Steel's Redemption

By Pepper Espinoza

Steel Coleman sinned in his heart the day he saw fifteen-year-old Riley Spencer. Driven by lust he couldn't acknowledge or control, he encourages his mother to marry Riley's father, joining the two families and creating a living hell for Steel in the process. In an attempt to spare his sanity, he goes for long rides from the family ranch, and he's not home to protect the family when bandits strike. Riley survives but their parents are murdered. Haunted by grief and guilt, Steel flees to catch the men responsible, promising his younger stepbrother he would return.

He never does.

When they meet again ten years later, Riley is a far cry from the boy Steel left behind. And he needs his former stepbrother to pay for the very real sin of abandoning him when he needed Steel the most. But their fateful meeting sends Riley running. Leaving Steel is the hardest thing he's ever done, but Riley understands what Steel knew all along -- it's too dangerous to stay.

Will he be prepared to face the consequences when Steel inevitably catches up with him? Can forgiveness be possible?

• Language: English
• Publisher: JMS Books LLC
• Release date: Sep 26, 2020
• ISBN: 9781646564859

Book preview

7

Prologue

Arkansas Territory, 1867

The bandits came at the height of Riley’s fifteenth summer, just as the corn was starting to get tall and before they separated the yearling calves from the herd for the drive to Kansas City. Riley’s father, the Honorable Clarence Spencer, stepped out of his home to greet the men, alerted to their approach by Riley’s own hollers. The heat disrupted his vision, and he’d been expecting friends from town that afternoon. They didn’t get too much company on their spread, as far away as it was from just about anything of interest, and Riley was like any other young man his age. He craved conversation with somebody his own age—Steel didn’t count. He and his momma both claimed he was just a year older than Riley, but Riley secretly doubted them.

There were six, all mounted on monster horses. Riley might have seen the glint of their guns sooner if not for the horses. He’d never seen another creature like them on God’s earth. Later, when he thought about those horses, he wondered whose stock they’d been stolen from. He did see the sun reflecting one long, silver barrel, and he tried to shout a warning. It was lost in the gun’s report, a loud explosion that echoed across the plains and startled the animals into a flurry. All but the horses, who didn’t even flinch at the sound of the gun going off so close to their ears. Riley had been born and raised near the border of the Oklahoma territory, and he’d never seen a war horse until that moment. He hadn’t seen a trained regimen of hungry ex-Confederate soldiers either, and didn’t understand what was happening until the second gunshot threatened to burst his ears.

Somebody pushed him to the ground from behind, covering his body and holding him in place. The shooting began in earnest then, a volley of bullets flying overhead, each one accompanied with a roar of thunder. And some of that thunder—God help them all—some of that thunder was followed by a human shriek of pain, a cry to God for mercy, a wet groan and final gasp. Riley tried to lift his head, but whoever held him down pushed his head to the dirt. Riley didn’t just hold still after that, he played dead, praying for the soul of his father, and his stepmother, his stepbrother, even the free darkies, and finally himself. He made his bargains with God. He offered everything he had, though he possessed very little, and he lived a lifetime of terror in those endless seconds of unexpected violence.

When it stopped, the silence wasn’t the relief Riley expected. The ground vibrated with ominous warning as the horses galloped toward the house. A hoof clipped his leg and another came within a hairsbreadth of crushing his skull. Riley didn’t move. The weight on top of him was perfectly still as well, and Riley hoped they were just good at pretending, too. As the men disappeared, Riley held his breath for a full minute and realized in those sixty seconds that they were burning down his home and the man on top of him wasn’t breathing, either.

Another lifetime passed and the bandits took off, shouting and shooting their pistols and shotguns off again. Thick, acrid smoke filled Riley’s nose, crawled down his throat, and settled deep in his lungs. Riley tried to move and felt the same pressure on the top of his head, urging him down as before. This time, though, Riley wasn’t distracted by imminent death, and he realized it was his father’s hand holding his head down. His father’s unmoving, heavy hand. Riley swallowed down the sudden impulse to cry and crawled out from beneath the dead weight, covering his mouth in horror as he saw what remained of the only parent he’d ever known. He’d been shot at least four times—or at least there were four exit wounds in his back—and there was no way of knowing if he’d saved his son with his dying breath or if it was no more than accident that he’d been saved.

Mrs. Coleman would have said it was God’s will to spare his life. The thought of his stepmother snapped him out of his daze and sent him racing toward the house, running at the furious heat and the flames reaching out for more, hungrily lapping across the dry yard toward the barn where the cows bawled their fear. The door hung open, half knocked off its hinges, and Riley kicked his way into the smoky darkness shouting her name. Smoke clung to his eyes, cut off his breath, and made him dizzy, but he ran from room to room, voice growing hoarse from the