"That's not killing someone, June."
"He described it as accidental, the hospital ended up settling with the family, and my supervisor chalked it up to nerves, from the deployment. But it wasn't nerves," I said. I looked up at Cade. I wanted him to understand what I understood about myself. "I nicked that artery on purpose. I did it because he didn't deserve to live."
"June," Cade said. "This isn't the same thing."
"It's a difference of degrees," I said. "I don't give a shit what you say. I'll follow you to California if I have to. But I'm coming out there. Your dad meant something to me. So did April. And you mean something to me. It's not a question - it's a fact. I don't care where it leads, and I don't care if it means I have to kill someone myself."
"You're going to throw everything away, just to follow me out to California," he said, shaking his head. "No."
"No," I said. I'm not throwing anything away. You're my family. And I'll do anything to protect my family."
Maybe it was shock. Or maybe there was just something fundamentally wrong with me. But I knew what Cade was going to do when I saw Stan and April.
I knew what he had to do.
And I knew what I would do.
The image of Stan and April, there in the house, would never leave my head. It was burned on my brain. I kept replaying the scene in my head, like some kind of horror movie on a loop. I'd arrived there first, could hear the sirens wailing in the distance as they approached. I knew they were both dead when I saw them, they couldn't be alive, not with those injuries. But I'd still gone to the bodies, felt for a pulse, choked back the bile that rose in my throat, looking at them.
I slipped, fell, in April's blood that pooled on the floor, and then everything after that was a blur. Someone in a uniform picked me up off the ground, took me outside, asked me questions. I think he thought I'd killed them. Then I saw Cade, running toward me, Jed behind him.
The look on Cade's face....
I'd seen death before, been in the thick of it. But to have someone bring it to my front door, kill the people I cared about... that deserved an equivalent response.
Eye for an eye.
So maybe it was shock, what I was feeling right now. What I'd been feeling since it happened. Like I was operating on auto-pilot, emotionally detached from everything. Just like what Cade was doing.
But I had no anxiety, felt no panic thinking about what I was willing to help Cade and Crunch do. I wanted to dole out revenge.
Los Angeles, California
Three days later
"Are you sure I'm supposed to be here?" I whispered to Axe as we stood on the steps of Benicio's home. Home wasn't the right word for it. Home was for places like mine. Not places like this. Buildings like this were outrageous. Estates. "I could have stayed with MacKenzie and Maria."
"No, you're staying with me. And Dani will be there, anyway - she's Benicio's daughter," Axe said. "I think Maria wanted some grandmother time with her, especially after all that's happened." Maria had swept in yesterday, surprisingly in control and composed for a woman whose daughter had been murdered, and busied MacKenzie with a flurry of activities. Crunch had told MacKenzie that her mother was sick, and it was only when Mac asked Maria when April was coming back, that I saw Maria's brave front begin to falter.
The bodyguard opened the door, and Crunch, Axe, and I followed him silently down the foyer and the hallway, then through a doorway to an office, flanked by two men in suits, their holstered weapons visible under their jackets.
"Come in." The man who spoke was well-dressed.
Scratch that.
Impeccably dressed, in a tailored suit that had to have cost thousands. But his face, etched with lines, gave him a hard look that said he was definitely not some pampered millionaire. Axe had said he was a crime boss, and that's exactly what he looked like. Like he wouldn't think twice about ordering a hit on your family before he calmly finished dessert.
What the hell have I gotten myself into here?
~
"Do you trust Benicio?" I asked Axe, when he said we'd go back to California, go to their employer. After he'd explained what had been going on with the club. "If your club president was stealing from him, wouldn't he want to kill you, too?"
"Blaze trusts him," Axe said. "His Old Lady is Benicio's daughter."
"What about Blaze?" I'd asked. "Can he be trusted?"
"I've always been able to trust Blaze," Axe said. "I'll stake my life on it."
That's what we were about to do.
~
Then a guy wearing an Inferno Motorcycle Club emblem on his - leather jacket or whatever it was they called it - turned toward us. "Axe. Crunch."
"Blaze," Axe said.
I stood by, awkwardly, while Blaze hugged Cade and Crunch, offered his condolences.