Duke (The Henchmen MC 5)

"What'd he say to that?" I asked, genuinely curious.

"'Woman'," she said with a shrug.

"Gotta love his monosyllabic ass," Alex pitched in.

"Go talk to him and tell him. He will understand if he knows that you feel responsible."

"Right," I said with a nod, moving to walk away, then turning back. "Thanks for your help on this," I offered them, knowing that no one else likely had.

That made both their heads snap up to me, brows furrowed. "Weird," Alex said to Janie, who nodded.

They said nothing else and I shook my head and moved down the hall toward the common room where I only found Vin.

"Everyone is outside," he said immediately. If you saw him in that moment, you would think nothing was amiss. Vin was an old-timer. He had lived through more turf war and violence than most of the other members. He was calm in the face of chaos. But I could see the tension in his hands down by his sides, curled into fists and the way a muscle in his jaw was twitching. "She doin' alright?"

I shrugged. "We'll see when she wakes back up," I said and he nodded to that, understanding. "Go find the pres. He wants to talk to you."

I nodded and headed outside into the yard, seeing a swarm of leather cuts everywhere, eyes aware, bodies tense. I found the small circle of Reign, Cash, and Wolf and moved over toward them, finding my arm clasped from behind and I turned to find Shredder.

"Was she..."

"No," I said, shaking my head. "Just bruises, the H on her back, and a busted rib or two."

Shredder ran a hand across his brow, exhaling hard. "Those fucks are gonna pay."

"I'll give you that but since I'm the one who had to hold her while she sobbed and screamed into my chest, I get to be the one to do the most damage," I said, words firm, leaving no room for disagreement.

Shredder nodded at that, biting into his cheek. "Yeah man. But I get to do some hitting too."

"Sure," I agreed, moving toward Reign who jerked his chin at me.

"How is she?" Cash asked immediately.

"Passed out thanks to two Vikes. Stitched up and her ribs are wrapped. Other than that, just bruises. They didn't rape her."

Reign nodded. "She's an innocent far as everyone can tell. Clear cut wrong place, wrong time kind of thing."

"Yeah," I agreed, draining the rest of my coffee.

"But now she's at risk," Cash added. "Guilty by association, in a way."

That was also true. She wasn't safe. Especially now that we took her in and healed her up like she did belong to us. It was as if I put a cut on her with "Duke's Bitch" scrawled across the back. Her life just took a sharp turn into Fucksville. Until the threat was neutralized, she was in trouble and, whether Reign agreed or not, under our, or at least my, protection.

"We need to have the girls look into the Russians and the Columbians," Reign said, rattling off the closest gun runners. "Then we need to pool possible personal vendettas. So we all gotta bring the skeletons out of our closets," he said, suddenly pinning me with those intense hazel eyes of his, knowing how much I didn't want to do that. Not many of the guys knew my whole past. Reign, Cash, Wolf, and Repo knew because they insisted. Renny knew because the mother fucker couldn't keep his nose out of everyone else's business. Aside from them, no one else had a fucking clue and that was just how I preferred it.

I couldn't just take out my skeletons, dust them off, and hang them out like they weren't dangerous. They were bones soaked in monkshood. All you had to do was brush against them and you'd have multiple organ failure. You'd be dead before you knew there was a threat.

"None of us like it," Wolf offered and I looked over at him, knowing his skeletons weren't of the pretty variety either when he went full-on Hulk and raged out and killed people in inventively violent ways.

"It's different here and you know it," I added and Cash nodded.

"We're not asking you to share all the ugly details, just tell us if any of those fucks have it in for you or us."

"Yeah, alright," I said with a nod, knowing it was a long list. It was a long, fucking ugly list. Every single person in my past had a reason to want to hurt me by whatever means necessary. And they were crazy enough to take on an MC to do that. That being said, my gut told me it wasn't my past coming into my present. This wasn't about me. But I also knew that I had to fork over the information. There was no choice. The safety of the whole club was at risk.