Roan (The Henchmen MC 17)

"The fuck are you... how much blood are you losing?" he asked, looking down at my thigh, clearly thinking I was losing my damn mind.

"I know her," I told him, shaking my head at myself. "Knew," I corrected.

There was no way to think of her other than past tense. Because the girl I had known all those years ago, that was not the same woman with the hard eyes and the gun.

"Made a good impression on her, huh?" he asked, snorting, shaking his head.

Women, it seemed, in The Henchmen world, at least, had a tendency to bring a lot of trouble with them. Reign had learned over the years to find a small bit of humor in it. Which was likely a very necessary coping mechanism. "Come on. Let's get you inside, get a shot in you, a bullet out of you. And you can tell me all about it."

With that, I was given a shoulder, led inside, only cursing a bit over the pain as it burned through me.

Reign got the kit, Wolf got me some whiskey, and I got to have a little dignity stripped away as I got down to my underwear on the common room couch as Pagan made his way in, grim-faced, taking the tweezers from a more hesitant Reign, squatting down beside me, and without even a second's hesitation, jabbing them into the bullet wound.

Pain came in a lot of levels.

Some you could bite your lip and endure without a sound. It was the only way to get through a solid beating with your sanity intact.

But there were other kinds of pain that you could only get through by letting out a string of curses that would make a sailor blush.

"How many languages was that?" Pagan asked casually as he dropped the bullet into a glass on the table. "Three? Four?" he went on, distracting me enough that I missed the bottle of vodka until it was being poured over the wound.

After that, the stabbing and stringing of stitches didn't feel half so bad.

"Good as new, cupcake," he declared, slapping a hand down on the stitched cut as he moved to stand. "So, who was the crazy chick with the gun?" he asked, grabbing the bottle of vodka as he dropped down in the chair, not even bothering to wash my blood away as he tipped the bottle back to drink.

"Reign, I'm fucking sorry," Roderick cut into the conversation, tearing into the room with a worried-eyed Livvy at his heels.

"Don't. I approved it. This is on me. I should have known better. Gotta remember that there is no such thing as a quiet period in our world. Every time we start to get lax, something new happens."

"I heard she was hot," Pagan cut in. "Was she hot?"

"She's hot," I agreed, feeling a stirring inside, something not unfamiliar, just long buried, just a memory I tried to forget.

"Roan was just going to explain how he knew her," Reign explained.

"I'm so glad I made it back for story time," Pagan said, smirking.

"Who is she?" Wolf asked, tone grumbling even as we heard more bikes on the street. And while no one could actually hear them, I could feel Lo and her crew on the way, ready to chew out her men for not being more on their game, for getting distracted. I almost felt guilty for not getting my ass handed to me too. Maybe Reign figured a bullet hole was enough punishment. Especially when you had Pagan as a nursemaid.

"Her name is Mackenzie Minasian," I told them. "She was a mark of mine... fifteen years back. She's supposed to be dead."

"Supposed?" Wolf clarified.

"Yeah, supposed."

Guilt - familiar, consuming - swarmed my system.

As a whole, my jobs were jobs. My marks were marks. Everything was done by order or by necessity to save my own ass. I didn't regret what I had needed to do to stay alive or in the name of my country.

But Mack?

Fuck, Mack.

Yeah, I regretted that more than I had words for. She was the only ghost who haunted me, the only face I saw in my dreams, the only memory I punished myself with. Even after all these years.

"And yet..." Pagan said, waving an arm out to the yard, "here she is. Taking a chunk out of you. You must have fucked her over good."

"That's one way of putting it," I agreed. "Mack was the niece of a banker in Armenia who was aiding terrorism. But we needed proof."

"Sounds like our good ol' boy here engaged in some old fashioned sexpionage," Pagan declared happily, making Reign's brows go up. I couldn't tell if it was curiosity or disappointment for using a woman like that.

As a whole, Reign didn't demand to know a lot about my past, understanding that some shit wasn't mine to talk about, that there were matters of national security at risk. Even if I was burned, was out of it for good. He didn't pry. And I didn't supply more than I needed to.