Chapter 16
TINY
The blood is still under my fingernails.
I washed my hands three times after the scouting mission, but it doesn’t matter.
The courier’s fear lingers in my skin, in my bones, in the echo of every blow I kept throwing long after he stopped breathing.
I can still hear Trigger yelling at me to stand down.
I can still see Dagger grabbing my shoulders, pulling me off what was left of the kid.
Worst of all, I can still see Syvannah watching. Her eyes weren’t afraid of the violence. They were afraid of me.
By the time we ride back into the compound, the sky is bruising purple. My gloves are stiff with dried blood, and my chest is heavy with the truth I can’t outrun. Syvannah saw a part of me I never wanted her to see. The parts I barely contain.
Now the sun’s gone, the compound feels wrong, and every instinct I’ve got screams that something’s coming.
Torch, Trigger, Dagger, and Bones are still prepping bikes for another run, tensions high after the warehouse intel confirmed the worst. Lattimer is alive. He’s rebuilding and used the Hellhounds to send a message. I know in my gut the message is meant for me.
Peanut flicks her tail from where she sits on the seat of my bike, watching me like she senses the storm forming under my skin. The quiet in the lot settles in thick, unnatural waves.
That’s when Torch shouts. “Tiny! Have you seen Syvannah?”
My heart drops so fast it hits concrete. “No,” I answer, already moving toward him. “Why?”
Torch’s expression is grim. “Nadia called. Syvannah never met her. Phone’s dead. Red can’t ping it.”
A cold rush punches straight through my ribs.
Trigger appears at my side in seconds. “Say that again.”
“She’s missing,” Torch repeats. “Has been for hours.”
The words rip through me like a blade.
Dagger mutters, “Fuck,” and sprints toward the tech room.
Bones cracks his neck. “Gear up. Now.”
But I’m already running. We sweep the compound in seconds, brothers splitting into practiced patterns, checking behind the clubhouse, the dorms, the garage ruins, the gate, the fence.
Dagger’s voice cracks through the comms. “No sign of her inside.”
Trigger swears. “I told Capone that the south camera needed fixing!”
I sprint to the back gate, scanning for anything out of place. That’s when I see footprints pressed faintly into the dirt. One small. One much larger.
And drag marks.
I crouch, fingers brushing the disturbed soil. My throat closes. “They took her off foot.”
Torch appears behind me, jaw flexing. “Any direction?”
“South,” I rasp. “Into the dark.”
Red’s voice booms into the comms. “I’m rerouting every traffic cam within a three-mile radius, but something’s jamming half my access.”
“They prepared,” Trigger growls.
“They fucking prepared,” I echo.
And that means this wasn’t random. This was a message.
Trigger storms up beside me, breathing hard. “That's her tracks?”
“Yeah.” My voice is gravelly. “She didn’t walk out of here. Someone pulled her.”
Dagger’s jaw locks. “We need Capone. Now.”
Red’s voice bursts through the comms. “Boys, Prez is calling an emergency Church. Get inside. All of you.”
The moment Syvannah’s missing and Hellhound signs are on our land, Capone won’t wait. He’ll pull every brother into the war room.
We sprint across the lot toward the clubhouse. Brothers flood the hallway, grabbing cuts, weapons, boots, rage. Church slams shut behind us, sealing the war room.
Capone stands at the head of the table, eyes cold, jaw set like stone. “What do we know?”
I drop the report hard and fast. “Footprints by the south gate. Drag marks. Van tracks. Two, maybe three men. She’s drugged. Taken.”
Capone’s eyes go lethal. “Find her.”
Before any of us can speak, Red’s radio crackles violently from the tech room. “Prez? Tiny? We… I… shit. Hold on, I just got a call. You’re gonna want this.”
Capone storms out of the Church like he’s been summoned by the devil himself. I’m right on his heels. He stomps into Red’s communication room, making the poor guy jump, and his face burns bright red. “Put it on loud.”
Red nods and patches it through.
A voice bursts from the speaker like sunshine with a fistfight attached. “Aloha, motherfuckers!” Aloiki’s booming voice carries across the room.
Thank God.
“Capone, howzit!” Aloiki sings, voice dripping charm and mischief. “Heard your garage exploded, your shipments vanished, and now your wahine has been scooped like a Costco sample. That accurate?”
Aftermath groans. “How the fuck does he always know everything?”
Red shrugs, his face turning red again. “Island magic.”
Aloiki’s voice sharpens playfully. “RED! I’m bringing you coffee. REAL coffee. Not that burnt dirt you L.A. haoles pretend is drinkable.”
Red clutches the desk like he might cry. “He loves me.”
Capone cuts in. “Aloiki, you bringing bodies?”
“Brother,” Aloiki purrs, “I brought the Twins.”
Torch freezes. Trigger mutters, “Oh, double fuck.”
Everyone knows that Thing One and Thing Two are chaos wrapped in matching cuts, and nobody can tell them apart.
Aloiki adds, “Landing in fifteen, yeah? Keep the gate open. And hide your girls if they get easily distracted. My boys like to flirt.” The line dies.
Capone drags a hand down his face. “Hawaii’s coming. God help us all.”
Fifteen minutes later, a low rumble builds outside. Three custom Long Beach–built bikes that Aloiki had commissioned because, in his words, “No way I fly across the ocean jus’ fo’ ride some rental haole junk.”
The gate opens, and they roll inside. Aloiki’s shirt is half-open, tattoos glowing under the lot lights, grinning like he’s about to bless or ruin our lives. Hard to say which.
Behind him, Thing One and Thing Two are riding identical builds, each holding a giant slice of watermelon like psychopaths on vacation.
They skid to a synchronized, show-off stop.
Aloiki hops off and tosses a bag of sealed Kona coffee at Red. “HEA, Brah! Fresh roast. The kind you cry for. Better than your Costco swill.”
Red hugs it. “I’d marry you.”
Aloiki winks. “Shoots, but I'm too much man for you, Red.”
The Twins dismount in eerie unison. Thing One tosses Thing Two his watermelon rind, or did Thing Two toss it to Thing One? It doesn’t fucking matter. I shake my head in confusion.
“Custom bikes,” one says.
“Perfect for breaking bones,” the other finishes with a grin.
They scan the lot together, eyes bright with mischief.
“Hope you boys got targets,” the first muses.
“Because we brought itchy knuckles,” the second adds.
Kensi walks past, smiling at Aloiki, who has removed his shirt and stuffs it in the saddle bag with a sigh of relief on his face. Both Twins peel off from their bikes and drift toward her at the same time, leaning on the same post with mirrored smirks.
“Hey, baby, you lookin’ cherry today.” One murmurs with a smooth voice.
“You look like you could use two very bad decisions tonight,” the other finishes, lowering his voice mischievously.
Kensi rolls her eyes. “Hard no.”
The Twins straighten, exchange a delighted look, and speak together. “She definitely likes us.” They fist-bump.
Capone glares skyward. “Why am I cursed?”
Aloiki laughs. “Eh, calm yo’ nuts, Prez. We stay here to help.”
“Tiny.” Capone grunts. “Brief them before I have a stroke.”
Leading Aloiki and the twins to Church, I lay out everything. The tracks, the drag marks, the likely sedations, the courier’s dying words. Everything that feels like it’s unraveling inside me faster than I can breathe.
By the time we enter the Chapel, the light fades from Aloiki’s grin. “That motherfucker, Lattimer.”
“Yeah,” I say. “Him.”
The Twins exchange a look, cracking their knuckles with eerie synchronicity.
“Well… shit,” one murmurs.
“Guess it’s violence o’clock,” the other finishes.
When Capone orders us to wait for a coordinated response, something inside me fractures.
I hear the words, but my body refuses to accept them.
Syvannah doesn’t have time for strategy.
She doesn’t have time for negotiation. She doesn’t have time for anything except me finding her before whatever they injected into her bloodstream becomes the last thing she ever feels.
I turn and walk out before Capone is done talking. He calls after me, voice sharp with command, but my legs move anyway. “Tiny!” Capone roars. “You WAIT. We do this clean!”
“No.” My voice is gravel, smoke, blood.
Torch tries to stop me, hands raised as though approaching a wounded animal, “Brother, breathe.”
“Get out of my way.”
Trigger tries reason. “We can do this smart.”
“I’m done being smart.”
Dagger grabs my arm, desperate. “If you go alone…”
None of it gets through. Syvannah is gone, and the world has narrowed to that single unbearable truth.
“I’m not alone,” I growl. Because when I swing my leg over my bike, three more engines fire behind me.
Aloiki. The Twins.
They don’t ask permission. They don’t seek approval. They don’t even look toward Capone. They simply fall into formation behind me as though this is where they were always meant to be.
Aloki’s expression loses its usual brightness, replaced by a fierce determination that settles across his features like warpaint. “You ride, brother,” he says, voice low and steady. “We ride with you.”
The twins mirror each other perfectly, one tilting his head, the other cracking his knuckles. Their smiles are thin, sharp, anticipatory.
“One stray woman,” one says.
“One pissed-off giant,” the other adds.
“And a whole city of skulls to crack,” they finish together.
Capone storms across the parking lot like a man about to stroke out. “STAND. DOWN.”
But I’m already twisting the throttle. “No.”
If the devil himself had grabbed my cut, I still would’ve pulled away.
My engine screams as I shoot out of the gate. Behind me, Hawaii follows without hesitation. Island thunder ripping through L.A. streets.