Reeve (The Henchmen MC 11)

When Babcia passed, I simply was happy in my life, in my odd jobs, in the way it gave me just enough money to do the things I wanted - like care for all the animals. I didn't need anything else. Having been raised with a well-off and materialistic mother, I longed for the simple life Babcia always offered, the handmade dresses she gave me as presents, the way she canned her own soups from her summer garden, the way she fixed things that broke instead of throwing them away.

All that fancy food and expensive clothes. Who needs it? Give me the simple life. My pasta sauce tastes better than that canned shit anyway.

That was Babcia for you.

I guess I got quite a bit of her in me as well.

My pasta sauce wasn't quite as good as hers yet, but I was getting there.

The roads were empty save for the plows making the mess I was dreading, cleaning the main drag before they started in on the side streets. People hadn't even been out to shovel their sidewalks yet since school had been canceled, so no one was going to get on their case about them not being cleared.

As I moved down the street, my eyes fell on the compound, looking mildly less industrial and ominous under a fresh coating of snow, melted only on the odd, large glass room on the roof they had installed a few years before.

It wasn't like I didn't know what it was for.

And why it was necessary.

I might have been more removed from the town than most, happy in my little corner of the world the vast majority of time, but I knew enough about the town to know things.

Like if you ventured over toward where the street names became numbers, you were squarely in Third Street Gang turf. You were likely to find prostitutes on the corners and dealers gathered on front stoops.

And if you were driving - or in my case, taking a walk - and looked up toward the hills, you would see a giant gated community made of recycled shipping containers. You might think it was simply a prepper's wet dream. But I knew better. I knew that was a paramilitary camp. I had maybe entertained the idea of asking when I saw one of the members in town how they kept such a large place fully sustained by solar panels since I was in the process of saving up for them for my house, but generally thought better of it since not one of them seemed exactly like the approachable sort.

And I also knew that The Henchmen MC were dangerous guys. Not because they purposely went out looking for trouble - flexing muscles in bars to start useless fights after a few too many drinks. But because of what they did for a living, what they were willing to do to protect that business.

Gun runners.

Even the phrase made my lip curl up.

Guns.

I hated the things.

I hated what they represented - the worst things about humans. Their hate and distrust and premeditated violence.

And I think it went without saying that I hated what they did to people. Namely, putting big, painful holes in them.

This was one thing that I did not get from Babcia who had always had a chest full of rifles that her husband had owned. She had even shot a man in the foot who had tried to get into her house. When I was younger, she insisted I learn to use them. Not because she thought I had any interest in them - I never did - but because she didn't keep them locked up, and therefore believed I needed to know how they worked.

They were the only things of hers that I had swiftly gotten rid of after she passed, never feeling comfortable with them in the house.

But, I guess, where there is criminal activity, there is need for guns.

My legs had gone somewhat blissfully numb - ending the prickling discomfort of the cold - by the time I closed in on the front gates to the compound.

A man had been casually leaning against a car out front, his air huffing out like a cloud around him, paying me no mind until I stopped fully at the gates. His head shifted, his light blue eyes watching me for a second before he pushed off the car and made his way over toward me. He reached up, hands grabbing the chainlink high at the sides of my head.

"What's up, sweetheart?" he asked, giving me a charming smile. It was charming too. This was the smile of a man who knew just how attractive he was. And, likely, how irresistible as well.

With the blond hair and light eyes and tall, strong, but somewhat lanky build, I would actually say he looked a lot like Reeve. But with his full beard, it was hard to see if they shared bone structure.