King of Ashes: A Novel

Roman Carruthers, a wealthy Atlanta wealth manager haunted by his mother's disappearance nineteen years earlier, learns from his sister Neveah that their father Keith is comatose after a truck ran him off the road into a train. Roman, who privately copes with guilt through ritualized BDSM sessions with a dominatrix, flies home to Jefferson Run, Virginia, a hollowed-out town where his father runs a crematory.

At the hospital, Neveah reveals that the crash was likely deliberate: the crematory vans had been vandalized and tagged with "187." Their younger brother Dante, an addict, is missing. When Roman finally finds Dante, the brothers are tracked to a club called Candy's by two menacing men, and their car is set on fire as a warning. Pressed by Roman, Dante confesses he and his friend Getty were fronted $300,000 worth of Molly and heroin by the Black Baron Boys, run by the Gilchrist brothers Torrent and Tranquil. The drugs were lost or consumed, and the BBB ran Keith off the road as a message.

A meeting at the crematory turns brutal: Tranquil shatters Roman's teeth with a pistol, and Torrent severs Dante's pinkie. To save Dante, Roman strikes a devil's bargain—he will triple the BBB's money and turn the crematory into their body-disposal service. Roman gets dental implants and summons his mercenary friend Khalil from Atlanta, secretly resolving to destroy the Gilchrists from within rather than pay them off.

The pact darkens immediately. Torrent forces Roman to murder Getty, who is revealed to have been a police informant, by burning him alive in the oven. Dante kills the BBB enforcer Splodie with a hammer to save Getty's girlfriend Cassidy, whom Roman sends fleeing town with cash. The brothers cremate the bodies and clean the scene, bound now by murder.

Roman launches a multi-front campaign. He infiltrates the BBB by pitching a stock-fraud scheme, then a much larger plan to launder money through inflated demolition contracts tied to a state-backed revitalization of the Skids, orchestrated by the corrupt Mayor Gravely. He coerces Mike Handler of Guardian Construction into surrendering control of his company. Khalil, meanwhile, attacks from the outside: firebombing a BBB stash house, hijacking a gun shipment while disguised as the Rare Breed motorcycle club, and feeding paranoia inside the gang. Roman also meets Shade, the true power above the Gilchrists, who hires him to launder seven-figure government funds.

Roman begins a relationship with Jealousy "Jae" Evers, only to discover she is the Gilchrists' half-sister. Their bond deepens even as Roman lies about his work. Torrent grows increasingly volatile: he feeds the traitor Yellaboy to his dogs, executes hijacking survivors, and stabs a fifteen-year-old runner, Eddie Munsta, to death for laughing at the wrong moment—an act that begins to turn the lieutenant D-Train against him.

Neveah, meanwhile, pursues her own investigation into Bonita's disappearance. The cold case file reveals her mother had an affair, that Keith caught her with another man, and that physical evidence points to him as the last driver of her abandoned car. Convinced her father murdered her mother, Neveah confronts Roman, who refuses to discuss it. She also ends her affair with the corrupt Detective Chauncey Mansfield by threatening to expose him to his wife.

Chauncey, spurned and unraveling, tries to extort Roman and feeds the Ghost Town Crew information that nearly gets Neveah killed in a drive-by. Roman saves her by ramming the attackers' car. Realizing Cassidy has secretly returned to town in Splodie's distinctive car—putting the entire family at risk—Roman orders Khalil to remove her, by any means. Khalil kills her, and Roman secretly cremates her body while Dante grieves in the lobby. Torrent's retaliation against the GTC produces a wave of massacres across Jefferson Run.

A flashback finally reveals the buried truth: in 2004, after a young Dante caught Bonita with her lover Oscar, sixteen-year-old Roman confronted his mother at the crematory. During the struggle, Bonita fell, struck her head, and died. Keith returned, cremated her body to protect his sons, and bound them to a lifelong silence—even from Neveah. Keith hid Bonita's ashes and melted heart-shaped ring inside the family's teddy bear cookie jar.

Roman springs his endgame. He lures Chauncey to a Skids warehouse promising a sting, while feeding Torrent a fake story about ambushing a GTC boss at the same place. Roman has secretly bought off Torrent's own crew, including D-Train, with money and Shade-backed deals. When Torrent orders his men to kill Roman, they turn on the Gilchrists instead. Roman personally executes Torrent with his father's gun; Khalil snipes Chauncey through a window.

The victory is immediately devastated. Dante, drunk and broken over Cassidy, has confronted GTC leader Ernesto Salaazar alone and been killed. Roman identifies his brother's body and collapses into Jae's arms. Alone at the family home, Neveah smashes the teddy bear cookie jar and discovers Bonita's ashes and melted ring. Believing Keith murdered her mother, she has already tampered with his blood thinners; he dies of an aneurysm. When Roman finally confesses that Bonita's death was an accident and Keith was not present, Neveah realizes she killed their father for nothing. She tells Roman they have nothing left and drives away.

Weeks later, Roman has consolidated his takeover of Jefferson Run's underworld. He cremates Salaazar's severed head before the surviving BBB, installs D-Train as his lieutenant, and announces his crematory will launder the gang's profits. Jae arrives, frantic about her missing brothers; Roman comforts her with lies. But she peers through the crematory window, sees him presiding over the men, recalls her brother's saying that "the devil ain't got no friends," and—possibly carrying Roman's child—whispers her father's apocalyptic mantra: "Everything burns."