Page 39 of Zeke

Pony:SOS. Kitchen.

Fuck.

“We gotta go,” I say to Savage before tearing out of the bedroom, leaving Savage to finish cleaning himself up and get dressed.

I run down the stairs and come to a skidding halt at the entrance to the kitchen. Pony is standing off to the side, shaking from head to toe, his gaze darting between me and Zeke, who’s standing facing some greaseball with an eagle tattoo on his neck.

Ah. So, I finally get to meet Wizard.

I draw my gun quickly, pointing it at Wizard’s head. I’m only a couple of feet away—close enough that there’s no chance of me missing. If I pull my trigger, he’s dead.

But so is Zeke, and that’s something I’m not willing to risk.

It isn’t the first time we’ve been in a standoff like this, and Zeke knows how to get out of a situation like this. Dad always made sure we knew how to defend ourselves in any situation, though he put more into me, thinking I’d never end up leading the Kings and assuming I’d need to have lots of tools to protect myself against people who would use me as leverage.

It was back in Miami, in one of our first weeks there. We’d run into a rival club, not the one Wizard is from. Despite the fact we were on our own, Zeke was still wearing his cut. We ended up in a biker bar with about ten members of the other club. They surrounded us and dragged us out back.

“What do we have here, boys?” the biggest, dumbest-looking one of the bunch asked. “Looks like some ‘Toothless Kings’ didn’t get the memo that this is our bar.”

“We don’t want any trouble,” Eli said.

“Well, then you came to the wrong part of town, kid,” said an older guy with more muscles than brain cells.

It was clear the guys in this club weren’t the smartest, with each one seeming dumber than the others as I looked at them. “Look,” I said, staring directly at the one I assumed to be the Prez. “We didn’t know. We’re new in town. We have no issue paying our tab and leaving.”

“Nah,” he said, stepping forward, his gun already drawn and pointed at me. “I think we’ll make a lesson out of you. Show the other Kings what happens when you come to our turf.”

Was this guy even real? He sounded like some villain out of some old movie. He stepped closer, about an arm’s length away from me.

Too far. I needed to get him closer so I could use the trick Dad taught me.

“Well, what about me?” I asked him. “I’m just a girl. No cut or anything.”

“I know a cut slut when I see one,” he said. “Which means there are only two questions I have. Are you only a slut for the Kings? Because you’re welcome to stand against that wall and take off those jeans for me. The second question, if you don’t want to take me up on my offer, is how much you matter to these guys. Enough to let you die while they pull out their guns?”

My nickname now is Big Red, but it applied back then. My fiery red hair was pulled up in a ponytail, but that was just on the outside. When he called me a cut slut, when he offered to let me live if I fucked him, my field of vision went red. I put my hands up to show I was unarmed, then stepped toward the guy with the gun.

“Here we go,” Zeke mumbled behind me to Eli, who I could almost hear rolling his eyes.

They had no chance of drawing their weapons before this guy could put a bullet between my eyes, but my boldness seemed to confuse him.

“You picking door number one, then, sweetheart?” he asked, grabbing a handful of his crotch with his free hand, making me want to gag, but not as much as what he’d called me.

Sweetheart. Ugh. It was like a bad Nickelodeon script.

“I think…” I said, stepping forward again so the gun was pressed to my head, right where I wanted it. I needed it to be in contact with me. “I think…”

“I think she wants it,” he said. “What do you boys think?” He looked around at the members of his club, which was an opening I could take advantage of.

Fast as lightning, I took my right hand, which was still up next to my head, and shot it up and to the left, forcing the barrel of the gun away from both me and my brothers. When he tried to recover and bring the gun back down, I took the grip I now had on his wrist and spun, pulling the arm down over my shoulder while my other hand wrapped around the barrel of the gun and pulled. A bullet shot into the ground in front of us as his finger was pulled back against the trigger. Then it was in my hands, and not his. Now that I had the upper hand, my brothers drew their guns and aimed them at various members of the rival club, while I pointed Mr. Beefy’s own gun at him.

“You bitch,” he’d said.

“You sure do know how to talk sweet to a girl,” I said, nodding for Eli and Zeke to start walking toward our bikes. They did, and we all walked toward the lot, not turning our backs until we were on our bikes.

A couple of rogue bullets pinged off one of my wheels, and I knew they were shooting at us. I glared at them in rage as I revved my engine, then took my gun and shot out tires of the six closest bikes, then watched Eli do the same behind him. Zeke, on the other hand, had turned his bike to face them and looked angry enough to play douchebag bowling with them.

“No,” I shouted to him, and he gave me a look of frustration.

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