Zeus (Renegade Kings MC, Detroit Chapter #4)

Chapter 1

London

He found me.

I shove clothes into my duffel with hands that won't stop shaking.

Three t-shirts, two pairs of jeans, underwear, the hoodie with the broken zipper that's still warmer than nothing.

My fingers leave bloody smears on the fabric—my blood.

The cut on my cheekbone throbs, a fresh split from his ring when his fist connected.

I don't look at the damage. I know what it looks like, but I've had worse from Greg Bowman.

The fire escape rattles under my weight as I swing my leg over the windowsill. My duffel catches on a nail, and I yank it free, tearing the canvas. Inside my apartment, I can hear him—boots crunching over broken glass, his voice a low, dangerous rumble.

"London. Londonnn. Where the fuck are you hiding, you little bitch?"

I don't breathe. I don't think. I drop to the metal landing and take the stairs two at a time. My worn sneakers barely grip the rusted grate. Three floors down. The alley below is dark and stinks of old garbage, but it's freedom.

When my feet hit the concrete, I run.

I go six blocks before I slow down. Seven before I dare to look back. The street behind me is empty—just parked cars and closed storefronts. I hear city sounds—the distant wail of a siren, the honk of a car horn—but no Greg. My lungs burn.

Three weeks. That's how long my independence lasted.

Three weeks of working double shifts under the table, of eating ramen and stale bread, and sleeping with a knife under my pillow because old habits don't die when the threat is still breathing.

I was careful. I paid cash for everything and didn't give my new address to anyone.

But Greg has friends. Greg has connections. Greg spent years training me to believe I could never escape him, and tonight he almost proved himself right.

The cut on my face weeps warmth down my jaw. I wipe it with my sleeve and keep moving, no destination in mind except away.

My mother would tell me to come home if she could tell me anything at all. But Mom is in a hospital room on the fourth floor of Henry Ford Hospital with a tube down her throat and machines making her chest rise and fall.

My mom’s an addict. Pills, booze, sex, anything she can get high from, she’s drawn to. Lately, it’s a new drug called Raven—a drug that's eating this city alive. Raven sank its teeth into my mother eight months ago and almost ended her life.

Mom was never clean. Like, ever. Not in my lifetime anyway.

I can't remember a time when she was fully sober, fully present.

But Raven was different. Raven didn't just get her high.

It hollowed her out. It took her from functional addict to zombified in a matter of weeks.

I watched it happen. I saw her eyes glass over, saw her forget to eat, forget my name, forget everything except the next hit.

I found her on the kitchen floor three weeks ago. Blue lips. Barely a pulse. The paramedics said if I'd arrived ten minutes later, she'd be dead instead of comatose.

I visited her yesterday. I sat beside the bed and, while the monitors beeped their steady, meaningless rhythm, I held her hand—the same hand that used to brush my hair when I was small, before she hooked up with Greg and drugs rewired her into someone I couldn't trust or rely on.

Now I'm on the street with a split face, twenty dollars in my pocket, and nowhere on this entire planet to go to find refuge.

No family. No friends. Greg made sure of that. He cut me off years ago with threats and lies. Anyhow, it’s hard to maintain friendships when you can't invite anyone over, can't go out past dark, and can't explain the bruises. My coworkers know me only as the quiet girl who takes extra shifts.

A 24-hour laundromat materializes ahead, its fluorescent lights buzzing behind fogged windows.

I push through the door, and the humid air wraps around me, carrying the scent of soap and dryer heat and the rumble of machines.

Two other people occupy the space—a woman folding towels with headphones in, and an old man dozing in a plastic chair with a newspaper over his face.

I find the farthest corner, wedge myself between a dryer and the wall, and slide to the floor with my duffel clutched to my chest.

Think, London. Think.

But thinking is hard when your body is still flooded with adrenaline, when every shadow through the window could be Greg's silhouette, when the reality of your situation is a bottomless pit.

I can't go back to my apartment now that he knows where it is.

I can't go to my mom’s place since Greg lives there and the lease is in his name. Every piece of my childhood that survived his rages is locked behind that door.

I can't go to the police. I tried that once, at sixteen.

Greg charmed the officers, called me troubled, showed them prescription bottles with my mother's name on them and said I’d been stealing and taking her drugs.

He convinced them that I was the one with the problem.

The cops believed him and wrote in their report that I was a difficult teen, a liar, and anything I said should be questioned.

Essentially, Greg made sure I never called them again.

I press my forehead against my knees and force myself to breathe. In and out. In and out.

My hand drifts to the inner pocket of my jacket. It has a broken zipper that I safety-pinned shut. Inside is a piece of paper I've carried for two years. Folded and refolded so many times the creases have worn thin enough to see through.

I pull it out and stare at the three words in my own scrawled handwriting.

Fiend. Renegade Kings.

My biological father. Supposedly. He’s also a man I've never met who might not even know I exist.

Mom mentioned him a few times over the years, always when she was drunk or high or both, but the story changed with her mood.

Some nights he was a monster who tried to force her to terminate the pregnancy.

Other nights he was a coward who ran the moment he found out.

And others she never told him about me at all.

The consistent thread was his nickname—Fiend—and the club he belonged to.

Renegade Kings, the outlaw motorcycle club. Dangerous men.

“Your daddy's a piece of shit," she'd slur, pointing her cigarette at me. "A deadbeat biker who didn't want you. Be glad he's gone, baby. Trust me."

But my mother’s a liar. She lies about everything—about how much she's using, about where the rent money went, about the bruises Greg leaves on both of us. She lies when it will get her something, she lies when it's easier than telling the truth, and she lies when there's no reason to lie at all.

Which means she might have lied about my father.

I trace the letters with my fingertip. Fiend. What kind of man chooses that name? A villain? Or someone who wants people to believe he's one?

The old man in the plastic chair snores, the newspaper fluttering with each exhale. The dryers hum beside me, warm against my back.

I have no money for another apartment deposit. No couch to crash on. No shelter I trust. And Greg knows how to hunt.

But he doesn't know about this. He doesn't know I have a father out there. A man with a different name, in a different world, who might—might—open a door for me.

It's a long shot. My father could be exactly what my mother says—a dangerous man who never wanted me. He could turn me away.

Or he could be someone who didn't know. Someone who would've wanted to know me if he'd been given the chance.

Or…

He could take me in, then turn out to be worse than Greg.

I fold the paper and tuck it back into my pocket. My cheek has stopped bleeding. The blood has dried in a stiff line from my cheekbone to my jaw.

The Renegade Kings. I've seen their logo around Detroit—the skull and wings—painted on buildings, stitched into leather. People talk about them in whispers. They run this part of the city. Everyone knows it.

I don't know exactly where their headquarters is, but I have a general idea of where it might be.

Marcy at work always talks about biker clubs.

She says her cousin used to prospect for one before he got jumped out.

She mentioned a location once—something about a compound in the industrial district, south of the rail yard, behind chain-link and razor wire.

I pull out my phone. The screen is cracked from when Greg grabbed it out of my hands last month and threw it at the wall, but it still works. I type "Renegade Kings MC Detroit" into the search bar and get nothing useful. No address. No website. Just news articles about arrests from years ago.

Fine. I'll find it the old-fashioned way. I'll walk every street in the industrial district if I have to.

I'll start searching in a few hours. I figure that by then, Greg will have either passed out drunk or given up looking for me for a while. I'll find the compound, ask for Fiend, and tell him who I am.

Then, I’ll pray he doesn't slam the door in my face.