West (The Henchmen MC 19)

"That makes sense," I agreed. "Are you coming down to tell them the news?"

"I figure you can handle getting it started. A bunch of us will all take trips down eventually, but everyone has some shit going on right now. Since you're there, it's easier to have you oversee shit, and report back to us."

That was actually a lot of responsibility, a lot of trust he was giving me. I couldn't have possibly known how much that would mean to me to have that from him. I guess because my own father was a dick. It wouldn't have mattered if I was the perfect kid, he'd have still found fault in me. I just figured it was something I could do without in life. But, as it turns out, getting that approval from Reign—who was a bit of a father figure to most of us—meant something. Meant a hell of a lot more than I could have guessed.

I had to pull this off.

To prove myself to him.

And maybe even to myself.

It was no secret that I was somewhat flaky. No one would ever dare call me serious. A part of me liked that. Liked the ability to add a bit of light to an oftentimes very heavy club. It was nice not to be the one to make decisions, the one people were putting responsibility on. To be able to just be and have fun—that shit was underrated, if you asked me.

That said, I wanted to prove myself now.

Which meant that every part of this had to go flawlessly.

And that meant it was even more important to stay as far away from Auggie as possible.

If there was one thing I knew, it was that letting yourself get distracted by a woman was one surefire way to fuck everything up.

I turned, moving back into the apartment, finding Auggie sprawled across the couch, legs on full display, top slipping down, tits nearly spilling everywhere.

Being all...distracting.

Fuck my life.SEVENWestThe plan was relatively simple.

Yet ingenious.

With so much competition in town, Huck had decided that it would be the path of least resistance to make that work in our favor.

Why bother having to take out the Russians, Ukrainians, and the local street gangs when you could simply take out one of the Russians?

Then convince the remaining Russians that the street gangs did it. Meanwhile, you got the street gangs to think it was the Ukrainians. Or find them and take them out as well.

It would be chaos.

And by the time anyone figured out what was really going on, three-fourths of the competition would be taken out or cut off at the knees. From there, it would be easy work to pick the rest of them off.

It was the kind of plan I could hear Lo suggesting.

And it was one Reign approved of when I told him about it. Though, I suspected, even if he thought the plan was asinine, he wouldn't have tried to step in to stop anything. It sounded cold and heartless, but he believed that if they got slaughtered in this first initial test, then they didn't have what it took to be Henchmen long term anyway. So he would have let them walk to their own deaths just to know if they had what it took or not.

"How well protected are the Russians?" I asked, watching Remy try to snag Auggie around the midsection, but she twisted away at the last possible second, slamming the football down on the sand, throwing her arms up in the air in victory.

I decided right then and there that it should have been a crime for a woman who looked like her to do sports in a public place while wearing a bikini. A bright red bikini. That barely held in her breasts. That showed a nice chunk of ass.

Let's just say... things were moving around a lot.

And I was focusing way too much on it when I was supposed to be giving Huck my full attention, being his sort of sounding board since he saw me as a superior, someone who could give him advice.

It had been Auggie's idea to do a beach day since the on-season was quickly approaching and, according to all of them, you wouldn't catch them anywhere near the beach in the on-season. It was something I'd heard a lot of the girls and guys say about the beach back near Navesink Bank as well.

They'd all jumped at it since she promised to invite her friends and their friends, meaning the guys would have some eye candy while we drank mixed drinks out of Powerade bottles.

Remy, more the life of the party than any of the others, had brought the ball and talked the girls into a battle of the sexes.

I think he vastly underestimated their clear decision to take that title very seriously, and prove that they were superior.