PROLOGUE
FIVE MONTHS AFTERPUMPKIN
Jack “Steel” Duncan didn’t feel the rain. He didn’t feel much of anything, not these days at least. Numb. Shock. Whatever the fuck it was psychologists wanted to call it. He didn’t give a shit because none of it mattered.Nothingmattered.
“I love you, Jack Duncan, and I’m going to marry you in one year, one month, and twenty-eight days.”
For most of his life, Steel had kept some sort of count. As a child, it was how many days since he’d last eaten or how many days since he’d last seen his mother. As he got older, as a teenager, it was how many days until he was eighteen and could get him and his sister, Lilly, out of that fucking trailer.
And then he’d mether. With her fiery hair and that fucking yellow dress… He’d never felt the effects of gravity as much as he had in that moment. He’d fallen. Hard. She’d shattered his world, using herself as the glue that held him together as she rebuilt him into the man he was today.
A new countdown had begun. How many days until she was eighteen and Steel could legally claim her. It had taken years,but finally they stood before that proverbial altar and said their vows. They’d become Mr. and Mrs. Jack Duncan.
He never,neverimagined standing in this fucking cemetery forty years later.
Steel had been to a lot of funerals in his life. Too many. Good men and women who had put their lives on the line for their country, many of them so young it should be illegal. But Steel had been one of those young souls who signed on the dotted line to provide a better life for his country and family.
Steel had also buried his parents. Not his biological parents, he didn’t give a shit about either of them. But the parents who had taken him in, raised his little sister and Steel and never asked for anything in return, Daphne and Arnold Zarin.
Steel’s own father, John Duncan, had murdered Mrs. Zarin. Hers was the first funeral Steel had ever gone to. He remembered seeing Mr. Zarin trip on the stairs of the church as he walked up to say his final goodbye to his wife before they closed the casket. Steel had caught him and helped him, not understanding untilthis momenthow utterly weak Mr. Zarin must have felt that day.
For one godawful moment, Steel thought about what his life would have been like if he hadn’t taken Lilly into town that day. What if they’d gone left instead of right or they’d never stopped outside that bookstore for Lilly to admire that used collection ofThe Chronicles of Narnia. What if that girl full of sunshine and flame had never entered his life?
Steel might have seen her at school, might have even had a crush on her from afar, but he never would have spoken to her, never would have fallen for her kindness or seen her smile aimed athim. He never would have kissed her against his locker in the middle of the hallway for all their peers and teachers to see his claim.
He never would have been beaten and hospitalized by her mother’s cruel bodyguards. He never would have asked Mr. Zarin, a former Marine, to train him so he was never vulnerable again. He never would have held her hand as he watched his adopted mom’s casket get lowered into the ground. He never would have lost his virginity at sixteen in the back of his pickup truck after her funeral.
He never would have stood in the judge’s chambers at the courthouse as he made his vows:
“Nine-hundred and sixty-nine. Do you know what that signifies? How many days since we met, which means it’s been nine hundred and sixty-nine days since I fell in love with you. That’s two years, seven months, and twenty-seven days. When we met, I had a different countdown in my head that couldn’t come fast enough and for an entirely different reason. I never thought that I’d be happy to make that number larger, but that’s what you do to me, Jenna. You change my perspective, my outlook, and you make it better.
“A part of me can’t believe we’re finally here, Jen. We’ve been counting down for so long that it makes me wonder what the hell we’re supposed to do now. I know I’m supposed to be making a vow now that declares my love and devotion to you. But you don’t need those vows. You already have them. You’ve had them for nine-hundred and sixty-nine days.
“So here’s our new number, Jen: zero. There is no countdown, no deadline, no end date. We are forever and eternity. From now on, we only count up.”
In that godawful moment, Steel considered just how dead and dreary his life would have been without her. No kids, no grandchild, no love, no laughter,no club… No dancing.
Scrunching his eyes closed, Steel hung his head and let the agony of this day wash over him. It was too awful a thought.Even if it could save him the pain he was in now, he would never give up a single second of his life with her.
His knees gave out. Mud and sludge splashed around him, but he didn’t give a damn. He no longer wore a cut. He’d turned it in, given up his reign. Because he’d wanted more time—and the fickle bitch had laughed in his face and spat at his feet.
Steel wrapped his arms around his middle as pain tore through him, threatening to rip him apart. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. It should have been him. If the world was going to take someone, it should have beenhim.
Falling forward, his head connected with the cool, wet granite. How fucked up was it that he’d beengifteda headstone, causing her name to glare at him like an accusation. While the others were inside fucking ‘celebrating her life’, he’d stayed outside to watch them fill in the ground over her presidential mahogany wood coffin. Then the rain had fallen and lightning flared across the sky, sending the crew far away in fear of being struck.
Steel had no fear now. What was it that he would fear? Death? Death would be such a sweet relief to the torment cascading down on every cell in his body. If he wasn’t owed blood, he’d have already done it.
He’d always thought Mr. Zarin to be the strongest man he knew. After his wife had been taken from him, Mr. Zarin did not abandon the children she’d taken into her home. No, he continued to love and raise them. It was only after Lilly had graduated high school and had gotten into college, essentially becoming an adult, that Mr. Zarin’s heart had given out and he’d been able to join his beloved Daphne in the afterlife.
Steel’s heart was ready to burst. The pressure there was immense and beyond what he could handle, but hehadto endure. For now.
He. Was. Owed. Blood.
Everything that had happened since Ollie’s birth mom had shown up at the club’s gates demanding to see him now made perfect sense. Steel knew who had killed Dixie Gilbert and framed Steel for the murder, who had salted the ice, who had set their consignment store on fire, who had cut Jenna’s brake lines… He knew it all, and worse, he knew why.
No good deed really does go unpunished.
He’d done his good deed. Years ago, he’d turned a man in for killing innocent civilians. Now that man was out…and he’d gotten his revenge. He’d taken from Steel far more than Steel had ever taken from him.
