Prologue
Austin “Phoenix” Smith Jr.
The only person I loved in this world was dead.
Imagine having to wake up every morning knowing that your father, the man who had given you everything, even after your mother had died of a drug overdose, wasn’t there to greet you. Imagine that the man who had given you not just all of the lessons of this world, but an opportunity at a career and a lifestyle, wasn’t there to hug you and tell you he loved you.
And now imagine that the reason he wasn’t there to be by your side was because your so-called brothers had murdered him in cold blood.
How the hell do you think you’d feel?
I can tell you how I felt. I had a lot of bitter resentment toward the world. I already thought that the Black Reapers were, at best, ineffective in their leadership, incompetent at worst. Now, though, they had gone from a group that I liked but had reservations about to the group I considered my sworn enemy. There was no one, and I mean no one, that I hated in this world more than the Black Reapers.
And that was a hell of a fucking thing, considering that for the longest time, the Fallen Saints were my sworn enemy.
Someone knocked. It startled me so much, I jumped. I muttered “fuck” under my breath as I put on my tie, something I hadn’t done in ages.Something I shouldn’t have a reason to do.
“Yeah?” I shouted. “What?”
“Mind if I enter?”
I shook my head, catching my breath. Just because he’d scared the shit out of me didn’t mean he deserved the same venom I had for his brother.
“No.”
Cole Carter opened the door very slowly. The president of the Gray Reapers, a man who treated his men like, well, men, Cole had a presence to him that suggested a certain ease and cheerfulness that Lane had never had.
But he had also become a harder man since the shootout that took the life of Lane’s fiancée—the night the patriarch of the Carter family had perished.Speaking of people who are probably rolling over in their grave at what the Black Reapers MC has turned into. Jesus fucking Christ.
“How are you doing?” Cole said as he shut the door behind him.
Cole’s shift to someone tougher and harder hadn’t just come in the form of his actions. He’d shaved his head and grown a bit of stubble—not a full-on beard, but enough to make him look rugged and older. He also didn’t smile as much as he used to, but he was still easily the warmest and most gregarious biker that I knew.
“I’m fine,” I said.
It didn’t take a psychiatrist to see I was full of shit. But it also didn’t take one to see that pushing back on me would be a huge fucking mistake.
“It’s OK not to be,” Cole said. “No one in the club expects you to be perfect today. They know what the Black Reapers did. They know it’s your father. They know—”
“I get it, Cole,” I snapped.
But in truth, I appreciated the words. That didn’t mean I was going to cry or even show emotion. That could not fucking happen, and my father would’ve been ashamed of me if I had.
“My father would have wanted me to be strong,” I said. “I am going to give a good eulogy for the man. I am going to lay him to rest. And then I am going to kill every last one of those motherfuckers to avenge his death.”
Cole didn’t flinch. I knew he still, somehow, for some stupid reason, held out hope that he could make amends with Lane. I didn’t know why—it’s not like Lane ever treated him well, not even in the supposed couple of months of peace when the Gray Reapers had come to help us...
Us?
No, them.
“I understand,” Cole said, patting my shoulder. “We’ll let you lead the procession to the funeral. For today, you’re the President of the Gray Reapers.”
And that, right there, was exactly why Cole Carter was ten times the President that Lane ever could be. Actually, no, that implied that one could measure how much better Cole was; Cole was infinitely better than Lane. It was like asking who could be a better leader: a Navy SEAL or a newborn kitten. They weren’t even on the same fucking scale.
“We’ll leave on your cue.”
Cole left.
