Fallon (Henchmen MC Next Generation #3) - Jessica Gadziala Page 0,4

of the local organizations. Though, to be clear, there were a lot of them, and it was hard to keep track. But the local mafia family, the Grassis, tended to mind their own business. As did the loan sharking Mallicks. Then there was the other new guys on the block. The Alcazar Cartel, led by the almost alarmingly good-looking Andres Alcazar. I'd run into him picking up groceries once, and the smooth bastard had come up behind me, and casually murmured Hey, lil' mama, you're sexier than I was told. The fuck's up with that?

Now, I was generally of the mindset that no one should be calling a woman who was not his mother any variation of ma or mama, but, well, when that man said it, I swear it was practically panty-melting.

And I had to admit, it had been a stroke to my ego that he even knew who I was. I was new in town, and new in my position. It felt good not to have it questioned, just accepted. Then again, unlike your typical MCs, the cartels had a long history of having respected and ruthless female leadership. So, coming from that world, Andres—or "A" as most people called him—hadn't blinked an eye at my position.

But then, of course, for all the "minding our own business" type organizations in town, there was the fucking Henchmen.

Okay, alright, fine.

Did I steal their business and have their president kidnapped?

Yes, yes I did.

But they had their panties in a fucking bunch about it.

In my opinion, it had been a rather tame takeover, all things considered. We could have taken them out. We had the numbers to do it, even if we had to call in the sister and mother chapters to carry it out.

Yeah, Reign got a little roughed up in the process. But that hadn't been our doing. We'd outsourced the kidnapping, and those idiots got carried away. I'd killed their so-called leader for them as a show of good faith.

That wasn't good enough for them, though.

They were the perpetual thorn in my ass.

I mean, the paranoid bastards still had men staked out on the roof across the street from our clubhouse, day in and day out.

It was wearing on my men. Which meant they kept starting shit with the Henchmen—mostly the younger, second-generation ones—when they came across them in bars or restaurants or even at the damn beach.

It was exhausting.

They were exhausting.

Why was it so hard to accept that they got spanked, and move on?

But, no, they had to be babies about it.

Sore losers, all of them.

Though none of them rubbed me the wrong way quite like...

"Oh, son of a bitch," I grumbled as my thoughts aligned with my reality as I moved into Chaz's, and nearly ran right into the asshole himself.

Fallon.

The president-in-training.

A man whose attractiveness only made him all the more irritating.

He was a younger version of his father—tall, dark, handsome, cocky, tattooed. But he had his mother's blue eyes.

"Nice to see you too, Danny," Fallon said, shooting that wicked smirk at me.

"Ugh. Don't you have a curfew to abide by?" I asked, holding a finger up at the bartender, who knew me well enough at this point to know it was either a beer or vodka, and that I wouldn't bitch either way.

"Shouldn't you be surrounded by your flying monkeys?" he shot back, tipping up his beer.

I did not watch him swallow.

That would be too weird.

"Is your old man around?" I asked, taking my vodka, glad the bartender was good at reading the room because a beer just wasn't going to cut it. "Isn't he worried about you being out here without your training wheels on?"

"Are you always such a smartass, or do you reserve it all for me?"

"Don't flatter yourself," I said, annoyed that I didn't have a better comeback. "I save my best for my equals," I added, a little more satisfied with that. Especially when Fallon's eyes blazed. He didn't exactly have a poker face, and I enjoyed it way more than I should that I could get a rise out of him.

I was riding that high for a good solid hour after walking away from him.

Long enough to feel the vodka kicking in, and the stress lifting from my shoulders.

With a slight buzz coursing through me, I paid my tab, glad to see all the Henchmen guys had moved on, and made my way out front, ready for the walk home that suddenly felt a lot longer than the walk to the