Page 68 of Tiny's Testament
Outside, the horizon is bleeding out the last light heading back to the compound, and the air is still ash and anger. Capone hears Trigger’s two-sentence report without a blink. “Courier down. Confirmation that Lattimer is bankrolling the Hounds.”
“Good,” Capone says like a man standing over wet concrete with a stick. “Now we write.”
Red will ghost the equity shell and light every account it touches. Trigger will arm heavy and quietly. Torch and Bones will build a new cage out of steel that bends for no one. Dagger will take outreach and wear a tie that makes teachers say yes, and enemies relax. Blayze will open old doors in Vegas for a look South by Southwest.
Derange and Aftermath will dust off the things we keep in the back, starting with calling in the Hawaii Chapter. Aloiki Ka’ana’ana, the president of RBMC Hawaii and Aftermath, have a strange bond between the two of them.
Capone doesn’t mention me. He doesn’t have to because everyone looks at me anyway. He meets my eyes last. No judgment. No absolution, only the math of leadership. “You lead the next pass,” he says. “And you keep your head.”
“Yes, Prez,” I answer, voice steady like I didn’t leave a piece of it in the shed.
Syvannah doesn’t come to the common room. I find her where the garage used to be, sitting on an overturned crate inside the chalk outline of a bay, sketchbook open, charcoal blacking her fingers. What she’s drawing isn’t the fire, it’s what comes after. A steel-braced frame with light pouring where the roof will be.
“You shouldn’t have been down there,” I say, because it’s easier than saying what I should.
“You shouldn’t have kept hitting him.” She doesn’t look up. “But here we are.”
I lower myself across from her, knees popping, hands in my pockets so I don’t have to see them again. “You think I liked it?”
“I think you felt it,” she says. “And that scares me more.”
We breathe the same smoke in the same silence. She finally looks up, and it guts me that the first thing she does is track my face for damage.
“I don’t need a hero,” she says quietly. “I need a man who won’t get lost when it’s dark.”
“I was already lost,” I admit. “I’m trying to map my way back.”
She studies me like I’m a sketch she’s not sure earns the next line. Then she reaches out and cups my jaw with the hand she hasn’t wiped clean. Charcoal smears across my cheek like a brand. “Then stop punching ghosts and start cutting ropes.”
My throat tightens around all the things I can’t promise. “I’ll try.”
“Try harder,” she says, and presses her palm harder against my face like she can hold me in place if she pushes hard enough. I close my eyes and lean into it. After a few beats, I take Syvannah’s hand. She doesn’t hesitate to follow me back inside the clubhouse.
Capone and Blayze are talking low at a table with Monica and Danyella at their sides, the kind of conversation that draws lines on maps and men. Bones laughs loudly to catch the eye of one of the patch bunnies. Torch curses lovingly at the jukebox, dancing with Daisy and their twins. Trigger flips a page in the ledger with the reverence of a priest, while Aerianna sits next to him, cleaning her guns. Footsteps thud outside. Engines pop cool. The brotherhood moves as one body around a wound.
Red pops his head around the corner with Matthew in his arms. “Tiny,” he calls, eyes bright with the feral light of a manwho’s just found a wire to pull, “our shell company has a cousin. And the cousin lives in a warehouse with a dented quarter panel.”
“Same truck?” I ask, standing.
“Same scar,” he grins. “We ghost tonight, or we lose the scent.”
Syvannah drops my hand. The absence is colder than the air. “Go,” she says. It’s not a plea. It isn’t permission. It’s a dare to come back different.
I nod, not trusting my mouth to make a promise my hands will struggle to keep. I touch her shoulder, a small, human anchor, then turn toward the sound of men getting sharper.
As the gate yawns open and the night breathes us in, smoke still smudges the horizon where our garage used to be. The fire’s out, but the war is just waking up.
15
SYVANNAH
The compound is loud during the day, but when the Royal Bastards ride out to protect all they’ve worked for, it’s too damn quiet. Not the peaceful quiet, but the quiet that settles after a scream. Like something is waiting, ready to strike. I went into the garage again, sketching ideas of how the Club can rebuild, trying to settle my mind. I give up after an hour, and the nip in the air causes my fingers to tremble.
I try to shake the forbidding feeling as I cross the lot. My arms are wrapped around myself, my jacket pulled tight against the night chill, telling my heartbeat to calm the hell down, but it doesn’t listen.
I make it halfway to the Clubhouse and safety when boots crunch behind me. A voice slices through the dark.
“Syvannah.” Pearl steps out from behind one of the trucks, and her normal put-together façade is cracked wide open for me to see who she really is underneath all the glitz and glamour. Pearl’s mascara is smudged under her eyes, and her carefully styled blonde hair is wild like she’s run her hands through it too many times. She looks jittery, desperate, and dangerous.
