Reaper
Iwasn’t supposed to be there. That had been the deal the Dead Knights and I had agreed to. We’d stay clear of the funeral and pay our respects our way later that evening at the clubhouse, with a bottle of Jameson in hand, Caleb’s kutte laid across the bar, and stories we’d only tell in the dark. No suits. No flowers. No lies. That wasn’t the way we did things.
But there I was, parked two blocks out, engine off, helmet hanging on the handlebar. The silence was too loud in my ears. I’d waited ‘til the priest started mumbling his final words before I slipped in from behind the rusted fence, heart pounding like I was seventeen again and about to throw my first punch for the club.
I’d tucked Caleb’s kutte under my hoodie and walked the long way around the cemetery, circling trees and ducking behind gravestones until I found the one funeral that looked more performance than pain. When everyone had their eyes closed in prayer, I snuck Caleb’s kutte onto the top of the casket, under the flowers so it wouldn’t stick out. No one noticed me. No onelooked.
That should have been it. I should have turned and walked away, but there was one person in attendance I couldn’t tear my gaze away from.Lucy.
Caleb always swore she was happy to be gone from this town, free of their parents and their warped life. I believed him. Hell, I’d counted on it. She had always been too good for the life she’d been dragged up in.
She stood across the grave, grief carved into every line of her body. She hadn’t gone soft, not one bit. If anything, the years had sharpened her. Her curves hit like a sucker punch as her dark brown hair tossed in the breeze, copper strands catching the sun until it looked like flames were licking through. She was glass and hellfire, all at once.
I couldn’t stop staring, which was a fucking problem. Because it wasn’t Jay looking at her anymore. I wasn’t the kid who used to tease her, calling her ‘Little Kane’ when she’d storm after us with her fists clenched. I was Reaper now, President of the Dark Knights MC. Every look I gave carried weight, and every slip of control could become a weakness.
I stood under the shade of a crooked willow, watching as she hovered beside the casket. The rest of the mourners were already drifting back to their warm cars and polite finger sandwiches. Lucy stayed.
Then she saw the kutte.
My breath hitched as she stepped forward and touched the leather. Hisleather. The same kutte he’d bled in. The same one I pulled off his dead body the night we found him, slumped in that goddamn motel like he hadn’t asked to come home a month earlier.
He was our brother, and he wastryingto come back, but someone had made damn sure he didn’t make it.
I thought it was a warning from someone on the inside or just close enough to know our moves. That’s why we weren’t at thefuneral. Keep quiet and keep our distance. Let the world believe he OD’d.
But I couldn’t stomach burying him without the colours he earned.
I watched as she traced the patch with her fingers, jaw tight, eyes burning. She’d pieced it together faster than I expected. Ghost didn’t overdose. He didn’t give up. Someone had made sure he didn’t come home.
Now, Lucy would be looking for blood. She stepped back to her car then turned like she knew someone was watching her, and that’s when her gaze caught mine, like a gunshot to the chest.
Those eyes hadn’t changed, not even after all this time. Still that same storm grey, but now with something new behind them. Purpose. Maybe even fury. I wasn’t sure if it was aimed at the world . . . or at me. Maybe both.
I didn’t flinch, didn’t move. I let her look. Let herknowI was there, that I’d always been there for Caleb.
She turned away, got into her car, and locked the doors like it would help. I watched her drive off, tires spitting gravel.
I stood there for another full minute, listening to the silence Caleb left behind. Then I pulled my kutte tighter across my shoulders, fingers gripping the worn leather like it could keep me steady.
“Rest easy, brother,” I muttered, “but we both know this ain’t over.”
Because Lucy was going to start digging, and I’d be damned if I let her do it alone. Not when the people responsible might be wearing the same patch I had on my back. Not when she might end up in a grave beside him if she pushed too hard, too fast. Not when I owed Caleb more than silence.
I turned back towards the willow, fading into the shadows like the Reaper I was named after.
I rolled in just before dusk, engines already roaring out back as the guys geared up for the ride we were supposed to takeafterthe funeral.
I parked beside Boxer’s bike and killed the engine. Silence settled in my chest like a loaded gun as my fingers drummed against the handlebars, still feeling the weight of Lucy’s stare.
I hadn’t told anyone I was going to the cemetery. If they found out I’d slipped the kutte onto Caleb’s casket, there’d be questions. But screw ‘em. That kutte washis. He’d bled for it, same as the rest of us. He may have left for a while, but he was trying to comehome when he died, so I owed him that much.
“Pres!” Boxer’s voice boomed from the loading dock, already half-drunk. He was leaning against a stack of beer crates, patched vest open, chest straining under a black Dead Knights T-shirt. “You ready to ride, or you planning to sit there brooding like a goddamn poet?”
I slid off my bike, tossing him a grin I didn’t feel. “Maybe I don’t feel like riding for a brother we buried in lies.”
His smile faltered. “You know how this works,” he muttered, straightening. “Cops say overdose, we let ‘em. No heat on us. No war with some ghost hitman no one’s even sure exists.”
“I’m sure,” I said.
