Page 65 of Tiny's Testament
Her look says to tell him. Mine answers, not yet. The hurt and betrayal in her eyes gut me. But I can’t do it yet.
Capone slaps the table once with his ivory gavel, making me jump. “We hunt.”
Church breaks apart like a cracked skull, everyone spilling out with purpose but no words. The second Capone slams that gavel, the entire table exhales the same ugly truth.
Outside, the compound moves like a wounded animal still baring its teeth. Torch and Dagger haul out the mobile armory cases, their metal clanking sharply in the smoke-stained air. Trigger disappears into his workshop, or what’s left of it, digging through scorched shelves for spare mags he swears were there before the fire. Red heads straight to his screens in the comm room, already barking coordinates and tracing every vehicle that moved within a mile of the blaze.
The rest of us clean what can be salvaged and bury what can’t. Melted tools, a warped engine block. Flames turned part of our home into bones, and the brothers treat those bones like the body of a fallen man. Quiet, respectful, and angry.
I try not to look at the spot where Syvannah almost died. I fail every time.
We pass each other only once. She’s carrying a crate of supplies to the medic room with Danyella, a blanket still wrapped around her shoulders. She doesn’t avoid me, but she doesn’t come toward me either. Her eyes brush over mybandaged back, linger on my hands, then slide away before I can read what’s in them.
It’s the worst kind of distance. It’s not rejection or fear, just a silence that doesn’t know what to do with the truth.
I throw myself into prep because the alternative is thinking. I check the chain tension on the bikes, swap out damaged LED bars, tighten bolts that don’t need it, and fix things that aren’t broken. My back screams with each movement, but I grit through it. Pain is easier than remembering the pity in her eyes when she saw me lose control.
Trigger slaps a new mag into my hand without looking at me. “You’re riding point.”
Dagger sets a tracking beacon on my saddlebag. “Don’t die,” he mutters. “It’s annoying.”
Bones hands me a bottle of water. “You ain’t right,” he says simply. “But you’re ours.” It’s not comfort, but it steadies me.
By the time the sun bleeds toward the horizon, the air hums with the quiet before violence. Helmets are lined up, guns loaded, engines polished and waiting like loyal beasts itching for release.
The sky bruises purple and red, the exact colors of last night’s fire.
Capone steps out onto the porch, cut dark against the dying light. “We hunt,” he says.
And something inside me answers.Good. I need something to bleed that isn’t myself.
We roll at dusk, engines low, exhaust swallowed by the bruised sky. The night smells like smoke and war. Red’s voice threads through our comms like wire.“A two-mile bubble around the co-op is quiet. The east service road shows fresh tracks, single-rider pattern on and off this afternoon.”
“Courier route,” I say.
“Copy,”Red replies.“Heat signatures southbound, minimal. Northbound, there’s nothing. Either they’re ghosts, or they ditch the bikes and ride cages.”
“Or both,” Dagger adds.
Trigger rides so still he looks carved into the bike. I can feel his mood through the line. Contained violence, accountant calm. Trigger’s the only man I know who can balance books and bodies with the same elegance.
We don’t hit the hub. We hit the spoke. Cutting across a drainage ditch, we follow the wash to a stand of pepper trees that hide a break in the fence. The courier never sees us. He’s too busy texting with his helmet off, arrogance radiating off him like heat.
We take him clean.
Dagger comes from the shadows with a forearm choke that drops the kid without a whimper. I’m on him before he hits the dirt, zip-tying his wrists so tight he’ll lose feeling before we’re halfway home. Trigger sweeps him like a machine, grabbing his phone, saddlebag, the second clip tucked in his boot, and even the folded receipt in his back pocket. Fifteen seconds. Done.
Bones swings the back doors of the van open. It’s his. The asshole picked it up a few years ago at a police auction. It’s a retired surveillance van with half the wiring still hidden under the paneling. It looks like a painter’s beater on the outside. Inside, it's every kind of illegal comfort we need.
Dagger drags the courier’s dead weight toward the bumper. “Watch his head,” he mutters, and I’m not sure if it’s compassion or sarcasm. Could be both.
Trigger climbs in first, tossing the man’s gear onto the metal floor with a clang that echoes like a warning. He taps the mounted LED light once, and it hums to life, washing the interior in a clinical white that makes the kid look smaller. Younger. Stupid.
I shove the courier in next, pinning him with my boot long enough for Bones to slam the doors shut behind me. He takes off, with the prospect riding my bike.
After half an hour and a few kicks to the guy's face, Bones calls from the driver’s seat. “Four minutes to the outer gate, six if traffic’s stupid.”
“It’s L.A.,” Dagger replies through our earpieces. “It’s always stupid.”
