3465 Crest Crescent
Sand Bay
A debt unpaid. Bring him to the Snake Pit.
“He must owe Diesel money,” Mav pipes up from the back, putting voice to my thoughts. “But if he hasn’t paid Diesel, tonight is going to be bloody.”
Finn hands Mav and I a bag each. Black clothes, boots, untraceable guns. The usual kit. All of which will be bugged to the high heavens.
Fuck, I hate this shit.
“Let’s hope we’re just the delivery system this time,” I say, shoving my bag in the back and settling back into my seat while Finn puts the address in the GPS. A glance at the screen tells me tonight is going to be a long night. This address is two cities over.
How the fuck did this guy get on Diesel’s bad side?
Diesel, one of the Knights, runs the Snake Pit. A den of underground fighting, and so much worse. Things that, despite everything I’ve done, still make my skin crawl. Things I will never condone.
Since we have legacy votes, we’ve managed to oppose some newer things—which is exactly what brought Octavia to the attention of the Knights in the first place—but some shit was already established and getting that stomped out will take more juice than the three of us have alone.
Money and blood make the world go round, and we’re drowning in both.
We head around the building and enter through the back door after I punch in the code and change into the contents of the bags. I feel like one of the fucking X-Men in this get up. So fucking ridiculous.
It doesn’t take long and I stash my clothes back in the bag before we head back out to the car. We throw the bags in the trunk. I already know we’re going to need the back seat for transport, so this is just efficient for later.
Once we’re all sorted, I climb in and start the engine, taking a small piece of joy from the purr of the car. Just one moment, one sliver of a speck of light in the dark, before I throw myself into the oblivion of what’s to come.
Mav and Finn talk quietly for most of the drive, and I sit in silence, mentally preparing myself for whatever we’re about to walk into. I’d like to hope he’ll come quietly, but they never do. Mav’s favorite thing is when they run. He really does run the gauntlet of psychopathy, though really he’s just a product of his father’s twisted ways.
The same could be said for us all.
They groomed us from a young age to be ready for when the Knights would come calling, but it was done in such a subtle way we never saw it coming.
I shake my head to clear out the memories. That is not a dark hole I need to go down. Not now. Not ever.
I focus back on the road, the dark of the night split only by the headlights of the car. Before I realize just how much time has passed, the GPS has me pulling into a fairly upscale suburb in Sand Bay. We come to a stop in front of a two-story house with a white picket fence.
The children’s toys in the front yard make my stomach churn.
I don’t hurt kids. None of us do.
It’s a hard and fast rule.
“Fuck,” Mav mutters when he sees what I do. “What do we do?”
I swallow against the lump in my throat as they both look to me for direction. I hate that I have to be the shot caller, but it’s always been this way. “We do this quietly. We don’t wake the wife or the kids. We get in, we grab him, we get out.”
They both nod and we climb from the car, blending into the shadows. Finn heads up front, the guy can get past any lock or alarm system. He’s a goddamn magician. He pulls the small tablet he never leaves home without from his back pocket before nodding back to us. The door is open and he heads straight for the alarm.
In less than a minute he reappears in the doorway. “We’re in.”
We move through the house quietly, making sure not to stand on, or trip over, any of the toys strewn across the floor. I’m just thankful that the stairs don’t creak as we climb them.
“Linc,” I pause, turning to see Finn at the bottom of the stairs, staring at the photos that line the wall there. “I think he’s a single dad.”
Fuck.
“Call Ellie, she’s the closest person we have to this place,” I tell him and head back up the stairs as he heads outside to make the call. This changes everything. Thankfully, we’ve had some time to build our own network of people outside of the Knights, so we have contingencies for shit like this. I grit my teeth, trying to swallow down my frustration as I head down the hall. I pause at the kid’s room—obvious from the rainbow wood letters on the door spelling out ‘Sofie’—hating that if this goes wrong we’re going to rip away her innocence the same way ours was.