Chapter 14 #2
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 my bandaged 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.”
The van pulls off the gravel, suspension groaning under the weight of too many sins. The engine hums steadily. Bones treats that piece of shit like it’s a firstborn, and we slip into the night without so much as a headlight flare.
We don’t go straight back to the clubhouse. Bones takes the long way of two loops through an old industrial town, a cut through a dark alley behind a half-shuttered salvage yard, then another mile past the storm drain channels where Dagger dumped two bodies last summer.
Just in case someone’s tailing us. Just in case someone cares enough to watch this kid vanish. No one does. Which tells me everything about Lattimer’s army.
When Bones finally slows, I know exactly where we are. The old packing shed on the Royal Bastards' property. It’s off-grid with no cameras. Smells like mildew and secrets. A place I don’t want Syvannah near, but I know she’s been here before when Nadia, Exleigh, and Syvannah killed Josiah.
Dagger cracks the van doors, and I climb out, dragging the guy behind me. A string bulb hangs on a far wire, swinging lazily and splashing the shed with a sickly yellow that screams “gallows.”
Trigger jerks his chin. “Wake him.”
I haul the courier upright, feeling the zip tie cut into his skin as he starts to struggle.
Time to open him up. And time for me to lose a little more of who I’m trying to be.
I crouch beside the courier, watching the pulse flutter in his neck as he starts to come around. Trigger rests the muzzle of his pistol on his knee, pointing nowhere, meant for everywhere.
The kid’s eyes blink open, unfocused. He sees me first.
“Welcome to the Bastards,” Trigger says dryly. “We don’t do hospitality. You’ll get used to it.”
The kid blinks awake to my shadow. He’s not as young as the one on the road, but he wears his borrowed swagger the same. Hellhound jawbone tattoo, half-healed. Bad work, but a fresh earn-in.
“Want me to read him his rights?” Trigger asks, tone so dry it’s almost kind, even though it’s not.
“Only one right that matters,” I say, squatting eye-level. “The right answer.”
Dagger stands at the door, a blade resting lazily in his hand.
Red whispers in my ear, “Phone’s clean. Wiped after every send. But look at the transaction alerts cached. Drops from a private equity shell. That name ring a bell?” He reads it. It rings like a gunshot in my bones.
Lattimer. Spelled in a suit’s handwriting, but the same throat.
My face must change because the kid grins, split lip, and bravado. “Oh, you know him.”
Trigger’s voice is almost conversational. “What’s your name, son?”
“Wolf,” he says, laughing.
“Try again,” I say, almost bored.
He juts his chin. “Wolf.”
Trigger pulls up a rickety chair and turns it around, slow and polite.
“Here’s the thing about wolves,” he says, folding his arms on the backrest. “They think the pack saves them. But the pack doesn’t come when you’re in the trap.
They let you gnaw your leg off and call it loyalty.
” He nods at me, almost indulgent. “Ask your question again, Cap.”
“What hub does your spoke feed?” I keep my tone soft, almost gentle. It scares men worse than shouting.
He spits near my boot. “Bite me.”
“Ah, ah, ah,” Trigger says, standing. “Wrong answer.”
The first hit is an open palm, just enough to rock him. The second is my knuckles to his solar plexus, a lesson in humility. The third is Trigger again, a body jab that steals his breath without breaking ribs.
We escalate in inches. You don’t break a radio by screaming, you tune the frequency. Dagger slides a crate over so I can sit. He doesn’t need to say it. I’m going to be here a while.
“Try again,” I say.
He spits blood this time. “Lattimer,” he wheezes. “Pays on time.”
“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.”