Hard As Steel: A Hard Ink/Raven Riders Crossover (1001 Dark Nights) by Laura Kaye Page A

father before,” Ike said as he took a bite of bread. “Were you close?”
    Jess smiled. “We were. My mom split when I was eight, so it was just the two of us.”
    “Probably explains why you eat like a guy.”
    She laughed. “Probably. He wasn’t much of a cook either.” She pushed a piece of noodle around on her plate, then she took a deep breath and let the words fly. “I don’t talk about him that much because…it’s my fault he’s dead.”
    Ike froze with his fork halfway to his mouth. His gaze narrowed. “I don’t believe that.”
    She dropped her fork and sagged against the back of her chair. “It’s true,” she said, twisting her paper napkin in her fingers. In her mind’s eye, scenes from that night took form like some macabre silent-era movie. “I’d fallen in with a bad crowd. I didn’t realize how bad at the time. I just thought they liked to party. They seemed cool, fun, like they didn’t have a care in the world. After living at home with my super serious, everything-by-the-book dad—even while I went to college part time, I was itching to be more independent. I made every wrong choice you could—loser guys, getting drunk, trying drugs. I was working all day at the tattoo parlor where I first met Jeremy and partying all night. My dad and I fought all the time. I was actually planning to move out of the house.” Jess shook her head.
    “What happened?” Ike asked in a quiet voice.
    “I came home one night after work and walked in on two of my so-called friends robbing my house. They’d broken into my dad’s gun closet. They had my mother’s jewelry and her rare coin collection, and a bunch of rare comic books I’d picked up over the years.”
    Jess rubbed her hand over her left forearm, where her rose-and-vine tattoo surrounded a tattoo of Harley Quinn, a comic book villainess with red and black hair who wore a red and black costume. She’d been driven mad by the Joker and fallen in love with him, and then devoted her life to making him happy. It was one of Jess’s earliest tattoos, one inspired by her love of comics and this dark character in particular.
    “I was arguing with them and threatening them. I felt so betrayed because I’d told them about these things in casual conversation, never thinking twice about it or that they’d violate my trust like that. Hell, if I hadn’t come home then, I never would’ve known it was them who’d done it. This guy named Marx pulled one of Dad’s guns on me and threatened to shoot me. He said they needed the money or someone would hurt them. I learned later that they’d been dealing drugs and someone had double-crossed them and stolen some, which put them in debt to the dealer above them. I had no idea they were dealing.” She looked at Ike. “I mean, I get it, using is bad enough. But I didn’t know that.”
    Ike nodded. “And…your dad walked into the middle of this fight.” He didn’t phrase it as a question.
    “Yeah,” she said, her gut clenching. “I didn’t even hear him come home over all the commotion. Marx shot first, and Dad dove in front of me, taking the bullet. He knocked me down in the process and managed to get off a shot and hit Burton. When Marx raised the gun to shoot again, my dad threw himself on top of me.”
    The memory sucked her back into the past, right back into that horrible moment. Jess smelled the hot scent of the gunfire, tasted the tang of iron in her mouth from where she’d bit down on her tongue when she fell, and heard its deafening thunder and the screams and shouts.
    “Two shots went off at the same time, but my dad was on top of me and I couldn’t see what was going on. And then it got very quiet.” Jess met Ike’s solemn gaze, a knot lodged in her throat, tears burning the backs of her eyes. She blinked again and again to keep them from falling. “My dad was dead before the ambulance arrived.”
    “Aw, hell, Jess. I’m so fucking sorry.” He reached out and grabbed one of her