... point us in the right direction with that kind of thing."

"You want me to help launder your money?" I asked, feeling my smile spread a little. Oh, what would Detective Conroy Asher think if he saw me now?

"No. Of course not," he said, grinning a little devilishly. "I want to hire you as an accountant to handle the books for the mechanic shop and the studio. If Repo just so happens to find out how exactly to hide money so well that not even the finest IRS agent could find it, well, that would just be a crazy coincidence."