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I knew my life would change when I made the choice to join on with The Henchmen. The lifestyle I had always engaged in, where I could make a difference the way I had been doing for decades, was gone. But the urge to make an impact never went away.
Doing classes at the gym helped.
It wasn't the same, but it was something.
They had been happy to have me, even though they didn't need me.
Janie and Lo taught their Krav Maga. Malcolm from Hailstorm, along with a few of his other guys, taught LINE. Cyrus offered a Jiu Jitsu class twice a month. There was another guy who taught boxing.
They had it covered.
But they offered an ultimate package that cost a mint - unless you were one of the women already mentioned - which taught all of the above. And my class.
Systema.
Russian martial arts.
I might have been born in Romania, but I spent a lot of my life kicking across eastern Europe, spending a good chunk of time in Russia.
Systema was a specific fighting style that used an attacker's momentum against them, making it ideal to use for someone who was weaker than their opponent. Like women. It also focused on teaching things such as pressure points which, once you knew them, you could apply with almost no effort, but bring a man to his knees in pain.
Systema was the last of all fighting styles to learn before you graduated out of the Ultimate Self-Defense Package.
This meant that I usually had classes once a week for three months, then went several months again with no classes as I waited for the new classes to go through LINE, boxing, Jiu Jitsu, and Krav Maga.
I was only three weeks into my newest class.
I climbed on my bike, turning it over, feeling the vibration move through my body in a newly familiar way. Prior to joining The Henchmen, I had only had a handful of occasions to ride a bike, and usually in the kinds of situations where I needed to use them to get away and fast, and therefore didn't find a way to enjoy the experience.
I had no idea what I was missing out on.
The first few weeks that I spent at the compound, more prisoner than brother, I couldn't understand why the men had occasionally bitched about not being able to go out and ride.
That was, of course, until I got a bike of my own and understood the freedom you got without steel walls holding you in.
At first, I constantly found myself taking the long way back to the compound just to get a couple more minutes with the wind washing over me.
The ride to the gym was too short. Really, I could have walked. If I were still in Europe, I would have walked. But this was America, and unless you lived in a major city, you drove everywhere.
I parked in the lot out back, going in through the rear entrance, popping my head into the office to find the slight, raven-haired, tattoo-covered Krav Maga master, hacker extraordinaire, and explosives expert, Hailstorm's favorite daughter, Wolf's whole world, sitting there, chugging back an energy drink, shadows under her eyes, speaking of a sleeplessness she was known for.
Once, she had been a woman who hadn't been able to protect herself, who had been made a victim, who had wished for death, who had begged for it instead of more abuse.
She had almost not made it.
Surely, she would have died if it weren't for Lo finding her, and Hailstorm nursing her, hardening her, teaching her to harness her rage into something useful.
She did that.
She became a goddamn prodigy.
But the nightmares still came, unrelenting at times, even now, after her husband had viciously murdered the man who put those ugly memories in her head, they still came on occasion, leaving her up for days on end, plugging away at her laptop, trying to right some wrong or another.
"Jstorm," I called, trying for a soft voice, but, well, I couldn't ever really do soft, making her jerk around in her swivel chair, having to slam her hands on her desk to stop the momentum.
"Christ, stomp a little, would you?" she asked, rolling her eyes at me. "What's up?"
"Sugar said to drop him a line when you have a minute. He thinks he might have a lead."
"Finally," she declared, already reaching for her cell.
I knew when I was being dismissed, walking down the hall, past the two locker rooms, then into the main area of the gym.
It was a massive space the trio had gotten on a song thanks to it being too large to be anything other than maybe a factory and the unwillingness of the bank that had owned it to cut it up into more marketable pieces.
This meant that the main room was the size of your average gym, complete with weights and a line of cardio equipment. But there were also speed bags, heavy bags, and, of course, a large, raised boxing ring.
