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.
Blaze shook his head. "I'm so sorry," he said. "They'll pay. They will." Behind his eyes was the kind of fire, the same intensity that I had seen in Axe's eyes, and I felt my heart race. I had no doubt that they were going to destroy the men who were responsible for this.
I just hoped that Axe didn't destroy himself in the process.
Or us.
Benicio stepped forward. "I'm sorry that we meet under these tragic circumstances. And for the loss of your father. Your wife."
Cade shook his head and clenched his jaw. Neither he or Crunch said anything. Crunch just kept staring forward, barely blinking. He was the one I was worried about. Cade at least was talking; Crunch had barely said anything, at least to us. I thought that his grip on sanity seemed tenuous at best.
Benicio gestured to chairs, and I sat, beside the only other woman in the room, Dani.
She smiled at me, her mouth tight, and leaned over. "I'm so sorry to meet you like this," she said. "Are you okay?"
I nodded, too numb to say much of anything else.
"Blaze said you brought documentation of Mad Dog's theft," Benicio said.
"I have copies of the paperwork. It's been going on for a while," Crunch said.
Benicio nodded. "Unfortunately, Mad Dog's duplicity was not a surprise. Blaze, you know that you've been like a son to me, and I trust that you are uninvolved in any of this."
"Of course not," Blaze said.
"Mad Dog has never sat well with me," Benicio said.
Before we had left Colorado, Cade had explained the scenario with the club to me, trying to get me to change my mind about coming with him, or at least trying to make me understand the mess I was about to get myself involved in if I decided to join them. If what had happened to April and Stan had not happened, I would have considered staying in Colorado. The outlaw biker world did not sound like the place for me, no matter how much I cared about Cade.
But April and Stan's deaths changed that. I had made a promise to Stan that I would take care of Cade, and I would keep it. And I didn't care anymore if my hands got dirty. I didn't care if my hands had blood on them.
My mind drifted for a while when Benicio and the men talked business, until I heard Benicio say, "Blaze asked us to keep tabs on you, Axe."
Blaze held his hands up. "Not because I thought any of this was going down," he said. "Hell. I had no idea Mad Dog was involved in anything like this. I asked because I thought you were in a bad place, is all."