Breaking Hammer (Motorcycle Club Romance) (Inferno Motorcycle Club Book 3) (19 page)

“Aww,” MacKenzie whined.
 “Come on.”

"Something smaller first," I said.
 "We can't just go get a horse.  Besides, what will happen to a horse when you go back to visit grandma for the summer?"

"You'll take care of it," MacKenzie said.
 "Or Martina will."

Martina pulled a pan of lasagna from the oven.
 “I take care of children, not animals, I’m afraid.  Besides, I won't stay during the summer when you go back to visit your grandmother.  I have my own grandchildren I'll be visiting when they're out of school."  Martina turned to me.  “Are you sure you don’t have time to eat?  You need to take care of yourself, Mr. Holder.”

“It smells good, Martina.
 And I’m really tempted.  But I’m going to be late for work if I’m not careful.”

“Who’s going to keep you company when I’m gone?” MacKenzie asked.
 “You’re going to be all alone.”

"What are you talking about, MacKenzie?"
 I squatted down in front of her.  "Where is this coming from, talking about when you're gone?  The summer is a long way away."

MacKenzie shrugged, averted her gaze.
 "I don't know," she said.

I put my hands on her arms.
 "I promise I'll think about a horse," I said.  "But we only just moved here and got settled in.  I know you've been having a hard time adjusting to Vegas, and it might seem like getting a horse will make everything easier, but I don't know that it will.  We need to get adjusted before we think about anything like that."

MacKenzie sighed.
 "I don't want you to be sad again."

Shit.

That was the last fucking thing MacKenzie needed to worry about, at her age.  After all the shit she had already had to deal with, with losing her mom.

I squatted down in front of her, my face close to hers.
 “MacKenzie,” I said.  “You don’t need to worry about your old man.  The summer is a long way off, and I'll be just fine here when you're visiting grandma.  Horse or no horse."

"Are you sure you're going to be okay when I'm gone?" she asked.

"Kiddo, I am going to miss you like crazy.  But I’m going to be just fine,” I lied.   I didn't want to think about her leaving for the summer.  It hurt to think about it, her going back to Puerto Rico, but I knew she missed her grandmother immensely.  I knew she was having a hard time adjusting.  We'd started seeing a therapist, and the therapist said it was normal to have difficulty, but that MacKenzie was exhibiting signs of depression.

I made a mental note to ask the therapist if she thought the horse would help her.
 I'd do whatever it took to help her adjust.  Hell, if I needed to buy a horse to do it, I'd buy that kid a horse.  She'd been through too much already.

And then, on top of all the shit that had happened, to have her mention that she was worried about me and whether or not I'd be okay next summer...that just killed me.
 It wasn't right.  It sure as shit wasn't normal that a kid would have to be worried about whether or not her dad was okay.

"Enough worrying about your old man, kid,” I said.
 “I miss your mom like crazy, and I know you do too.  But I’m not sad like I was before.  Okay?  You don’t have to worry about me.”

I kept my voice calm, bright.

Reassuring.

At least I hoped I sounded more assured than I felt.

Because, the truth was, I sure as shit didn't feel calm or bright.  Things weren't the same without April.  For MacKenzie or for me.

I looked up to see Martina studying me carefully, her lips pursed and her brow furrowed.
 She obviously wasn’t sure about me either.  I couldn’t exactly blame her.  I tried to keep shit together, but I think sometimes she saw through the cracks in the facade.

“Okay, dad,” MacKenzie said.
 “We can talk about a horse later.  Can I watch TV now?"

I smiled.
 Conversation over.  Crisis averted.

“After your homework is done,”
 I said.  “For an hour.”

“My homework is totally done already!
 So I can watch TV, right?”  She raced toward the living room without waiting for a response.

“No!” I yelled, as I turned to leave.
 “Martina will check your homework first!”

“Don’t worry, Mr. Holder, I’ve got her,” Martina said.

“Thank you, Martina,” I said.  “This shouldn’t take that long anyway.”  I called out to MacKenzie as I walked into the garage.  “Love you, Mac!”

“Yeah, dad,” she said, dismissing me.

The door closed behind me, and I let out a sigh.  She didn't want me to be sad again.  I made a mental note to tell the therapist about that.  I needed to earn her confidence in me as a father.  I made a vow that, above anything else, I would do that.  I would her feel safe.  I would make her feel confident in me.

~ ~ ~

MacKenzie's voice shook me back to reality, and I tried to shake off the memory.
 Instead, it sat with me, weighty on my mind, even as MacKenzie talked about how well school was going.

"Okay, daddy," she said.
 "I have to go.  It's time for dinner."

"I love you, MacKenzie," I said.
 "Always."

"Totally, dad," she said.
 Then she paused.  "Thanks for letting me come here."

"You're welcome, baby."
 I said the words, even as it gutted me to hear that from her.  I wanted her happy, but hearing her so happy to be away from me, it just made me feel more and more like a failure as a father.

"Love you daddy," she said.
 "Got to go."

She hung up before I could say the words back to her, but I spoke them to the empty house as I heard the call end.
 "I love you, too."

Later, much later, I sat in the bedroom, wallowing in my bullshit guilt and rage.
 I'd replayed things over and over in my head, convinced that at some point I could have changed things, done things differently, made it so that April hadn't have been killed.

All of the "if only" thoughts, they would kill me.

I felt the heavy burden of guilt.  Guilt for my failures as a father.  And above all else, guilt for April's murder.  All of it was my fault.  April had been too good for someone like me.  She never deserved my brand of shit.

April had stood by me when I went to the federal pen for embezzlement, because I got stupid and cocky enough to steal from my employer.
 Well, stupid enough to get caught anyway.  I was young and foolish.  I was a helluva lot better at what I did now.  And now, I was doing the same shit on the right side of the law.  I was trying to make up for lost time, trying to redeem myself for all the wrongs I'd done, the things that resulted in April's death.

I knew all of these things, felt deeply guilty for them.
 And yet...when I'd visited the club, there was a part of me that missed it.  Part of me wanted to tell the club I was back and out of retirement, ready to do what was needed.  There was a dark part of me that wanted the excuse to act on the rage I felt all the time, to be able to do it under the guise of club business.  Working in a white collar job, securing networks from hacks like myself...it wasn't exactly an outlet for anger.

I couldn't explain why I was sitting in my bedroom, cleaning my weapon.
 It didn’t need cleaned, but I felt drawn to it, without any sense.  I knew I shouldn’t be, but I felt like I was on auto-pilot.  It started this morning, the impulse to clean it, then the vague thoughts about what if I used it.

It would be better for MacKenzie if I weren’t around.

Better for her to be with her grandmother.

She’d be happier, surrounded by family.

You weren’t meant to raise a kid, not by yourself.

April was the only parent worth her salt.  You don’t have your shit together to take care of yourself.  You can’t take care of a kid.

MacKenzie would be better without you.

It would be better if you were dead.

I told myself I was just cleaning it, that’s all.
 I hadn’t used it in a long time.  I wanted to make sure everything was still in working order.

Even I knew when I was bullshitting myself.

I held it, felt the weight of it in my hand, the cool sensation of the metal against my palm.  I wondered how it would feel to put it to my temple and pull the trigger.  I thought it through carefully as I turned the weapon over in my hands.

I thought about the people I’d killed, and how they felt when I did it.
 I didn’t feel badly about the men I’d killed, about beating one to death with a sledgehammer, smashing him into a bloody pulp until he was completely and entirely obliterated.  I didn’t feel remotely guilty about wrapping a chain around the other one and dragging his body behind a vehicle, while his cries of agony rang out through the desert night.  And when I watched Axe peel a man’s scalp from his head before slitting his throat, I felt satisfied.  Thrusting my knife into Mad Dog’s belly was like the icing on the cake.

I didn’t feel badly about any of it.
 Those shitbags had killed April.  They had ripped my wife from me, taken away MacKenzie’s mother.  They deserved to die.  They deserved far worse than the horrors Axe and I had inflicted on them.

What kept gnawing at me, clawing away at my insides, was that I’d felt
good
when I had done it.  Killing them wasn’t some sober act of retribution for April’s death.  It was like some kind of switch got flipped when I picked up the sledgehammer.  Something turned off in my soul.  Killing them felt fucking amazing.

It shouldn’t have felt that way.
 I wasn’t that person.

I didn’t want to be that person.
 If I was, what would happen the next time someone crossed me?

And what the hell kind of father could I possibly be with that kind of darkness in my soul?
 It was my fault MacKenzie had lost her mother.  I had brought that on her, with my involvement in the club.  Sure, Mad Dog’s men had killed April, but her death was all my doing.  Her blood was on my hands.

Since April’s death, I felt adrift.
 She was my anchor, always had been.  We joked about her being a ball and chain, but it was a good thing, in my case.  She kept me tethered, tied to family and the things that were important to me, when I could have kept running out of control with the club, like back in the early years with them.  When she died, I lost my moorings.

I looked back down at the piece in my lap.
 It would be so easy to just end everything.  I sat silently, the weight of the options heavy on my mind.

Then I set the weapon on the nightstand, beside the slip of paper with the phone number on it.
 I don’t know why I had kept it.

Or why the fuck I picked up the phone then.
 I should have done something else, called a friend.  Shit, called a hotline or something.

But I didn’t.
 I called a woman I didn’t know.

When she answered, I almost hung up.

“Hello?”  She asked it three times before I swallowed the lump in my throat and spoke.

“It’s Joe.
 Hammer.  The computer guy,”  I said.  Why the hell was I calling her?

“Hammer,” she said, her voice soft.
 “I wondered if I would hear from you.”

“I don’t know why I’m calling,” I said.

She was silent, and for a minute, I thought she’d hung up on me.  “It’s okay not to know,” she said.

“I-”
 How the fuck did I explain what kind of mental space I was in right now?  I didn’t know why the hell I was calling her.

"My wife -" I began.
 I couldn't continue.  It was too painful to explain to someone who didn't already know.  She couldn't possibly understand.

"You lost her," Meia said.

"She was murdered."

"Loss is difficult," she said.
 "You begin to despair, to think you're better off dead."

"You lost someone close to you."