Heartless (Steel Demons MC #6) - Crystal Ash Page 0,99

nauseous. Did that just fucking happen? A god intervening on me taking a life?

Hades was all dopey and smiling at my side again. He licked at my hand but I yanked it away, the thought of touching him just too fucking weird in that moment. I mounted my bike slowly, turning it on and guiding it back out to the road when I started to feel more normal.

Once I was a good distance away from the jail, the hospital looming into view, the wheels started turning in my head again.

I couldn’t kill Shadow.

Which meant I had to do something else.

Twenty-Eight

SHADOW

Disappointment didn’t cover a fraction of what I felt.

Hades wouldn’t allow me to die, and if I ventured a guess, that included by my own hand. So I’d be forced to live, and for what?

They could keep me here in this jail cell and that would work for me. Mariposa would never see me, and I’d reacquaint myself with a lifeless existence in a cage. That seemed like a fitting punishment.

I couldn’t tell how much time had passed. I was brought six meals by people I didn’t recognize, and barely touched the food. I was offered books to read, but refused them all. I passed the time by pacing my cage like I always used to. By staring at the walls—none of which had cracks that lead to glimpses of an outside sky. When I was feeling particularly masochistic, I thought back to all my moments with Mariposa.

I held on to every detail, sometimes wishing I had a pencil and sketchpad so I could draw my memories into something real. That one sketch I made of her was still in my room, and I yearned to fold and unfold the paper in my hands for one last look at her, stretched out and unafraid of me.

I often had to remind myself that I didn’t deserve anything of hers, not even her likeness on a piece of paper. She had almost convinced me otherwise, but that truth would never change.

When the jailhouse door opened and booted footsteps approached my cell, I didn’t react, thinking it was just my food for the day. But the footsteps stopped, my visitor motionless at my cell door, until I looked up.

Reaper stood there with something in his hand. He said nothing for several long moments and I wondered if he was going to make another attempt at killing me. If so, I couldn’t blame him for trying.

“Have you decided what to do with me?” I asked after he continued to stand there and do nothing.

“Yes,” he said, holding out the first item in his hand. “We have.”

It was my cut, complete with my name and patches still affixed to it. So they had been in my room, and had probably searched through my things for all I knew. I just hoped my drawing of Mari hadn’t been destroyed.

Reaper opened his hand and dropped the garment on the floor, the worn-out leather making a soft swishing sound as it hit the concrete. His eyes never left mine as he unscrewed the cap on the other item he held—a can of lighter fluid.

He bathed my cut in a generous amount of gasoline, the stench quickly filling the stale air of the jail. I watched as he emptied the can of flammable liquid all over the vest I designed and proudly wore for years. Even now, I’d pick that thing up from the floor and put it on if he asked me to.

Reaper tossed the empty can away, letting it clatter against the wall, before he took out a matchbox from his cut pocket. He removed a match, struck it against the side of the box, and dropped it onto my cut.

The leather caught fire in a deep whoof sound, fire consuming the cut in a sudden rush of heat. Flames licked the air almost to chest level between us, illuminating Reaper’s face as we stared at each other across the blaze.

For a moment it reminded me of bonfires out on our rides, my brothers’ faces lit up, glowing orange as they laughed, drank, and talked shit. But this wasn’t any kind of unifying event. This fire was the opposite, a clear severing of me from him. Me from the club, and from everything that made me see how good life could be.

The one part of my life that had been worth living, burned away before my eyes.

Reaper stood there until my cut became nothing but ashes on the