Page 57 of Duke

She smiled. “I said I’m ready for you to take me in there as your Old Lady.”

I laughed. “Sugar, they’ve known you were my Old Lady for a while now.”

She playfully slapped my chest. “Don’t rain on my parade. I want to make a grand entrance.”

I grabbed her arm and pulled her to me. “I love you, Reese Walker.”

“I love you, too, Duke Jackson.”

Phoenix

I was fucking exhausted after Coal’s patch in party, but I had work to do. In addition to my regular club responsibilities, I spent several hours a day going through the shit we found hidden all over the farm. Boxes upon boxes of files and folders. Octavius kept meticulous records. It had taken me almost a year to get through the better part of it, and I still had nothing on Annabelle.

I tossed the current papers I was holding in the shredder and moved to the next folder in the stack. When I opened it, my breath caught in my chest. I closed my eyes and slowly opened them again, not believing what I was seeing. At the top of the first paper in the folder was the name I had been searching for. Annabelle Burnett.

My hands were shaking as I carefully placed the folder on my desk and began looking through it. My heart was pounding in my chest, blood whooshing in my ears as I looked at the contents of the folder. The first things I saw were Annabelle’s birth certificate and social security card. Then, birth records for Ember, Coal, and Nivan. Nivan’s death certificate. But it was the next few papers that changed everything. “Fucking finally,” I said as I reached for my phone.