Page 67 of Tiny's Testament
“Where does the payment land?”
“Wouldn’t you like to know.”
Trigger’s smile is small and ice-cold. “He’s proud,” he observes. “Let him make a speech.”
The kid inhales like he’s onstage. “You think you’re a storm, Royal? You’re the weather and Lattimer’s the climate.” He laughs, high and wild. “He has judges on his payroll, ports in his pocket and owns men like you. We’re the blade. He’s the hand.”
“There it is,” Trigger murmurs, almost tender. “The confession before the funeral.”
I cuff the kid lightly, eye contact never breaking. “Which warehouse? Which lane? Which day?”
His jaw sets, but he leans forward to spit the final line like scripture. “Say his name when you see him. Say Lattimer.” The name lands between us like gasoline. Something old inside me flares.
“Tiny,”Red says in my ear, voice suddenly careful.“You’ve got enough.”
I hear him, but I don’t. Trigger hears me not hearing and rises in a single smooth motion. He takes the kid’s chin in one big hand, tilts it up, and speaks in the tone we reserve for absolutes. “You get one more breath, son. Use it to be useful.”
The kid grins red. “Long live the..” Trigger puts the round through his eye so clean the chair doesn’t creak. Silence eats the shed. For a heartbeat, the bulb hum is a choir.
Dagger exhales. “That’s tidy.”
Trigger holsters his gun like he just put a pencil away. He looks at me without judgment, like a man checking a ledger. “You good?”
I’m not. The dead kid’s grin hangs in the air. Lattimer’s name still burns in my mouth. Creed’s hand is on the wall in black paint from a week ago. It all stacks, and something inside slides off its shelf.
I hit the corpse again. My fist cracks his cheekbone, accomplishing nothing. The second strike mashes what’s already gone. By the third, I’m in a tunnel, the roar of the fire and the scream from last night and Syvannah’s voice breaking when she said I lied.
I punch the past, the present, the map of a future I can’t protect. I hit until my knuckles bark and bleed, and the sound in my ears goes from thunder to wind.
Hands grab my shoulder. Trigger’s grip is iron. “Enough.” I shove him back like a fool, but he doesn’t move.
Dagger steps in, blade low, not a threat, but presence. “Brother.”
The word pulls me a half-inch out of the pit. I stand there, chest heaving, blood slicking my hands with a heat that isn’t heat at all.
“Tiny,”Red says softly in my ear.“Come back.”
Footsteps crunch on the gravel outside. I don’t turn because I feel her before I see her. The shed’s side door hangs on a squeak, and Syvannah stands in the doorway, one hand white-knuckled on the jamb, the other holding her cellphone like it’s a grenade about to go off. Smoke-smudged face, eyes wide and hurt and, God help me, afraid. She saw more than the shot. She saw me swinging after the silence.
For a second, none of us move. Trigger’s gaze turns toward the door like a man offering me a mercy kill I’m too slow to take.
I lift my hands without thinking. She flinches, and it hurts my soul. “I…” My voice scrapes. “Syv…”
She doesn’t step back. That should make it worse, but it doesn’t. “Is that who you are?” Barely a whisper. “After.”
I look at the kid in the chair and see nineteen versions of him. I look at my hands and see all the ghosts that led me here. When I look at her again, I see exactly what I always feared, the moment her faith fractures and the hero costume I never deserved burns off.
I search for a word big enough to be a bridge, but I can’t find one.
Syvannah’s gaze drops to my cracked, already swelling knuckles, then back to my face. The pity in her eyes collides with fear, and the collision is worse than hate.
“Say something,” I choke, because I’m a coward who needs saving from the mess I made.
She swallows. “You told me last night you’d try honesty.” The words shake. “Start with yourself.” Syvannah walks away before I can respond, and my stomach drops. Shit. I’ve really fucked up this time.
The quiet that follows is a verdict. Trigger touches my shoulder once, then he and Dagger take the body to the shallow pit we dug for men who chose the wrong oath. The bulb swings.
Red’s voice threads back into my ear.“I flagged the payments. Names we can burn. We’ll hurt him, Tiny. One cut at a time.”I nod to a man who isn’t in the room and feel nothing.
