Breaking Hammer (Motorcycle Club Romance) (Inferno Motorcycle Club Book 3) by Sabrina Paige

 Testing the waters, hanging around like I'd done in the beginning.  The President there, Geezer Jake, was a solid guy, at least he seemed that way.  You never fucking knew, though.  I wouldn't have expected Mad Dog to go the way he had.
    Well, that wasn't true.  Mad Dog always had it in him, from the very beginning.  He had that capacity, and I knew it.  He just always kept it in check...until he didn't anymore.
    I wondered if, years from now, someone would say the same thing about me.
    Even so, despite my reservations, the thoughts about coming out of retirement kept creeping into my mind.  It was a new chapter.  It wasn't Mad Dog's club.  I could keep the day job, do the bare minimum at the club.  I'd be like a fucking weekend warrior, right?  No big deal.  It didn't mean I'd have to turn over my soul to the club.
    These were the things that kept going through my head.
    But I knew they weren't true.  I knew myself.  I knew that if I came out of retirement, I'd take it seriously.  And that was something I wasn't sure I was ready to do.
    Even so, I sat out in the garage yesterday with the bike, just thinking.  I still hadn't ridden yet, afraid that if I got on the bike, it would flip a switch inside of me that I wouldn't be able to turn off.
    It felt like I'd be closing the chapter on April or something.
    Even if I knew in my head she'd want me to move on - fuck, she'd chew me a new asshole if she knew I was this wrapped up in memories still - I couldn't quite bring myself to actually do it.

    “Watch your self up there, Mr. Holder,” Mark, the security guard, said.
    “You make it sound like I’m walkin g into something dangerous, Mark,” I said.  “I think I’ll be all right installing this system on some rich guy’s penthouse, thanks.”
    He shrugged.  “He’s a special kind of rich guy, that’s all I’m saying.”
    I opened my mouth, about to ask him what exactly made this special snowflake different from all the other fucking rich shits here in Vegas, but Mike’s radio squawked and he picked it up.  Without taking the radio away from his mouth, he waved at me as he walked down the hall, his pace brisk.
    I was already irritated with this whole thing.  It sure as shit wasn’t my job to install security in a goddamn penthouse.  But it was a special task from the casino owner, and what he wanted, he would get.  My boss had given me no details, just told me this was a security system issue with the penthouse owner.  Some dude with too much money who was used to having people jump through hoops for him.  Which was what I was fucking doing now.  I didn't even know who the owner was.
    So to say I was irritated as I stood here was an understatement.  I wasn’t irritated.  I was fucking livid.  At this douchebag for insisting on a goddamned specialist to come up and do what a regular garden-variety tech could do.  At the casino owner, for readily agreeing to pimp out my services.  At my boss for insisting it was me that had to come here on a fucking weekend.
    Mostly at the world, for the way things had turned out in general.
    I rung the penthouse doorbell, half-expecting it to be answered by a butler.  But this was no butler.
    She stood there, in this all-white outfit, these flowy pants and top made out of some kind of silky material that almost shimmered, the way the light glinted off it, making her look other-worldly somehow.  A look of surprise flitted across her face when she saw me.

He stood in front of me - the fighter.  The man who’d run into me in the casino, held me in his arms.  The one who'd delivered the beating in the fight, that took my breath away, kept me on the edge of my seat, my hands clenched tightly as I watched him fight the way a man fought when he didn't care whether or not he lived or died.
    Even when I'd seen him in the casino the first time, in slacks and a collared shirt, he was rough, there was no doubt in my mind about that.  His business clothes,