Niro (Henchmen MC Next Generation #1) - Jessica Gadziala Page 0,3

I had no idea what that would even look like.

So I did what I could.

I kept living.

I came when she called.

And I pretended it didn't gut me when she stopped calling so much.

I took care of Nugget, hopelessly clinging to the last piece of her that I got to keep with me.

Until, one day, she came and took him from me too.

And I had fucking nothing left.

But the memories.

But the love that refused to die no matter how many different ways I tried to kill it.

So I did the only thing I could.

I did what my father taught me.

I covered it up.

I got hard.

I got so hard that the man I became would never deserve her softness.

I figured knowing she would never want to be with such a miserable bastard would make it possible to finally let go.

It wouldn't be the first time I would be wrong.

Chapter One

Andi

"Maybe this isn't the right job for you," Nadine, the office manager of the vet hospital I had been working at for all of three months told me, towering over me in her canary yellow scrubs, a cat-printed lanyard hanging around her neck, her ID badge resting on her chest.

Nadine always reminded me of my sixth-grade math teacher—somewhere in her forties with her brown hair pulled severely back from her face, her eyes a little over-lined, lipstick perpetually on her teeth no matter the time of day. She was pretty with somewhat cool green eyes, and a slender figure. Her voice—when she spoke to me, at least—was rough and stern, always disapproving.

To be fair, I gave her a lot to disapprove of in such a short period of time.

I hadn't exactly been a model co-worker.

This was evidenced by the fact that I actually outranked her as the new vet on staff, but she had to come in and scold me at least once per shift for something I did or didn't do, some arcane policy that I hadn't abided by perfectly enough to suit her needs.

It was proving harder than I could have realized to feel like an adult with my life together and people 'below' me in ranking when I felt like I was scrambling every minute of the day just to do the bare minimum that being a grown woman required.

I was pretty sure I had permanently ruined my dishwasher that very morning. Don't ask me how, it was just another thing I would need to handle but had no idea how to, so I would spend my lunch break Googling everything I could about dishwasher repair since I still wasn't in a place to just go out and buy one. My super wasn't an option, because he was a complete creep who stared at my boobs and tried to "reassure" me that I was safe because he was the only person in the world with a key to my door.

I was constantly trying to steam my work jacket in the bathroom when I showered in the morning because I could never remember to pick up an iron and board, even though I passed that department at the store all the time on my way to the pet section to stock up on a needless number of toys for Nugget.

My cell bill was overdue, evidenced by the twelve or so calls a day I got from the company. It wasn't that I didn't have the money to pay it, either. I just kept telling myself I would get to it. Then never actually doing it.

On top of all of that, I was sitting in the break room under the window, wedged between the garbage can and the refrigerator sobbing my eyes out like a kindergartener on their first day of school when they realized their mom and dad really weren't going to come in with them.

"I had to put the puppy down," I told her, heels scrubbing my eyes, hoping the pressure could stem the flow of the tears like a towel pressed to a bleeding wound. That was what my heart felt right about then. Like a bleeding wound.

"Yes, well, in this line of work, you are going to need to put a lot of animals down," Nadine reminded me, just barely tolerating my misery.

I understood that.

Of course, I had known that going into this profession.

A part of being a vet was compassionate care. Like taking a very sick animal out of their misery.

Maybe I could have accepted it better if this was a thirteen-year-old, arthritic dog riddled with cancer