Chapter 1
Lucy
Icouldn’t keep my eyes off the wooden box in front of me. The coffin looked too narrow, too small. Not because my brother was a big man—he was average height and slim, but because it felt like a lie, and the coffin wasn’t big enough to hold all the secrets.
Like everything about the funeral, it felt staged. Polished wood, closed lid, and silence. A photo of Caleb was propped on an easel, smiling, clean-shaven, wearing a baseball cap instead of a helmet. The photo was from years back, when I still knew him. The man in the picture hadn’t existed for years. My parents, as always, put up a pretty picture of the perfect son instead of accepting him for who he was. Flaws or any kind of weakness were unacceptable in our family. I fought the urge to roll my eyes and shake my head.
I fidgeted as my heels sank into the damp grass. I hadn’t cried. Not yet. Not when the police had called. Not when I’d gone to identify the body. And not now, as my mother pretended to weep into a dry handkerchief she’d barely bothered to lift from her lap. Grief tore through me, but instead of tears, anger raced through my veins.
I blinked, and the service was over. People were drifting around, offering hushed apologies in low voices. No one looked at me for long, which I was grateful for. I didn’t want them to see behind my grief and discover that I wasn’t falling for their lies.
I stayed behind as the others left, the smell of fresh-cut flowers and rain turning my stomach. My parents didn’t even bother to call to me, just gave a disapproving look and got into their car.
Then I saw it, as the wind blew enough to part the petals. A sliver of black fabric stuck out from under the arrangement on the casket.I staggered forward to see what it was and gasped.
A kutte. Old. Faded. Bloodstained. The Dead Knights MC patch was unmistakable.
My heart jumped. My brother hadn’t worn that in years, not since the day he walked away from the club. He told me never to say their name again, not to even think about them.
So, why would he be buried in their colours? I glanced around, but no one was watching. All mourners were now headed back to their cars to head to my parents’ house for the wake.
I stepped closer, parting the flowers enough to see the patch. ‘Dead Knights’ curved in bone-white thread. Under it, the reaper skull grinned wide, its skeletal hands clutching a rusted sickle. Caleb’s road name was stitched below: ‘Ghost’.
My breath caught, and my heart began jackhammering in my chest. Someone had put that on top of the coffin after they closed the lid. Not the mortician. Not me. Not anyone in our joke of a family.
That left one possibility, the club. Suddenly, my dress felt too tight across the chest and neck, and the three-quarter lace sleeves were rough against my skin.
Had they taken him back? Or had they killed him for trying to return and the kutte was a warning?
Either way, his death wasn’t an overdose. Not some miserable spiral into pills and depression like the police claimed.
The kutte was a message.
“Rest easy, Caleb,” I whispered, “but I’m not letting this go.”
I stepped back, heels sinking once more into the soft earth and pushing me off balance for a few moments, but my eyes stayed on the patch.
The Dead Knights. He’d warned me about the club and what they were capable of.
Stormy grey clouds which matched my feelings rolled in, and I turned and walked towards my car. I opened the door, and a shiver raced down my spine, causing the hairs on the back of my neck to stand. I turned back to the gravesite and froze.
He was simply standing there.
A man I hadn’t seen in years, standing exactly where I’d been just moments ago. Jet-black hair spiked at the front, his jaw was chiselled and shadowed with stubble, that only made him more striking. He’d filled out since the last time I’d seen him, no longer the lean boy who used to trail after Caleb, but a man carved into hard muscle and sharp edges. Gorgeous in a deadly kind of way.
And his eyes . . . God, those eyes. The ones that had haunted my dreams for years. Ice-blue, cold, and unflinching, locking on me and freezing me in place.
Jay “Reaper” Maddison, now President of the Dead Knights. He stood statue-still, hands in his jeans pockets, kutte hanging across his shoulders.
But why was he there? To make sure Caleb was truly gone? To remind me who held the power now? Or was it a warning?
I forced my shoulders back and lifted my chin, meeting his stare head-on. Then I slid into the driver’s seat, pressing the lock button with a sharp click.
Only when I was clear of the graveyard gates did I let the tears come. For a moment, then I wiped them away, shaking off the grief before it could drag me under.
I wasn’t there to mourn. I was there to burn every lie to the ground.
Chapter 2
