Niro (Henchmen MC Next Generation 1)

"Was it you, you fuckers?" a man asked, striding toward Reign and Fallon with a fearlessness that spoke of someone from out of town since no one born and raised here would step to the Henchmen with the anger bouncing off of his nerve endings.

"Was us what?" Fallon asked, already off his bike, moving to tower over the older, shorter, much rounder in frame man.

"With the blood and the garbage everywhere? The new owners came to view it today and lost their fucking minds. You been squatting here with your biker buddies?" he asked.

"Do we look like we've been squatting here?" Fallon asked. "We're looking for who was here too. They leave anything behind?"

"Besides a good ten grand in property damage? No. You find them, you tell them that me and my lawyers need to have a word with them."

"Yeah, I don't think you want us to do that," Fallon told him. "You ever stop to worry where all that blood came from?" he added, brow quirking up. "Did you clean it all up yet?"

"It's gonna take a few days."

"Mind if we look around?" Reign asked, but he was already pushing past the man, going toward the front door.

"What the fuck are you doing here?" Fallon hissed when we made it into the kitchen to find Danny leaning over the bloodstained kitchen table, checking out the blood.

"You guys are slow as fuck," she declared, giving him a saucy smile as she used a pen to pick up a bullet she found near the leg of a chair.

"Stop touching that shit," Fallon snapped, moving forward.

"I have every right to be here as you do. More, even. My man was shot. Your girl was, what, a little scared?" she said, rolling her eyes.

"She was kidnapped," I clarified.

"Right. Yes. And then returned. Unharmed."

I'd never hit a woman. I'd never had the urge to hit a woman. But I could have slapped her for the way she kept downplaying what Andi had been through. But, I reminded myself, Danny had been raised in an MC, and had likely needed to fight her way to the top in a male-dominated world where everyone thought she wasn't qualified to run shit. It made her hard and jaded and tough on other women who hadn't been through something similar.

"Need I remind you that Toll is going to need to walk with a cane. Probably for the rest of his life. So you're just going to have to forgive the fuck out of me for being less than moved by the vet's little ordeal. I mean she was here and she couldn't get any more information out of them? Why they were here? What they want?"

"She was a little busy pulling a bullet out of some guy's stomach," I told her.

To that, she shrugged as she squatted to gather a pile of pictures. "Not a bad one of you," she declared, holding out a picture of me. "Or you, Daddy," she said, shooting Reeve a wicked look.

"Enough," Fallon snapped, reaching for the pictures.

"Oh, are you going to physically stop me?" she asked, giving him a look that was heated, but it was impossible to tell if it was anger, or interest, or a combination of the two. "That would go against your little 'we don't want war' approach to having us in town, wouldn't it?"

"What? And you do want war, Danny?" Fallon asked. "Our club is bigger than yours."

"Ours has more chapters than yours," she shot back. "And fewer morals."

"Children," Reign said, sounding a mix of frustrated and amused. "We're not going to war over some fucking crime scene. Or even this goddamn cartel. If they are even still in town. So enough with the chest puffing," he added, shaking his head. "Way I see it, Danny, if they are around, we have a mutual enemy. Sharing information would get us further than stepping on each other's feet."

"Hm," she mused, pressing her lips together. "I'll think about it," she decided. "How are you healing up, old man?" she asked, slapping a hand roughly on his shoulder.

"Careful," Reign warned.

"Oh, but where's the fun in that?" she shot back, giving him a wicked smile as she passed, forcing a path through our assembled crowd. "Toll wants to make good on the date he started with Andi," she said, coming to a stop in front of me.

"No."

"Oh, but I think he's going to ask."

"Then he can look forward to his other fucking leg not working too."

"Ah, I see," she said, eyes dancing. "God, you guys are all so mushy and romantic. How sweet," she teased to the group at large before she made her way out of the kitchen.

"Christ, someone needs to take that bitch down a few pegs," Fallon declared, getting a whack to the back of the neck from his father, likely because his mother wouldn't like him using that particular word.