revenge—bloody and cruel and vicious.
He thought about the night he lost his eye. The night he’d been tied up to a truck with the burning hot engine searing his skin off and nearly beaten to death. Those fuckers hadn’t even bothered to show their faces, but Kicks had been left in the middle of nowhere, and he’d never gotten to take the power back from those memories.
And now, thinking about Hydra tying Jude up—knowing his plan was to kill him in front of Eliah to make him suffer, to make Smokey suffer—sent the same hot coils of rage rippling just under his skin. He hated himself for having been taken out, for his inability to protect Jude. For having to be rescued yet again.
Pressing a hand over his face, he took a deep breath, then pushed his thumb into his empty socket. The implant he’d gotten after the doctors removed what was left of his eye was smaller than the eyeball had been, and it always felt foreign when he touched it. He had a spare prosthetic somewhere in the house, but there was no point in putting it in. There was no one around to see him, and there wouldn’t be for a damn long while.
With a groan, Kicks pushed himself up to sit. The healing wound on his side ached, but not worse than the pain he felt when he stood up on his burnt legs. He needed to move though. Emeine would probably have his head for it, but his body was already starting to feel the strain of spending three days on his back.
His knees shook as he made his way to the kitchen, but he found a fresh can of the cheap grocery store coffee he loved, and he quickly started a pot going. The smell of it invigorated him enough to rummage through his cabinets, and he saw everything had been restocked. It was probably Forge, since the fucker was always trying to Dad everyone into eating better and drinking water instead of beer. And it made him feel a faint surge of warmth in his gut, even if it was the last thing he wanted right then.
He knew he couldn’t have done anything different. He hadn’t been lying when he told Jude that it was his job to know where people were—that was the whole fucking point of his position in the Chains. He had the skill for it and the tech for it, but Hydra was a different beast. And he was working in a different world. Five years of relative peace hadn’t given him enough preparation to deal with an all-out club war, and he could tell that was where they were headed.
To make matters worse, Hydra wasn’t just after them. He’d been fucking with clubs up and down the coast, and so far, no one had been able to pin him down long enough to stop him. Securing himself a position in a club that had been flailing was all the fucker needed to give him the power he’d lost when Smokey’s dad had booted his ass.
He couldn’t help but wonder if the Reapers would go after him. They hated Smokey for what he’d done—turncoat didn’t go over well in any club, and Smokey had spit in the face of his old man’s orders and left in disgrace. But Kicks wasn’t sure that even a common enemy would be enough to build a bridge, and now he couldn’t help but wonder if they’d just take the place of Hydra once he was out of the picture.
Of course, he didn’t regret joining the Chains. He didn’t regret choosing this life. But he did want to be prepared if the last several years had been nothing more than an illusion.
The coffee pot let out a small click when it was finished, and he poured a cup, drinking half down without bothering to wait for it to cool. It seared the roof of his mouth, but the pain helped distract from the way the rest of his body was aching, and he opened the cabinet again and spied a box of the chocolate Pop-Tarts Maddie loved.
He snagged one, then shuffled to his back door and onto the porch. It was in need of repair, which he could do. Most of Kicks’ side-jobs were fixing shit outside of the shop. It allowed him to make cash to pay his utilities and property tax, and it was a job he could do where people didn’t