Shane (Mallick Brothers 1)

“Sure you don’t want to catch some sleep before you go in there?” Pops asked.

“You can’t go in in broad daylight anyway,” Ryan reasoned.

With that sound bit of logic, I climbed into their backseat and passed out for a bit while they bullshitted around me, made plans, did whatever the fuck they did.

They woke me up as soon as night started to fall.

“It’s time,” Pops said, shaking my leg. “Gotta go show your woman how much she means to you.”

With that, I got up, stretched, grabbed some shit out of my truck, and started the mile and a half walk toward the clubhouse.

My family was behind me, but far enough that I couldn’t hear or see them. Close enough to spring into action if so needed, but giving me the freedom to do what I needed.

See, the thing was, they knew her ex was a bad guy. And they knew that he was a threat. But they didn’t know he had fucking raped her for years. They didn’t know that my plan wasn’t just to beat the shit out of him and intimidate him into leaving Lea alone.

That wasn’t good enough.

If they knew that, they might not have rallied behind me.

We were violent fucks. Spilling blood was as natural to us as breathing. It didn’t mean much.

But we didn’t kill.

Not one of us.

There were no bodies in our trails, not even from going overboard on a beating.

That was a clean track record I was about to sully.

I might have been able to let it go if her ex did too. Okay, so he was a fuck and he put her through hell, but she was free and healing and I would be there for her to help her in whatever way I could. But he didn’t want to let her go. Not only that, but he would pile up bodies until she felt so guilty that she went back simply to stop the carnage.

That shit would not be happening on my watch.

And being the evil fuck it was clear he was, there was only one way this was going to go.

One of us would be in the ground by the end of the night.

My money was on that shithead pushing up daisies, not me.

I crouched down behind a gutted car on their land, a safe twenty or so yards from the compound itself, closer to some other external building, small and windowless, like the shed they had at The Henchmen compound.

I stayed there a good long while, waiting, trying to figure out my plan. Then, like some God damn sign from a higher power, the back door opened and out walked the fucker with the knife from the video. He seemed a bit smaller in person, not as intimidating without a blade in his hand. He reached into the back pocket of his jeans for a pack of cigarettes and a lighter, taking a long drag as he tilted his head up to look at the sky.

Looking back at the compound door and seeing no one else, I decided it was then or never. I could sneak up, grab him, and hole up in his own mother fucking shed and do what I needed to do. He walked a few feet closer to the shed and I bent down low, closing my hand around the crowbar and charging. He heard me at the last moment, obviously used to having to be on guard given his illegal dealing.

“Who the fuck…” he started to say, looking at me charging. But the rest of that phrase was gone when I swung out the crowbar, knocking him cold before he could alert his men. I tucked the crowbar into the loop of my pants and grabbed the guy by the back of his shirt and cut, dragging him toward the shed and tossing him onto the floor inside, using the crowbar to slide into the door and lock, blocking anyone from coming in, no matter what they heard.

I wasn’t a coward; I was a firm believer in fair fights.

I wasn’t going to slit the bastard’s throat while he was passed out.

Instead, I fished around in his pockets, found his knife, threw it into a corner, leaned against the door and waited.

If there was something I knew about knocking people out, it was that the pussies were out cold for up to half an hour at times. The bad guys, the ones who had been around the block a time or two, their brains shocked them back awake in usually just a couple of minutes, like they knew their lives depended on it. They often did.

True to my prediction, I heard a hiss and movement from the fuck on the floor, choosing that moment to flick the switch and bathe us in harsh light. He winced against the brightness, likely having a wicked fucking headache, as he looked around for a minute, trying to place his surroundings.