KIWI

Shit’s happening and I couldn’t sit around that bar anymore. Loni kept giving me looks of apology for Loki leaving with Taz. I knew why he did it, but her looks were making it worse and my mind kept wandering around to what it is he could have been doing with her. I’d expected him back sooner and no one is answering my calls. I’ve tried Big Daddy, Pixie and Sticks. Those are all the numbers I have. I wanted to call my brother, but I don’t have his number and calling Loki would blow his cover.

I turn down the street my house is on.

I can’t sit here. I have to help in some way.

But how?

I pull in the driveway of my house. The house is dark, considering it’s after midnight and both Emily and Piper should be sleeping is normal, but I just don’t feel right being here.

I have no idea where Loki went with Taz.

I need to know he’s alright.

I back out of the driveway and take off down the street toward Loki’s.

A minute later I’m pulling in front of his house and there’s nothing going on here. His truck is in the carport, but his bike is gone. He’s not here.

My heart sinks. I reach into my vest pocket and pull out my phone. I see a missed called from Loki and I’m about to dial him again when it rings. I idle down the bike and answer the phone.

“Where the fuck are you?”

“Jesus, calm the fuck down. Glad to know you’re alright,” I snap back at him.

“I’m fine, where are you? You were supposed to stay in the bar,” he growls.

“I couldn’t take it anymore. Loni kept giving me pity looks because you left with Taz. I couldn’t tell her that I knew why. It was pissing me off.”

“Where the fuck are you, Lily?”

I roll my eyes. “Maybe I shouldn’t tell you.”

“She tried to kill me,” he barks into the phone.

“You knew that.”

“No, she put a gun to my head and tried to kill me. She played me, Lily, like a fucking fiddle.”

“Jesus,” I breathe.

“When she called Gunnar to tell him I was dead, Gunnar gave her a new target.”

“Who?” I ask.

“You,” he says and the phone disappears from my hand. Something presses to the side of my head and I know instantly that it’s a gun.

“Hello, Loki,” a menacing female voice says into the phone. I catch a glimpse in my side mirror and see it’s Taz. “I warned you that I was going to get my son back.”

She puts the phone on speaker.

“And I told you that if you didn’t follow my rules I’d call off the rescue mission.”

“Go ahead, she’ll be dead in a minute anyway.”

“You can’t kill her any more than you could kill me.”

“I was never meant to kill you, asshole,” she sneers and the phone goes dead when she pushes the end button. She tosses it onto the ground and stomps on it. “Now, turn it off.” Tells me. I take a deep breath, calming myself down as best I can. I’ve been in this position before. Granted, the gun wasn’t loaded then, but still. I wait for her instructions before moving further. I put my hands up, my keys hooked on my index finger. “Get off,” she orders.

I kick the stick down and using my legs, let the bike lean to the side as I stand up on my left foot. “Off,” she orders.

I do my best to gauge her position behind me before I move to kick my leg over. She’s standing too close, perfect. At the same time as I kick my leg up and over, I use my arm to knock her arm and the gun out of the way. I kick her in the back pretty hard and she huffs. The gun falls from her hand and lands on the ground. Thank god it didn’t go off.

With my left hand, I reach inside my cut for my Glock and I point it at her, flicking off the safety and cocking the firing pin as I point it at her face.

“Well, well, well. What do we have here?”

The voice sends a sliver of ice through my veins. “If it isn’t the ever-elusive Lily Beaumont,” Rooster sneers my name.

I turn toward him, keeping my gun in my left hand pointed at Taz’s head and I pull my second gun from inside my vest, my favorite gun, and point it at Rooster. I flip the safety and cock it.

“Drop it,” a voice behind me says and I feel the barrel of another gun press to the back of my head. “Both of them,” Opie growls behind me.

“Well, aren’t you in a pickle?” Rooster gives me a wicked smirk.

I could kill Rooster and Taz before Opie would get his shot off, but what good would that do if I’m dead, right? Right.

I uncock the guns, holding them and my arms up while at the same time switching the safeties back on and I manage to tuck them back into the holsters under my cut before Opie can snag them from me.

“Get out of here, whore,” Rooster snaps at Taz.

“Where’s my son?” She screams.

“You didn’t complete your mission. Loki is alive, and so is she.” He cocks his head in my direction before his face lights up with his phone.

“She failed. Kill him,” Rooster orders and Taz lets out a blood curdling scream as she falls to the ground on the other side of my bike.

Her gun is sitting at my foot and I kick it toward her. Her sobs continue, but somehow, I manage to do that without raising Rooster’s attention. Opie may have a gun to my head, but I’d like to believe he’d be loyal to the Angels, even if they’ve threatened his son. “Where is he?” Rooster asks me.

“He, who?” I counter.

“Don’t be a cunt, cunt. Loki, where is he?”

“How the fuck should I know?” I snap.

I notice Taz has gotten quiet. Her sobs no longer break through the night.

LOKI

“She has Kiwi. All bets are off. Move, now, goddammit. Get him out of there before he gets killed,” I bark into the phone over the roar of my engine as I’m racing toward Kiwi’s house. I can’t hear the reply but I hang up my phone. I may be a monster, but killing children is not high on my list of shit to do. Millions of children are raised without a mom or dad and Hunter will survive that. Taz, on the other hand, will not.

She crossed a line. Tried to kill me and is trying to kill my old lady, the sister of Tryke, the niece of Big Daddy and Sticks. No one will get away with that. Not now, not ever. They let Tryke’s ‘murder’ slide at Tryke’s behest. He wanted to do things the right way and since it was actually me who shot him, and besides, if they’d gone after the person responsible, I’d have gone down. Tryke wouldn’t stand for that and neither would Big Daddy, and especially not Sticks.

I understand now why Sticks championed me so vehemently. By the time this all went down, Kiwi was pregnant with my daughter.

Anger colors my vision again and I kick it up a notch, taking the corner down our street far faster than I should have and I fishtail out on the other side. I manage to right the bike, but my heart rate triples. “Fuck,” I growl.

I roll up in front of Kiwi’s. The lights are off, the two cars are there, but no bike. “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” I roar down the street. If she was really concerned about my whereabouts, about what was happening between Taz and I, she may have gone to my place.

As I draw closer to my house, fear rattles my nerves.

I’m less than five hundred yards away when I hear a shot ring out. Followed by two more. I open the throttle and go charging for my house.

KIWI

“Dumb bitch,” Rooster growls. I glare at him, both guns pointed at him. My heart is pumping a million miles a second. There’s a bike roaring down the street. I’m certain it’s Loki, but I don’t bother to check. “Not a very good shot, are you?” he sneers.

I aim and fire, clipping him in his foot. He screams as the pain registers. “Say again?”

“You missed, cunt.” I aim for the other foot.

“Want to lose both of them?” I growl at him. “Or just your life?”

My gun in my right hand is pointed at his head, my left at his right foot, the one I’ve not shot yet.

It’s eerily quiet now.

“Drop it,” I hear someone, Loki, growl at someone.

Taz shot Opie in the shoulder, knocking the gun free and giving me a window to fire back. I didn’t know whether or not Rooster was armed, so I shot him first, clipping him on his shoulder with nothing more than a flesh wound.

I promised Loki that I’d let the Angels have their way with Rooster.

“Kiwi, you alright?” Loki asks.

“Perfect,” I say back to him. “I behaved,” I tell him and he lets out a nervous laugh.

“How so?”

I give Rooster an evil smirk. “I clipped his shoulder, just enough to slow him down. But then he got a smart mouth on him so I shot his foot. He thinks I missed.”

He laughs then he snaps, “Drop it, Opie.” “You don’t want to do this, man,” he says and I don’t want to turn away from Rooster, so I don’t know what’s happening. “Taz, you alright?” he asks.

“No,” she barks. “He told Gunnar to kill Hunter,” she sobs.

“Hunter is safe,” Loki says and I breathe out a sigh of relief. “I promised you we’d rescue him.”

“But you…I didn’t do what you…you said?” she sputters.

“If you know anything about the Angels at all, you know children come first. I couldn’t have called them off, even if your life depended on it, he’s safe,” he says.

“Babe, can we save the small talk?” I ask.

“Just trying to get her to stop pointing her gun at you, baby.”

My heart rate speeds impossibly faster. “Drop it, Taz. Don’t make this worse than it already is. Hunter is safe. Rooster is here…”

I’m interrupted by Taz screaming, “Shut up, you dumb cunt! You don’t know shit!”

I take a deep breath, steadying myself. It’s killing me to not pop Rooster in his kneecap and take him down, but I’m afraid if I fire then she will too. Though I don’t think she could hit the broad side of a barn if she did.

The quiet night is cut with the roar of motorcycles drawing closer. “You’re out of time, Leslie,” Loki says. “They show up here, you have a gun at her back, they’re gonna take you out and not think twice about it.”

“I need to know that Hunter is okay.”

“Loki’s already told you he’s safe,” Opie says through gritted teeth, his wound no doubt causing him some serious pain. Rooster starts to go white as he rolls to the ground. I roll my eyes.

“Bit dramatic, aren’t we, Rooster?” My voice drips with sarcasm. “You’re not dying. You have a flesh wound in your shoulder and I shot your foot. You’re not even close to dying.” I take another step toward him. Ignoring the fact that Taz has a gun pointed at my back and hogs are roaring closer. “For an evil son of a bitch, you’re sure acting like a damn pussy. You’re not even armed. What the hell kind of bullshit is that?” I snicker. “Oh, that’s right, you have people do your dirty work for you.” I’m about ten feet away from him now. “Get up, cocksucker,” I growl.

The pussy acts like he’s been shot through the heart as he slowly gets up.

“If you think those bikes roaring down the street are going to save your ass, you’ve got another thing comin’,” I tell him. “You see, we all know about your little skimming game. About the millions you’ve stolen from the club.” His eyes flare. “About the hits you put on Tripp, Tryke and Loki.” He’s finally up to his knees, I want him on his feet. “Stand-up, motherfucker,” I order him. He glares at me. “What, can’t stand taking orders from a cunt?”

“Kiwi,” Loki warns.

“Get. Up,” I emphasize.

He finally rises to his feet, though awkwardly. “Taz, you’re out of time,” I shout over my shoulder. “You gonna lower that gun?” I ask her.

There’s no answer.

“The choice is yours, Taz. Live for your son or die because you’re stupid,” Loki snaps at her.

“Here,” she screams. I can’t see them and I brace for a shot, but none come.

“Got it,” Loki says.

“Good.” I take one step toward Rooster. I fire once, hitting his other foot. “That’s for my mother,” I say with conviction as he cries out and falls to his knees.

“Kiwi, don’t,” Loki shouts.

I fire again, this time clipping his left shoulder. “That’s for my father.” Rooster’s hand comes up, leaving his other shoulder only slightly exposed. I narrow my eyes and fire another round. “That’s for Tryke,” I growl as he falls to the ground as Loki’s arms wrap around me.

“Easy, he’s down, alright?”

“I didn’t kill him,” I mutter.

“No, baby, you didn’t kill him,” he whispers in my ear.

“I got my revenge,” I breathe out as the biggest weight lifts from my shoulders.

“You did,” he returns in my ear as the roar of bikes gets deafeningly loud as they pull up in front of the house. Engines start turning off.

“Mommy!” I hear a scream and I turn, bringing Loki with me just in time to see Hunter put on the ground at Tryke’s side.

“Hunter,” Taz yells and she runs toward him.

“You got him,” I breathe and then everything goes black.