Lazarus (The Henchmen MC Book 7) Read online

  Contents

  - PROLOGUE

  - ONE

  - TWO

  - THREE

  - FOUR

  - FIVE

  - SIX

  - SEVEN

  - EIGHT

  - NINE

  - TEN

  - ELEVEN

  - TWELVE

  - THIRTEEN

  - FOURTEEN

  - FIFTEEN

  - SIXTEEN

  - EPILOGUE

  - DON'T FORGET

  - ALSO BY JESSICA GADZIALA

  - ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  - STALK HER

  Lazarus

  A Henchmen MC Novel

  --

  Jessica Gadziala

  Copyright © 2017 Jessica Gadziala

  All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without permission of the publisher is unlawful piracy and theft of the author's intellectual property. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author except for brief quotations used in a book review.

  "This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer's imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales, or organizations is entirely coincidental."

  Cover image credit: Victor Tongdee

  DEDICATION

  This one is going to go out to Teresa Minton Verhoestra,

  who understands the cracks.

  PROLOGUE

  Lazarus - 3 years ago

  I spent a lot of time thinking about eating a bullet.

  I had the gun sitting on my nightstand since I bought it two weeks before during a particularly bad low. It sat there, full of bullets, waiting for me to make up my goddamn mind already.

  And I couldn't tell you from day to day what way my decision was going to go when I picked it up every night.

  That was how rocky things were.

  Those idiots at the meetings didn't know what the hell they were talking about.

  It gets easier.

  Bullshit.

  It didn't get easier.

  I got better at fighting it. There was a very distinct difference.

  That was why the gun was still on my nightstand and not sold back to the guys I bought it from in the first place. Illegally. No one with my record got legal guns.

  The problem with nothing getting easier was, some days you didn't want to fight. Some days you just wanted to say fuck it, go out, get a bottle, get some pills and feel fucking better.

  It was a miserable life to feel sick and unstable every moment of your day, no matter how you tried to distract yourself, no matter how many hours you punished your body with exercise, trying to burn through the sensations, no matter how many books you read or meetings you attended.

  It was bad enough on a daily fucking basis for me to sit down on my bed every single night and pick up that gun and think about it. Thinking about ending it all. Thinking about sticking the muzzle in my mouth, putting my finger on the trigger, and making it all stop.

  I used to think suicide was for cowards, for selfish people.

  No one would have ever called me a coward.

  And I had spent my adulthood taking care of my mother.

  No one could accuse me of selfishness either.

  But I wanted it. I wanted to end it. I wanted to end it just slightly less than I wanted to keep breathing.

  That slightly was what I clung to as I put the gun back down and threw myself back on sheets I had spent weeks sweating through on a bed that I had gone through the most agonizing experience of my life- and I had been through a lot of pain- withdrawal.

  It was a special kind of hell I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy.

  Sweats, chills, skin-crawling, pain in every single muscle in your body, vomiting, upset stomach, headache, exhaustion, the shakes, depression, hallucinations, rage, runny nose, watering eyes- the fucking works. You name it, addicts in withdrawal go through it. All at fucking once.

  I ran toward the bathroom, gagging helplessly. There was nothing in my system but my body didn't care- it needed to purge, to make me miserable, to push me closer to the edge.

  I got up off the floor and grabbed my keys, throwing myself out of my apartment and hitting the streets- the frigid February air biting into every exposed inch of skin- the smarting pain just enough to take some of the misery away. Or, more accurately, masking it with a different kind of pain. I understood why so many people in recovery turned to blades, sliced themselves into ribbons of flesh. The pain, the new, visceral, understandable pain made sense. It made so much more sense than the pain that seemed to come from nowhere but everywhere all at once.

  I'd considered it myself.

  But instead, I walked.

  I walked until my legs got too numb to feel anymore, until my mouth was so dry I realized I had walked myself into complete dehydration, until I walked so far that I was almost in another fucking state.

  Then I walked my ass back home.

  I changed.

  I drank Pedialyte.

  I puked.

  And I sat off the side of my bed.

  The air expanded my chest until it burned before I slowly released it, my hand moving out to slide over the cold metal of the gun as I brought it onto my lap. I pulled it open, checking the cylinder.

  Two bullets.

  Six cylinders.

  I closed it and spun it, staring at my wall.

  Every day they closed in. Every single day, my world got smaller. No decent place would hire me with my record. No illegal way to make money would allow me to keep clean.

  It was no fucking win.

  And it was really fucking frustrating.

  My gaze drifted to my nightstand, seeing a picture of my Mom, taken five years before, smiling radiantly while I knew cancer and chemo was destroying every healthy and unhealthy cell in her body- leaving her in constant pain.

  She died three months after the picture was taken.

  It was the first time I had 30s.

  She had a supply of them for her pain that could last even a severe junkie for months.

  I took them all in under a week- numbing the pain that there was no way to dull. By the time they ran out, I was too far gone to turn back.

  I drank all day long. I took 30s when I could find them.

  And when 30s proved too expensive as my addiction got worse, it was H.

  I'll never use a needle.

  Those were the words I said the first time I crushed up H and snorted it.

  It was the same thing I said the second, third, twentieth, fiftieth time.

  Then, sure, fuck it.

  Eight months into that habit, I was tying off my arm and stabbing a needle into the vein- the rush through my system like no other feeling on earth. Nothing natural, I was convinced, could ever take its place.

  I took a breath and moved the muzzle of the gun into my mouth, feeling it scrape across my teeth in an altogether too familiar way.

  It wasn't as freaky, as surreal as it was the first time I did it.

  The shock of what I was doing was long since gone.

  It was just a decision- a weighing of pros and cons- a choice on whether there was enough to live for left.

  And as I sat there, gaze moving to look at the picture of my dead mother, knowing there wasn't one fucking person left in the world who would even give a fuck if I was still around... I made a decision I had never made before, not even during the worst part of detox, not even when the pain had me s
creaming into my pillow for hours on end.

  Not even then.

  But as I sat there, my finger slid to the trigger.

  And it pulled.

  Click.

  "What the fuck," I exploded, yanking it out of my mouth so fast that it ripped my lower lip open, opening the cylinder and dropping the bullets on the floor.

  What. The. Fuck?

  There was a dichotomy in the meetings between the counselors and the actual addicts.

  Don't listen to what you have heard, the counselor once said, you don't have to hit rock bottom to get better.

  No one contradicted him, but we all knew better. The only way you'd put yourself through the misery of losing the high was if things went so fucking south that there was nowhere further to fall.

  Rock.

  Fucking.

  Bottom.

  I don't think there was anything lower than pulling a trigger on a gun that had a thirty some-odd percent chance of killing you.

  Thirty fucking percent.

  I was so low that I was willing, in that moment, to take those chances.

  I shot up off the bed, pacing the small space in my room, my skin electric, my brain swirling.

  And all I could think was- I had to go.

  This room had been my prison.

  I had drank, snorted, shot up, puked, raged, screamed, and tried to fucking kill myself within the walls.

  There was nothing left to do there.

  I grabbed the gun with a fresh shirt, rubbing off my prints and tossing it in a garbage bag, taking it out to the hall and dropping it down the shoot before going back into my room, stuffing a handful of clothes and money into a bag along with a couple recovery books and the picture of my mom and zipping it up.

  I took the first train out of the City- heading for Jersey.

  And all through the ride, the words came back to me.

  The strength to accept the things I can not change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

  I could change the location. I could flip open a fresh page. I could be someone other than the piece of shit junkie with a dead mom and no one else to give a fuck. I could be a man who never thought about killing himself. I could be someone who started over.

  "Next stop- Navesink Bank," the robotic voice called over the loudspeaker, jerking me out of my thoughts.

  There had been at least eight other stops that had been called out before, none of which broke through the swirling mess of my brain.

  But that one did.

  Never really being the kind to believe in them, I somehow took it as a sign, grabbed my bag, stood up, and got off at the station in Navesink Bank.

  I had expected water.

  Navesink Bank... meaning the Navesink River.

  But I stepped off into a nice-looking station in a sketchy area full of small mom-and-pop restaurants and several old abandoned warehouses.

  With no idea what I was doing, but knowing there was no going back, I shrugged and moved forward.

  Eventually I came up on it- the river, settled down near a restaurant and a hospital. The dock was long and dark, the lights ahead only half on. The boats rocked in the water. The dock groaned against the current. Across the river, mansions lined the water, lights on, blocking out a bit of the brightness of the stars above.

  "If you're thinking of jumping," a deep voice said, making my head turn to find a man standing there in a three-piece suit, a watch on his wrist that was probably worth more than a year of my mother's salary growing up, tall, dark, intimidating.

  "If I'm thinking of jumping..." I prompted when he didn't finish his thought.

  "I'd let you drown," he said simply, shrugging, his voice nothing but sincere. "I'm no one's hero," he added, looking back at the water.

  "And yet," I said, making his head turn back to me.

  "And yet what?"

  "And yet you're talking to me," I shrugged. "If you really didn't give a fuck if I jumped or not, you would have kept your mouth shut and let it happen."

  "True enough," he agreed, looking across the water again, little bubbles popping up from some sea creature the water was too murky to make out. "Besides, if you were serious, you'd jump from the bridge," he added, nodding his head toward it. "You homeless?"

  "Wasn't until I jumped on a train to Jersey," I admitted, finding it was somewhat refreshing to talk to someone. Outside of the people I saw twice a week at meetings, I don't think I ever talked to another person in at least a month.

  To that, he just nodded, looking off at the line of expensive houses. I thought our conversation was over the silence stretched so long. But then he turned away from the railing, reached into his pocket, and pulled out a card that said simply: Ross Ward and an address.

  "You reek of desperation," he said oddly, sounding somehow pleased by the prospect. "I can work with desperate. Oh," he said, having started to walk past me before turning back. "You need to talk to Shane Mallick. About a crash pad. You can probably find him at Chaz's."

  "What's Chaz's?" I asked as he moved away again.

  "Bar in town," he told me, not turning back, and disappearing inside a black, sleek, expensive as all hell car and peeling off.

  A bar.

  Of-fucking-course.

  I knew I'd have to face them eventually. You couldn't insulate yourself from alcohol forever. That was part of recovery. That being said, it was soon. Way too soon.

  On that thought I reached for my phone and did a quick search for Chaz's and walked in the direction, standing outside the building trying to decide if I could walk in.

  It was right about then that fate stepped in.

  "Mallick! Long fuckin' time," I heard called, turning to see a man in a biker jacket greeting a giant wall of muscle with dark hair and light eyes.

  Mallick wasn't exactly a common last name.

  I leaned against the bar until the men finished their conversation and the Mallick man walked toward me. "You wouldn't be Shane Mallick, would you?"

  "Depends on who's asking and who sent you," he informed me with a smirk.

  "Lazarus Alexander and Ross Ward said you were who I talk to about a crash pad."

  At the mention of Ross, his brows drew together slightly, his gaze looking me up and down and seeming to find me lacking somehow. "You work for Ward?" he asked, tone skeptical.

  I had no fucking idea what kind of business he ran, but if you could judge a man's business by the man himself- I'd have to put my money on him being less than above-board. I had no idea if he was someone I wanted to associate myself with.

  "He just sent me in your direction," I hedged. "You have any openings?"

  "Did Ross happen to tell you the kind of crash pads I offer?"

  "Not exactly," I admitted, watching the man's grin go wicked.

  "The term 'flophouse' ring a bell?"

  I had thought he was exaggerating about the disrepair of the place. That was why I had shrugged it off, followed him inside the bar and to an office where the smell of booze wasn't so tempting, and filled out the forms, handed over my bank info, and took my keys.

  He hadn't really been exaggerating.

  Aside from an expensive fence blocking off the eyesore of a junkyard next door and a really state-of-the-art security door, the place was a genuine shithole. Why he even bothered to put a door like that on a building that could be knocked down by a gentle breeze was completely beyond me.

  I walked in the back door to be greeted by the smell of dime store cigars, the smoke completely filling the common room which was packed with mismatched furniture, dust, and piles of newspapers.

  "You the new 2D?" an older black man with white hair and knowing eyes asked.

  "Lazarus Alexander," I agreed, offering my hand.

  "Barney," he responded, shaking my hand. "The elevator doesn't work and it takes about fifteen minutes for the water to get hot," he informed me and I looked to the side where the elevator was crossed off with caution tape and about
ten years of dirt making the steel doors look dull.

  "Got it," I agreed, nodding. "Thanks for the heads-up," I added, moving off toward the staircase leading up to the second floor where I was met by another dirty hall.

  My new crash pad was at the end of the hall, the numbers that should have been under the peephole completely missing which was fine by me. It wasn't like I'd have any company anyway.

  The inside was what you might expect- small, dated, hideous. Directly inside to the left was a small kitchen with an apartment sized fridge, stove, and microwave that might have actually been the original fucking prototype for a goddamn microwave. The floor was a peeling fake-wood printed linoleum. The cabinets were straight out of the seventies style-wise, but whitish. The countertops were an absolutely eye-aching pink. The kitchen area stopped where the brown shaggy carpet met it and led to a small area that was, I imagined, meant to be the living room but it wasn't big enough to be called a room at all. The bedroom had a simple platform bed and was cut off from the rest of the space with only a bookshelf wall. Off the bedroom was a bathroom with more of the fake-wood floor and pink counters. And, I kid you fucking not, a pink fucking tub.

  I had no idea what I was going to be doing work-wise, but every last fucking cent that didn't go to living expenses was going to go to de-pink'ing my apartment.

  --

  I spent three days staring at the walls of my apartment, fighting the nausea, the bugs-under-skin sensation, and the aches by taking long walks around my new town.

  It took all of, say, five seconds to realize that my apartment building was on gang territory. And it took all of five minutes after that to find that the gang in question, known locally as Third Street, the most uninventive name ever since it was simply the street where their headquarters was, didn't just run women who I had seen on corners.

  Oh, no.

  They fucking sold heroin.

  They sold heroin and I could literally call to them from the front of my building.

  Fantastic.

  So when I walked, I turned out of the back of my building and walked past the junkyard instead and headed into an area that was more industrial looking. Businesses lined both sides of the street. Well, the ones that were in business that is. Many of the storefronts were boarded up. But I saw two tattoo parlors, a gym, Chaz's, a fenced place with bikes lining the yard to one side.