best thing that'd happened to the Reapers since they'd been formed by the D'Ath brothers three generations ago and had made more of a positive impact in just a year and a half as their leader than Zane D'Ath's entire reign.
So it was no great surprise that his death was being honored with a full funeral service, whereas other fallen gang leaders barely even earned a death certificate.
I shouldn't have allowed it. He'd openly disobeyed one of my strictest rules and had paid the price. Traitors shouldn't be honored. But when Roach had asked my permission to hold a funeral, I hadn't been able to refuse. How could I? Cass was... Fuck.
"We shouldn't be here," Zed muttered under his breath from my right side. He was heavily armed—like almost everyone else in the chapel—and his sharp gaze continuously scanned the hostile crowd around us.
"Fuck that," Lucas hissed on my other side. "Hades can go wherever the fuck she wants. And she wants to be here. So shut the fuck up."
Both Zed and I turned to look at Lucas, but he just tipped his chin up and refocused on the weeping woman at the front of the chapel telling a story about some abusive ex that Cass had saved her from.
Lucas had changed so much since Chase had taken him a month ago. He'd always been mature for his age, but the torture he'd suffered at my ex's hands had hardened him, brought him deeper into my world. As much as I should have regretted it... I didn't. Every new facet of Lucas's personality that emerged was just hooking me harder.
I didn't say a damn word for the entire service, sitting on the hard wooden pew with my spine as straight as a board and my black dress immaculate. But inside, I was a mess. Every accusing side-eye from the Reapers had me reliving that moment when I’d shot one of the men I was so dangerously in love with.
Over and over throughout his funeral service I saw myself pulling the trigger of Zed's gun. I saw the bullets hit their target. I saw the blood spray, the shattered wine bottles spilling cabernet sauvignon all over the stone floor as Cass's broad frame hit the racks behind where he'd sat.
My fingernails cut bloody marks in my palms as I pretended to listen to the sermon from the Reaper-bonded priest who droned on about God's will, when all I could see in my mind was the bloody mess my bullets had torn through Cass's body. I swallowed deeply as I remembered the pain of accusation in Zed’s and Lucas's eyes when Chase had finally left the cellar. That had hurt almost as much as shooting Cass in the first place.
I needed to blink a couple of times when people started standing around me, and refocused on the present. Six tattoo-covered Reapers approached the front of the chapel and lifted Cass's casket between them, their faces stricken with grief as they hoisted it to their shoulders.
Most of the congregation filed out of the chapel after the pallbearers, women wailing and sobbing and more than a few tough gangster men sporting red-rimmed eyes. It'd been a good service, from what I'd paid attention to.
"Hades, sir." The newly appointed leader of the Reapers approached awkwardly, dipping his head with a nod of respect. "Thank you for allowing this."
I didn't trust my voice, so I just gave him a tight, cold smile, which only seemed to make him more uncomfortable. Poor guy had been thrown straight in the deep end, having been appointed Cass's second barely a few weeks ago. He could handle it, though. He was smart.
"Uh, I will, of course, make an official meeting request with you this week, sir," he continued, running a hand over the back of his tattooed neck. "But I just wanted to assure you that the... that I'm taking care of things. The Reapers are loyal to you, sir."
I knew what he was saying. He wanted me to know that he was ensuring Chase's access to the Shadow Grove drug distribution network was well and truly cut off. Whatever connections he'd made through Cass were dead, and Roach would do everything possible to ensure not a single crumb of PCP was being sold in Shadow Grove.
"See that it stays that way, Roach," I told him in a voice like ice. "You've seen how I deal with betrayal, and I actually liked Cass." Understatement of the century.