Breaking Hammer (Motorcycle Club Romance) (Inferno Motorcycle Club Book 3) (6 page)

He dropped me and I nodded.
 “I’m okay, Knuck.  How’s the family?”

“Oh, you know,” he said.
 “Same old.  Cassie got a boyfriend.”

“
Oh, shit.”

“Yeah, she told me it was none of my fucking business.”
 He laughed.  “Can you believe that shit?  Sixteen years old.  I had a little chat with the boyfriend.  Surprised he stuck around.  What the fuck man, you been working out?  Looks like you’ve been in fucking lock-up or something.”

“Yeah, been working out.”
 I didn’t add that it was about the only thing that kept me from losing my fucking mind anymore.

I turned to Blaze.
 "How's Dani?"

"Good," he said.
 "She's doing great in law school.  Told her she'd better be doing good.  She'll probably have to defend my ass one of these days."

"Here?" I asked.
 "Or is she still at Stanford?"  I should know these things.  The old me would have known these things.

"UCLA," he said.

"That's good."  I was silent.  Blaze and one of the other guys made idle chit-chat and I looked around, detached from the whole thing.  I didn't recognize some of the newer patches, and the whole place had a different flavor since I had left.  It was kind of like going back to visit your parents after years away- everything was the same, but it was all different.

It definitely didn't have the same vibe it had when Mad Dog was running the show, but that last year with Mad Dog in charge everything had gone to shit anyhow.
 The whole place had been out of control crazy, parties all the time, drinking, drugging.  It hadn't just been me that was out of control.  The whole fucking club was.  This, now- it was more subdued somehow.  The guys sitting around, relaxed, watching the game.  It was more...normal, I guess.

One of the brothers, someone who had been patched since I left, walked up to me, held out his hand.
 "Hey, man," he said.  "You're a fucking legend around these parts.  Nice to meet you."

"A legend
, huh?" I repeated the word slowly.  "I'm not sure why."

A kid, one of the prospects, stood a few feet away, obviously eager.
 "Hammer," he said, nodding.  "They've been calling you Hammer.  Why are you riding up here in a cage, man?"

I felt blood pumping in my ears, and my face was immediately hot.
 Some stupid prospect without a filter and a shred of common sense wanted to run his mouth? Retired or not, I was going to fuck this kid up.  "You want to find out why I'm riding in a cage, you stupid fuck?"

My fist clenched, my feet shifted, and then Blaze yelled
, "Shut the fuck up, Prospect!  No one said you could fucking talk.  Thatcher, get in here and take care of your goddamn prospect."

The prospect looked down at the
ground, hung his head, and Thatcher slapped him across the head like a chastised child, then pushed him out the door, screaming like a drill sergeant at boot camp.

"Hamm
er?" I turned to Blaze.  "When the fuck did that happen? That's some serious bullshit, especially from a prospect."

"He'll be taken care of.
" Blaze said.  "Prospects don't need to be opening their fucking mouths like that.  Actually, you can go kick the shit out of him if you want."  Blaze nodded toward the open door.

I glanced outside, then shrugged it off.
 The truth was, I didn't know if I could stop once I started.  Lately, it seemed like more and more was setting me off, and I was going zero to sixty in mere seconds.  It used to take a lot more than this kind of bullshit to push me over the edge.

"Hammer?" I asked.

"The Hammer thing," Blaze said.  "It's because word gets around, Crunch.  I sent two brothers to help Benicio's guys clean that shit up.  They came back to the club, drank themselves incoherent, and you know, shit happens.  What they said became legend.  For fuck's sake, even Benicio's hitters think you're the goddamned boogeyman now, and those guys are hard fucking dudes."

"Jesus Christ."
 I didn't know what to think about that shit.  Achieving a reputation for pulverizing someone into pieces with a sledgehammer was one thing I'd never expected in life.  It was also tied to my wife's murder, and I didn't need another fucking reminder of that.  Not in a name.  I'd thrown away my original road name, Crunch, when I retired.  I didn't want to be reminded of the past.

Blaze saw the loo
k on my face.  "Come on," he said, turning.  "Have a beer with me.  Unless you want something stronger."

"Beer's good," I said.
 Blaze grabbed a couple of longnecks from the bar as we passed it, and ushered me into the back room, Mad Dog's former office.

"Place looks different without Mad Dog here," I said.

Blaze nodded.  "Not just the office, either."

"I noticed that," I said.
 "Out there.  It's a little calmer."

"Things are good, Ha - Crunch," Blaze corrected himself.
 So he was calling me Hammer now too.

"I'm glad to
hear it," I said.  "Working with Benicio is good for the club."  I assumed they were still working with Benicio.  I wasn't privy to club business now, and I knew not to even broach the topic.  I was trying to be friendly, casual.  But this was fucking awkward.  I had no real reason to be here anymore.

Blaze nodded.
 "It's all good now.  You think about coming back to the club, coming out of retirement?"

"I - "
I started, then stopped.  Had I ever thought about it?  Yeah, of course I had.  I'd be crazy not to think about it.  This club had been my whole life, the brothers my family.

Until the day April was taken from me
.

They ha
dn't been a part of my life now for a long time.

Blaze looked at me, waiting for a response.

I shook my head.  "I don't think so, man..." I said.

"I don't expect it," Blaze said.
 "It's understandable.  But if you ever wanted to come out of retirement, here or at the Vegas chapter, normal rules wouldn't apply."  Normal rules meaning the chapter rules that required retirees to stay in retirement for at least five years.  It was designed to keep people from deciding to retire and then come out of retirement impulsively.

That wasn't going to happen, not in my case.

No matter how much part of me wanted to ride again.

Or the part of me that missed what I had here, the sense of brotherhood.
 No matter how empty I felt now, without April, without the club, I wasn't going back.

"It's good of you to say that, Blaze," I said.
 What the hell else was I going to say?  
Thanks, but no fucking thanks.

"If you ever want to come back, say the word," Blaze said.

I nodded.  
It will never happen,
I thought.  I stood there, silently.  This was what the fuck Blaze wanted me to stop by for?  To tell me that I needed to fucking consider coming out of retirement?

He finally spoke.
 "I've got a job you might be interested in," he said.

"Shit, Blaze, I'm not getting back into club business.
 You got to understand that, man," I said.  "No can do..."

Blaze shook his head.
 "I'm not asking you to get back into club business.  This is strictly contract shit.  You're retired.  It's just that we need someone with your tech skills."

"What kind of tech shit are we talking about
exactly
?"

"We're in a couple of new enterprises, with Benicio.
 This involves the chapter out in Vegas too."

"Not here?"

"Both."

"Okay."
 I was getting irritated with how vague Blaze was being about this.  
Just fucking come out and ask whatever it is you're going to ask, man.  
That's what I was thinking.  I didn't say it.  "I'm not going to promise anything until I know what the job is.  I don't even know it's something I can actually do."

Blaze nodded.
 "Instead of telling me, let me show you."

"Meia,” Aston was bent over, his face close to the glass coffee table, inhaling white powder off the surface.  “Where the fuck have you been?  I called for you over an hour ago.”

“With the Congressman - the meeting you set up, if you recall.”
 I set my purse on the sofa, this piece of furniture - a modern art piece- that was ridiculously uncomfortable and useless in every way.  Aston’s penthouse was filled with such things.  I sometimes wondered how many people he could buy with the same amount of money.

Or how many women he had already bought.

Those were things I tried not to think about, tried to put out of my head so I could get through the day.  The larger questions like that, I
couldn't
think about them.  If I did, I'd fall into despair.  Everything would seem too insurmountable.

Aston rose, walked toward me, put his hand at the base of my neck, his fingers raveling through my hair.
 He gripped me hard, too hard, yanking the hair by its roots.  His mouth close to my ear, he whispered, “I don’t like this.”

“What?” I asked, my heart racing.
 I was surprised I felt fear at all anymore.  I shouldn't, not with everything I'd been through.  People say that your body adjusts to living in a perpetual state of fear, that over time it dissipates.  But not for me.  Each time felt like the first all over again, the dread and the anticipation, and the terror coursing through my body.  But it was all because of him - my son.  If not for him, I wouldn't care if I lived or died.

But I needed to keep him alive.
 I needed to see him again.  I needed to get him out of Aston's clutches, before it was too late.  Before Aston turned him into a monster.  Even from afar, I didn't doubt Aston's ability to mold him, to shape him into his likeness.  It was the kind of thing he would do for fun.

I wanted to kill Aston.
 Desperately.

I
ached
to kill him.

More than anything, I thought about stabbing him, feeling the knife pierce his skin, sliding it into his body and watching him fall to the floor, bleeding.