Chapter 1

CHAPTER 1

Butcher

Two Weeks Later

" H e needs to know," Hush said, shoving both Toxic and I into Lockout's office and shutting the door before we could walk back out.

I was still prepared to try, but Lock cleared his throat and motioned to the chairs on the other side of his desk. Toxic and I exchanged a glance as we sat.

Lock waited for a few seconds before sighing. "I need to know what?"

"Oh," Toxic said, "nothing big. Just about some guy who almost killed us."

" Tried to kill us. Nobody who ever tries to kill me gets a second chance," I said with a grin.

Lock stilled and glanced back and forth between us. He reached up and rubbed at his forehead.

I shot Toxic a look and found him already staring at me with a grim expression on his face. I didn't need him to voice his concerns aloud because I knew him well enough to know exactly what he was thinking. Lock needed something to take the stress out on before he blew up and went full lockout on everything around him.

The man was wound so fucking tight, I wasn't sure that this wouldn't push him over the edge. Now, here was where Toxic and I differed. Toxic would say that Lock needed to get himself some pussy. And while I could agree that coming in a hot cunt could take the pressure off, I would argue that Lock needed to kill someone.

There was nothing quite like snuffing out someone's lifeforce. It eased all the raging demons inside of me anyway. Violence always had a way of calming me. Since I was very well aware that my methods couldn't be understood by the normies—why else would my mother have me tested so much as a child—I usually defaulted to Toxic's ideas.

His were less likely to get us both deemed psychopaths, even though that was technically what I was. It was better if people didn't realize it. My brothers knew, of course. There wasn't anything I could really keep from my club. And I was pretty sure their women realized as well. The kids around here would one day, when they didn't see everything with childlike wonder.

One other thing I knew, I wasn't a sociopath. If there was any question, the hope gnawing at my chest that those kids wouldn't turn away from me, when they figured out what I was, would have left no room for doubt.

Another heavy sigh pulled my attention back to my president. This man had saved my life. He'd found me a few years after my CIA team had been disbanded, and they'd unleashed me back on an unsuspecting world with nothing left to focus my rage on, and brought me into the club.

I'd chucked my cell phone when I was released, and went no contact with everyone, so I was surprised to find out later that Toxic was in the MC as well. Turned out he was the one who let Lock know about me. Lock had found me before I'd managed to do anything too stupid.

Or glorious. It's all a matter of perspective.

Well, my handler—the person they assigned to watch over me after I'd been turned loose—wouldn't agree that I hadn't done anything stupid. But she had helped me clean up some messes. I think she was ecstatic when Lock took me in and promised to keep an eye on me. I couldn't exactly take offense. Not when the urge to maim and kill grew within me so often.

"You're telling me that another person has tried to kill you?" he asked, still rubbing his forehead.

My reflexes kicked in and I took solace with absolute truth. "No one person has tried to kill me." Several people had tried to kill me. Toxic kicked my shin. "Ow. Fucker…" I caught Lock's scowl and cleaned my throat, "I mean, today, yes, one guy tried."

The first incident was three months ago, when we'd been on our way to the hospital to meet Dani and Smokehouse's new baby. I wasn't sure why I needed to meet a new baby, but Toxic had told me it was expected of me so I went.

We hadn't gone together, but the fucker who failed to hit me with his car and had run when I'd confronted him—and beat his ass—had then gone after Toxic. My fault. His attempt was so sloppy and amateurish compared to professional hits that it didn't occur to me that it was an actual hit. It wasn't until he tried the same rookie stunt on Toxic that I suspected that he'd been going after both of us. Which meant it wasn't random.

The next two months especially confirmed my suspicions when more men had come after us. We'd killed them all and disposed of the bodies. Not wanting to add to Lock's stress we'd decided to keep quiet about it. We couldn't this last time because Hush had been on a ride with us.

"Today?" Lock asked. "How many in total since that first time?"

I shot Toxic a questioning look and he shrugged. I took that as confirmation to finally admit to our president what had been going on. "Well," I hesitated as Lock dropped his hand and that intense gaze zeroed in on me. I swore he could read my mind at times. Not sure if that was more worrisome for me or him. Me, because my mind was a fucked up place. And him, well, because my mind was a really fucked up place. "Eight."

He blinked slowly at me as he processed what I just told him.

Toxic turned to me with a frown. "Eight? Why do I only know about six?"

"You weren't there for two of them," I said with a shrug. That was when I'd smuggled a human head into one of the sheds on the compound and held onto it until the next guy tried. Then I had some fun with swapping out body parts. Like I said…fucked up. Toxic never let me do shit like that when we killed the guys together, so I took the opportunity to have some fun.

"You're telling me," Lock said, his voice a low growl of frustration, "that eight men have tried to kill you in three months' time?"

Toxic was busy looking at the ceiling so I just shrugged.

Lock took the gesture as it was meant and sucked in a deep breath. He was searching for patience. I'd seen that look enough to know it for what it was.

"Where was I?" Toxic asked now that Lock was distracted with struggling to hold onto his temper.

"You were busy," I told him.

He frowned deeper. "Doing what? And where did you go without me?"

"You were busy fucking Emily and Serena."

He paused. "Emily! That was her damn name. Shit, I can still feel that slap she gave me when I couldn't figure it out." Then he grinned. "Now Serena I remember." Then he shook his head. "Why didn't you come get me? Either time?"

I looked over at him in disbelief. He looked wounded, and dammit that was making me feel…well, a feeling. I wasn't exactly good at deciphering them, but I was guessing it was guilt. "You wanted me to interrupt you while you were fucking a woman to go for a ride to clear my head?"

He paused, then shrugged. "Sure. I can always get my dick wet later."

At first, I knew he stuck close because Lock had ordered him to keep an eye on me. We'd been close when we worked together on my team, but it'd been years since we'd seen one another and I'd sunk deep into myself by the time Lock found me. It took a while for even Toxic to pull me out of it and for us to become friends again. Shit, I'd barely even been human and every time he'd tried to befriend me I'd rejected him.

He'd finally given up and wasn't trying anymore, but just being around the club had pulled me closer to the surface. Then Lock had sent us on a run together and something inside me clicked. It was like I'd been released from my prison. I mean, I was still just as fucked as usual, but at least I was able to participate in the world again beyond drinking, fucking, and killing. Now we were damn near inseparable.

"Have you figured out who's trying to kill you?" Lock asked through gritted teeth. He ignored Toxic's interruption.

"Eh."

"You do want to know who is trying to kill you, right?"

"Uhhh…"

"Or why?"

Another exchanged glance between Toxic and I had Lock gripping the edge of his desk so hard I swore I heard the wood scream. "I swear to fucking Christ if you don't tell me what you know-"

"Honestly, I didn't really care until…"

"A couple of the guys on our team were killed," Toxic replied, interrupting me while trying to appease him.

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"You have a lot on your plate," I answered, giving another shrug. "We're handling this."

"Handling it," he scoffed. "Someone's sending people-"

"Assassins," I supplied, earning a glare from him.

"Are you fucking kidding me?" he barked.

Is that a trick question?

I looked over at Toxic and he shook his head no, that it wasn't. When I opened my mouth he shook his head again .

Ah, a rhetorical question. Good enough for me. I stayed quiet.

"How the fuck do you know they're assassins?"

Another glance at Toxic. A nod. So I answered, "Once the third one showed up, I figured someone must be sending them after us. Got a hold of Gail and she confirmed that they'd already killed Cliff and Ralph." He hadn't continued breathing long after I found that out. "Though they might be running out of assassins. Real ones that is. This last guy was an absolute joke."

That ought to ease his nerves.

Lock just glared at me.

Or not.

Gail was my handler. She and the others who were watchdogs for men like me and my team were pretty tight. Cliff and Ralph had been good men. I couldn't call them friends, though Toxic did, because I wasn't sure I had friends back in those days, but I'd been pissed that they'd been killed. That was why I'd sent the head and body swap message to whoever was doing this. After I'd annihilated the man who'd killed Cliff and Ralph that was.

If they—whoever they were—didn't get ‘leave us the fuck alone or end up like these two assholes' from that message, I wasn't sure what would get through to them. Other than a bullet. That tended to get a message across nicely.

Lock's shoulders finally dropped as he sighed. He'd given in to the fact that there wasn't any other way out of this mess but to kill whoever was trying to off me—something I'd realized a while ago but still waited to tell him—and accepted that he was going to have to deal with it.

"I'm fully capable of handling this on my own," I told him.

His eyes snapped up to mine. "Being a part of this club means you don't have to deal with shit like this on your own," he told me. The anger was still there, but it was banked. It was an impressive skill of his. Except there were times he lost his shit and ended up being way more like me than he realized. The only difference between us was his ability to control himself ninety percent of the time. I lacked that. Well, that and my official diagnosis as a psycho .

Thanks, Mom.

Having it confirmed hadn't really helped me out as a kid. Though, it had gotten the military interested in me. Turned out they wanted men exactly like me for those ‘special' jobs that would end up fucking with normal men until they were non-functional. For men like me, we thrived in those situations.

So the Army had recruited me. Trained me. Put up with all my bullshit, until one day, they'd passed me, and ten others, over to the CIA on loan. Eleven if you counted Toxic, but he was just our transport. He helped with a few of the lighter missions, but I knew better than to involve him in most of the shit we did. Even back then I wanted to protect him from the monster I was. He didn't need to see what I did. What I reveled in.

From that point on I'd been in charge of a special task force that handled all of the government's most heinous missions. Military, CIA, civilian, it didn't matter. We went where they told us. Killed who they told us to—and maybe a few extra—and did whatever they needed in the name of our country.

And once they were done with us they'd chucked us back into society and told us to assimilate back into being ‘ordinary men'. Problem was, we'd never been normal, and now we had years of violence and killing under our belts and no off switch to help keep those impulses under control.

"Don't worry," Lock said, leaning back into his chair. "We'll find these fuckers and dispose of them."

I grinned. Now he was speaking my language. And the fact that he and my other MC brothers would be there to back me up? If I had a heart that would have made me feel all light and happy. Instead, all I could think about was the upcoming bloodshed. And that made my dick harden. Reaching down, I adjusted so my zipper wasn't digging into it. This wasn't a new, or concerning reaction.

After everything with Fremont, we'd had three months of quiet. Well, the others had. Toxic and I had still had our fun thanks to our little assassin friends. But that was over now. It was time to go on the hunt.