The underwear he’d been afforded to hide his modesty had been soiled countless times, with the inside of his legs covered in urine and faeces.

As Wyatt approached him, he appreciated the sterling work that Mason had done in chipping Sykes away. When your most violent attack dogs bite your hand, you need to put it down.

Not retrain it.

Not provide it with a second chance.

Wyatt had given Sykes fair warning, but the man had let greed and ego dictate his thoughts. Terrible choices, fuelled by his obsession with status. And for those, he would pay the ultimate price, one which Sykes would have approved of from any other angle.

Two days of brutal torture had been enough.

The man was a wreck.

He would die a pathetic man who had soiled himself in fear and panic. A treacherous man, who lacked the nobility that Wyatt demanded from his Riders. They may have been criminals, but they had a code.

A brotherhood.

They were family, and the moves Sykes had made, the vicious contempt he’d held for Wyatt when he was bound and gagged on the floor of the forecourt, meant there was no other way.

As he stood a few feet from Sykes, Wyatt reached out with his gloved hand and rested it on his shoulder.

Years spent together.

Ripped apart by greed.

‘It’s over, brother,’ Wyatt offered kindly. Sykes struggled, but raised his head, his lone eye wet with tears. He nodded his acceptance. Behind them both, the thick, dominant smell of gasoline filled the air as Mason sloshed the gas canister around the garage. As he finished, he hurled the metal can into the shadows and walked back over to the two men.

‘Ready?’ Mason asked.

‘Yeah, one last thing.’ Wyatt pushed Sykes’s mouth open and inserted a cotton wool bud. With little care, he swabbed in and around Sykes’ mouth before removing it, letting his jaw slam shut, his teeth snapping as they collided. ‘Take his teeth.’

Sykes’s head lifted again in horror as Wyatt stepped away, enclosing the cotton swab in a ziplock bag. Sykes howled in terror as Mason approached him, mockingly clicking together a pair of pliers.

Wyatt waited outside, enjoying a relaxing cigarette as the blood-curdling cries of anguish echoed around the vicinity. They were a long way from help, and even if a police car happened to approach, Wyatt would send them on their way.

Ten minutes and a couple more cigarettes late, Mason emerged, casually strolling from the garage with his blood covered hands grasping a plastic bag, which jingled as he swung it. Judging from the blood seeping through the plastic, it contained all of Sykes’s teeth.

Everything that could have been done to identify him had been stripped of him.

Sykes was nothing.