The Henchmen MC: Renny Part 3

"Right, but we're not talking about his whoring around. I don't care about that. It would be weird if he didn't, to be perfectly honest. I'm talking about the fact that he's deceptive and he is unpredictable and he..." I waved out a hand, not sure what else to say. For me, that was enough.

"You know, Mina," she said, stopping suddenly when we found ourselves under a big tree at the far end of the yard, in the field where Repo had some of his cars situated again since the garage was burned down. "Sometimes it's good to not be able to read someone, to not be able to dig around in their brains. You have been the way you are for so long that I think you forget that that is not how relations.h.i.+ps between people work. You see what is going on inside someone because they choose to tell you. They put their faith to rest in you. They believe they can trust you to handle that information with care. Maybe if you gave Renny a chance to give you some of himself, he would."

"But that doesn't change the fact that I don't think I can trust him."

"You'll never know unless you give him the chance to prove that you can, babe."

She wasn't exactly wrong. And I wasn't exactly crazy about that.

"Besides," I said, shrugging, "relations.h.i.+ps aren't in the cards for me."

"Why? Because you travel a lot? Mina, I travel a lot too. Cash is a big boy, he gets on without me when I have to go. Plus, the welcome home s.e.x is always hot," she added with a smirk. "Don't let the job keep you from the more important things in life, honey."

I wasn't sure the last time I was with a man who I would call a boyfriend or partner or anything more than a fling or a friend with benefits. It had to have been years. Several, if I was being honest.

Most of that, I was sure, was my own d.a.m.n fault. It was always just too hard for me to open up, to let down my guards, to be real with someone. And it was selfish to try to tell a guy to hang around, to let me take a year to get over my hangups. That was just unrealistic. It was easier to ignore the reality completely.

Occasionally, I would go on a date or two.

And, once in a while, I would take a man to bed, albeit somewhat rarely because it tended to only complicate things.

But as a whole, I avoided entanglements.

It made everyones' lives easier.

Why, all of a sudden, it was such a big deal, well, I was going to go ahead and blame that on the fact that I was never in the same place for so long with a guy who couldn't take a hint.

It had nothing, absolutely nothing, to do with Renny.

It could have been any guy in any city in any country around the world. It just so happened to be him I was stationed around for so long.

"It's your life and you're a grown woman, Mina, and I would be the first woman to tell you that you don't need a man to have a good, fulfilling life. I just don't want you to be so closed-off to the possibility on some kind of bulls.h.i.+t principle. Having a man isn't going to strip you of your uniqueness or your skills, babe. I don't care how good his d.i.c.k is, he can't steal your spark with it," she said with a wink. "Besides," she went on, starting to move away from me, "your job here is almost done. Take a ride on that man before you're off to f.u.c.king Chicago or Boise or wherever the h.e.l.l you're heading next."

At that declaration, at the realization that my time was coming to an end at The Henchmen compound, I didn't feel relief like I should have. I was almost always happy to complete a job, to be able to move on, to get back to the compound or to see a new city.

It was in my blood.

That was how I was raised- to never put down roots.

It had gotten so that, over time, I wasn't sure I could grow them if I wanted to.

I sighed, sitting down at the bottom of the tree, looking off at the compound for a long time, trying not to get too down on myself over something that wasn't my fault.

We all had our damages, our traumas, our origin stories.

Mine, thankfully, was not tragic like many of the people who ended up at Hailstorm. Mine just involved a withholding mother and a workaholic father whose job took him all over the world at a moment's notice. So I never got to learn how to make connections, how to open up to new people. It was always a wasted effort in my life. As soon as I tried to get to that point, it was time to move on.

Why bother?

But, for the first time, the idea of never bothering seemed really sad and empty.

FOUR.

Renny The L guy was like an encyclopedia of crime families. Ask him anything from f.u.c.king Lucky Luciano's shoe size to who is running the mob in Nowheresville, USA and he had an answer for you. So when everyone got their confusion and outrage out of the way, he sat down with his giant cup of coffee and gave us all the dirt he had on the Abruzzo family. And he knew a lot.

Like Little Ricky was power hungry and while he didn't often involve himself in the hands-on aspect of things, according to L because he literally couldn't walk down his driveway without having a near cardiac episode, he had his men becoming increasingly violent since he took over. Their prost.i.tutes got knocked around a lot more, got smaller cuts of the money. And, apparently, they had graduated to cold-blooded murder.

The scary part was, for all L knew and he knew a f.u.c.kuva lot, he had no idea where they were. Well, Little Ricky was sitting pretty in his mini mansion on Long Island, but there was no accounting for who the men were in Navesink Bank and where they were located.

He recommended hiring someone to do a sketch of the men Penny had seen so that we and Hailstorm, at the very f.u.c.king least, had some faces to watch out for.

Malcolm sat down with everyone and formulated some plans, all being useless until there was a location, but it was good to have an idea of what we would be doing regardless.

Sometime around dinner time, the women coming back in because the kids were getting whiny for food, Malcolm and L took off back to Hailstorm, Lo hanging back to spend the night with Cash.

And Mina was still missing.

She had come in from outside about half an hour before the food finished and disappeared again "She likes quiet," Lo supplied as we both piled food onto plates. "It's hard to come by here."

"She likes it," I agreed, putting one plate down and grabbing another, "but it's the last f.u.c.king thing she needs."

Lo turned back to me, head ducked to the side, looking at me like she had never seen me before. "You scare her, Renny," she surprised me by saying. I knew for d.a.m.n sure that Mina would never be okay with her divulging that kind of information, even though it was something I already knew.

"Good," I said, making her brows raise as I grabbed two bottles of beer and tucked them into my pockets so my hands were free to grab the plates. "Know she's your girl and you love her, but she needs to be scared. She needs to be frazzled. She needs to have someone shake up her perfect little world a bit."

"And you're the person to do that?" she asked, lips quirked up slightly.

"Might be the only person capable. Besides," I added with a grin, "I mean... just look at me..."

She laughed at that, her face lighting up. "Alright," she said, nodding. "I'm not really the 'don't hurt my girl or I'll chop off your b.a.l.l.s' kind of friend, but you know how they supposedly pickled Rasputin's c.o.c.k..."

It was my turn to laugh. "Got it, Lo," I said, saluting her with a plate as I made my way toward the hallway and down the stairs.

Fact of the matter was, the clubhouse was pretty empty these days. Even with the women and kids around, it was quieter. It was eerie. I wasn't sure I would ever get used to it. Most of the doors in the hallway, the doors that used to house our fallen brothers, were closed, were a constant reminder of what we had lost. And thanks to the constant threat, we hadn't even been able to have a proper mother f.u.c.king memorial for any of them. For the men who didn't have family, we had the remains buried or cremated according to their wishes. And we had talked Shooter and Breaker into going to the services when we couldn't so they wouldn't be f.u.c.king empty.

It wasn't right.

They were our brothers.

We should have been there to say words, spill liquor, toss dirt, show them the respect they deserved for their loyalty and ultimate sacrifice.

There was a part of me, albeit an absolutely minuscule part of me, that almost felt bad for what was going to happen to those sorry sons of b.i.t.c.hes who came in and killed our men.

An image flashed into my head, the clubhouse completely f.u.c.king saturated in blood- on the walls, the floor, the table, TV, couch, on the f.u.c.king liquor bottles, some of the beds, the bathrooms.

I closed my eyes tight, taking a slow, deep breath, pus.h.i.+ng it away. That was all I had been doing too- pus.h.i.+ng it away. I hadn't faced it yet. I hadn't worked through the feelings I had been denying myself. I knew it wasn't healthy, it wasn't good. It would make me even more unpredictable than usual. It was eating away at my sleep. It was keeping me on edge.

But I couldn't bring myself to relive it yet.

So it went back into the box inside to be dealt with at a better time.

I moved down the stairs to the bas.e.m.e.nt that Duke had done the bulk of the remodel on, turning it into a d.a.m.n fine fallout shelter. Coming from his background, it made sense. Those doomsday racist f.u.c.ks.

"Feels like home down here, huh?" I asked her as I walked down, finding her on a bottom bunk, flat on her back, staring numbly at the bunk above her.

Her head turned to me, her face blank. "I came down here to be alone."

I shrugged, putting her plate down next to her hip, pulling out the beers and tossing them on the mattress then sitting down next to her feet, leaning back against the footboard so I could face her.

"In what way was that an invitation?" she asked, scooting up, careful to not touch me. She always was. It was like she knew that if we touched, s.h.i.+t was going to escalate.

"Your mouth might be saying 'go f.u.c.k yourself', but your eyes are saying 'please f.u.c.k me until I can't see straight anymore'. I'm fluent in eye-language," I added with a smirk as she rolled those gorgeous hazel eyes of hers and reached for her plate.

"Did you guys make a plan?"

"Not much of a plan to make until we have a number or, at the very least, a location."

"Oh my G.o.d," she groaned suddenly, pulling the fork out of her mouth and closing her eyes for a second.

I suddenly wished I could cook like f.u.c.king Repo.

"Yeah, sweetheart. Do that again, but maybe arch your back and..." I started and cut off on a chuckle when she kicked me with her sock-clad foot.

"Shut up," she said, shaking her head as she stabbed a piece of broccoli. "The cooks up at Hailstorm are, ah, adequate. But it's glorified military food. This, this," she said, pointing her fork toward the apple-stuffing stuffed pork loin, "is practically gourmet."

I nodded at that, acknowledging it. Repo could fine-tune an engine and do some real damage with a gun, but his cooking skills were legendary in our circle.

"So are we really not going to discuss the Pokemon socks? Like, are we going to sit here and pretend they're not right here, staring me in the face? f.u.c.king Pokemon," I added with a smile as I looked over at her feet, realizing how f.u.c.king small they actually were without her clunky combat boots on them. And the socks were Pokemon- electric blue background with red and white Poke Ball on them.

To my surprise, she didn't snap that it was none of my business or tell me to get lost or claim it was some gag gift. She shrugged a shoulder slightly and looked down at her plate for a second. "We traveled a lot when I was a kid. I became really attached to my Gameboy. Flight after flight or train or car ride after train or car ride, I always had Charmander or Bulbasaur to keep me occupied."

"You don't fidget," I said and her head snapped up, brows drawn together. "Kids who grow up gaming all the time, they tend to fidget. They're used to their hands always being active so when they're still, they tap their fingers or pull their jewelry or mess with their hair. You don't fidget."

"You know how in poker, everyone has a tell?" she asked, but went on without an answer. "When you fidget, people read into it."

"And heaven f.u.c.king forbid someone gets to crack open your cover, huh?"

"Hey, Kettle, it's Pot," she said, shaking her head. "You're black."

"Alright," I said, nodding, accepting that. I couldn't expect her to spill if I didn't give her something too. "Quid pro quo, Agent Starling..."

"So in this little scenario, you're a face-eating cannibal?" she asked, brow raised.

"Play along, you pain in the a.s.s."

She snorted at that, not able to hold back the smile. She f.u.c.king liked me. If she would just stop being so G.o.dd.a.m.n chicken s.h.i.+t all the time.

"Alright, is Renny your real name?"

"Yeah," I agreed, already uncomfortable with the line of questioning. But if I expected her to peel back a layer, I needed to as well. "It's my mother's maiden name. Renny Renolds West." That was more than I gave anyone save for Reign and the other higher-up guys. It was more than I wanted anyone to know. Because there was only one Renny Renolds West and a search of Renny Renolds West would produce the name of two doctors named Katherine Renny-West and Roland West. From there, there would be a lot of speculation about how the son of two extremely prominent and respected shrinks from up in Maine ended up with a biker for a son. And Mina, yeah, she was every d.a.m.n bit as good as she thought she was. She would dig up my dirt eventually.

Somehow, it wasn't as f.u.c.king terrifying as it usually seemed.

"Renny Renolds West," she rolled my name around on her tongue, sounding way too f.u.c.king good in that odd accent of hers. "How... distinguished. What no third or fourth attached to that?"

"My parents were a bit pretentious. They liked their appearances. It was bad enough I had copper f.u.c.king hair. They couldn't have a kid running around named Billy or Bobby or some s.h.i.+t like that."

"Were?"

"Are." She caught f.u.c.king everything. It was oddly s.e.xy. Which probably said a lot about me and my odd proclivities. "Alright, you're up," I said and noticed how hard she tried to not stiffen, but she did. "Joey or Chandler?"

She jerked back at that, her perfect G.o.dd.a.m.n lips parting. "I'm sorry... what?"

"Joey or Chandler. From Friends."

"I'm not sure I understand the question," she said, brows drawing together, creasing a small line between them.

"Which one do you like better?"

"You can't be serious," she said, shaking her head. "You're given a free pa.s.s to ask me anything, but you want to know my preferences on some sitcom?"

"You can tell a lot about a girl if you know her preferences on fictional sitcom characters. Pick one."

She looked up at the top bunk for a second, her head shaking. "I guess... Chandler."

"Why?"

"That's two questions."

"Yeah, but mine is trivial. Trivial questions get to have a follow up question to keep it fair."

"Are these rules written down somewhere?" she shot back. "Can I have a copy of this rule book?"

"No need, I have it all up here," I said, tapping my temple. "Answer."

She licked her lips. "His sarcasm is used to mask his deep-rooted insecurity and vulnerability brought on by a confusing and non-traditional upbringing."

"Why not Joey then? He's a simpler character."

"Who wants simple?" she shot back and it was the right f.u.c.king response. "Okay. You joined The Henchmen when you were about twenty. But you had been kicking around Navesink Bank for years before then. Why did you run away from home?"

"Why does a rat chew off his feet to escape the sticky tape?"