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“Well, I should probably get ready for my next class,” I say with a small smile. “This set won’t nail itself.”
“Neither will I,” she whispers in my ear, making my jaw drop.
She saunters away, swinging her hips more forcefully than necessary. She wants me to look, to watch her walk away. I’m more than happy to grant her wish. She looks back at me as she exits the gym, winking as she goes, and I know I’m screwed. My phone rings, but it takes me a while to hear it because I’m too focused on the place she just vacated.
“Yeah?” I ask, not even looking to see who’s calling.
“Where are you?” Seer asks curiously. “Do you think you could go do a run for me?”
I sigh into the phone, thinking of all the women I’ve had to walk out on in the last few months because Seer called me. My next class is much less important to me than that, but something grounds me to the spot. I don’t want to disappoint those kids, or Meredith, or Melissa. I want to see this through.
“Actually, boss, I’m tied up right now,” I say as two boys enter the gym and eye me warily.
“Literally?” he asks with a guffaw.
“Shove off,” I say quietly, aware of the slightly impressionable ears. “I’m at the youth center. I’m about to teach a class.”
“Really,” he says, shock coloring his tone. “And that’s not a euphemism for—” “Seer, I really have to go,” I say, cutting him off. Two more boys come in and start rifling through the power tools. They look as perplexed as Marcus did with the hammer earlier, and I can already picture one of them slicing their finger off. I turn my phone off and pocket it so I can give this new group my full attention. They seem to need it more than the preteens.
CHAPTERTHIRTEEN
“Beast, it’s good to see you again,” I greet the leader of the Houston Kings as he steps in the door with half a dozen of his men.
“Seer.” Beast nods solemnly. “I heard this house was nice, but I had no idea!”
He smiles as he takes in the large entryway of the house, and I think back to my time in Texas. Since we opened up relations with the Houston Kings last year, our two clubs have gotten closer and closer. A few months ago, Hex and I went out to Houston to view their facilities and meet with their leadership. Beast is the Prez of their club, though ironically, the man is built like a beast.
Their operation down in Houston is impressive, to say the least. Their club is double the size of ours, and their market is much less saturated. They aren’t competing with a dozen other gangs, nor do they get as much push back from the city. Their government has a little too much else to be worried about, so they mostly fly under the radar.
Their clubhouse is a ranch-style house that sits on at least ten acres of land. One of the founding members inherited the land from his family and decided he wanted to build something incredible on it. Thus, the Houston Kings were started.
One of their biggest enterprises is smuggling drugs in cowboy boots. I laughed out loud when I saw their operation at work. On their huge plot of land, there’s a manufacturing factory where they legitimately employ hundreds of migrant workers to put together beautiful, handcrafted cowboy boots. They sell the boots for a decent profit, but the real money is in the drugs. It’s genius. It makes me want to build our legacy into something more creative.
Beast was duly impressed when he heard about our arms industry. It doesn’t have the same panache as his drug front, but it pays the bills and keeps my men well taken care of. Considering how many people in Texas carry guns, I could almost see the dollar signs in his eyes as I told him about our business. He also really liked hearing the retelling of the shootout we had with the Cuatro Locos.
“Man, those fuckers had the wrong ones.” He laughed when I told him the story. “They came in guns blazing and left in body bags. How’s that for karma?”
Now I walk Beast, Sin, and a few of their members through our home, showing them the setup we have here. I’m proud of our home, even if I didn’t have the privilege of building it myself. Dozens of good, strong men have come through the front doors in our club’s history, and we’ve built our legacy on the backs of their hard work and sacrifice. We aren’t just our current members, but every person who ever has or ever will be a Ruthless King.
“Tell you what, I’d trade the ranch house for this one any day.” Beast laughs. “You ever want to trade clubs, you just call me. I could use a view like this.”
When we walk out to the bayou, he whistles lowly, eyeing a few alligators sunbathing on the other side.
“Never mind,” he says, growing paler. “I don’t fuck with alligators. Give me an armadillo any day, but you can keep your crazy-ass wildlife.”
We all laugh as I take them back out to the front and we get on our bikes to ride over to our warehouse, the true base of our operations. The New Orleans Kings have been smuggling guns for at least as long as I’ve been part of the group. We’ve sold to a lot of big clients, but we’re selective about our customer base. We have greater restrictions than most gun stores, especially since Pocus took over.
He always said that our reputation was attached to our business, and we couldn’t be held responsible for some of the greater evils in this world. If a gangbanger kills another gangbanger, that’s one thing, but if a madman goes to shoot up a grocery store, it won’t be with a gun he got from us.
I’ve maintained the same principles since I’ve taken over, and our reputation remains spotless. I may not be making cowboy boots, but anyone worth their salt who needs an illegal gun knows where to go. We’ve even gotten into assembling some models ourselves, finding that the parts are cheaper than buying the guns. Our customer base spans as far north as Canada and as far east as Florida. We’re running most of the eastern seaboard.
“Not to be an ass,” Beast says as he analyzes our stock. “I notice you’ve got a huge stockpile problem right now. Is business bad?”
I shake my head and sigh. “It’s not business that’s bad,” I tell him. “It’s the city politics. Our mayor has decided to crack down on crime in a big way. They’ve just taken down one of the oldest and most dangerous gangs in the city. So we’re sitting on this until the situation cools off a bit.”
There’s a spark in his eye as he walks through the racks and racks of stock we have. “We might be here at the perfect time,” Beast remarks, a bit in awe. “We want to get in the business and you have stock you can’t move. We’d pay you well for it.”
That would be a huge weight off my shoulders, knowing the warehouse would be empty if it were to be raided. It’s one of the many things that keeps me up at night. It’s taken me a while to really fill this role, to step out of Pocus’s shadow. I’ve been terrified of being known as the Prez who gets the Ruthless Kings arrested or kicked out of New Orleans for good. I can’t let that be my legacy.
