Page 1 of Kane's Kingdom

ONE

PROLOGUE / BELLA

PROLOGUE - KANE

The whiskey sits untouched in front of me. Every other glass around the table is half-empty.

Mud from the cemetery still clings to our boots. The leathers worn to the funeral creak when men shift in their chairs. The clubhouse beyond the church-room door is silent, the usual music and laughter cut dead for the night.

At the head of the table, my father's chair waits, and I stand behind it.

The painted crown on the wall rises over my shoulders, KINGDOM COME arched above it, LIVE FREE DIE FREE beneath. My father had that crown made bigger than the club name. Said men should understand who ruled before they ever heard him speak.

I never liked it.

"I've got one item," I say.

The room settles all at once, without hesitation.

Judge sits at my right, solid and unreadable. Griz is farther down, thick arms folded over his funeral shirt. Chains watchesthe table. Around them, a dozen patched men wait to see whether the son fits inside the space the father left behind.

Griz breaks first. "Before business," he says. "There's the name." Nobody moves; he doesn't have to explain which one.

"King wanted you to take his road name," Griz continues. "Said so before he went. Thirty years that name ran this town."

My fingers rest against the cold wood at the back of the empty chair, scarred with old dents and a burn mark where my father once crushed out a cigar during an argument, then made a prospect sand the table the next morning.

"My father's name went in the ground with him."

Griz's jaw works. "Tradition matters."

"I hear you, but that's my decision."

The words don't soften anything. They never do.

"Your father would--"

"My father's dead." I look straight at him. "What he wanted stopped mattering the day he died."

The silence tightens, but I leave my voice low and level.

"I'm not asking the table's permission. I'm telling you how it is. Anyone who thinks that makes me weak is welcome to test it."

My gaze moves from face to face. "Once."

Nobody takes the invitation.

Griz looks away first, neither beaten nor convinced, only loyal enough to stop.

Judge reaches for his glass but doesn't drink. "Perdition MC sent word."

I nod.Bury him well.Old-school respect from their president Cyrus to the man who'd been his peer, with nothing in the message for the son and nothing carrying forward. Fair enough.

My eyes move to the photographs lining the wall. Dead brothers, living brothers, men standing beside bikes and bars and one another.

Near the center is a clean, pale square where the paint never darkened.

My father left more than one empty place behind him.