Wyatt was a stickler for hierarchy.

The Death Riders followed a strict code and seniority dictated it. Mason had never had an issue, but Wyatt’s second in command, Eddie Sykes, struggled to fall in line. He had ambition.

A trait Wyatt admired. But one he had to control.

Mason took his seat and pulled his shoulder length, grey hair back and affixed it into a loose ponytail. As he itched the beard that hung from his jaw with a tattooed hand, he flicked open his computer and readied himself for a day just like any other.

Then the door to the bar flew open.

* * *

As Sam stepped out of Alex Stone’s apartment block, he turned and looked back up to the fourth floor. Ever since his son had been killed, Sam’s world had changed. Through the following pain and suffering of losing his family, Sam had planned to end it all. It was his Sergeant, Carl Marsden, who brought him back from the brink, stopping him moments before he’d decided to end his own life.

Marsden had been a good man, built on solid principals and with a moral code that would eventually cost him his life. If he hadn’t had interjected, Sam would be dead. It was Marsden’s words, spoken to Sam as he sat in the dark with tears in his eyes that convinced him to fight back. That he had the power to channel the devastation of Jamie’s death into something good.

While that set Sam on the path, it was meeting Miles Hillock face to face that set him on his path to fight for justice. The man, a vile drunk who had been released from prison on a technicality, was slowly drinking himself to death. Sam broke into Miles’ house with every intention of killing him. The man had killed Sam’s son.

He deserved no mercy.

But as he pummelled Miles in a blind rage, he realised that it would achieve nothing. Miles may have been behind the wheel, but it was the justice system that had failed to punish him for his crimes. The death of a young child had already dissolved the man’s humanity, and Sam left him beaten and battered, begging for death.

When Miles committed suicide, Sam had felt no sense of closure.

Only the need to put things right.

For everyone.

That’s what had spurned his fight and brick by brick, he’d torn down corruption within the police and the government, as well as removing some of the largest crime syndicates in Europe.

The world was a dirty place, and Sam knew he was in so deep that no amount of scrubbing would ever clean the blood on his hands.