Chapter Ten
Burial was in the compound garage when his phone lit up with the first report—Raymond's men hitting a Destroyer-watched auto shop on Greenville's east side. Before he could respond, the second call came: a bar under club protection, five miles west, taking fire at the same moment.
Simultaneous. Coordinated. Timed to the minute.
Guidry.
Andre Guidry, Raymond's operations manager, the man who kept twelve gambling sites rotating with mathematical precision. This had his fingerprints all over it—the timing, the coordination, the way both attacks pulled Destroyer resources in opposite directions.
"Brothers!" Burial's voice cut through the garage. "We're under assault. Two locations, synchronized. This is Guidry's work."
Hollow materialized from the shadows, his face carved from stone. "Where do you need me?"
"East side. Take Levee and Crossroad. Protect the auto shop."
"And the bar?"
"I'll handle it." Burial grabbed his cut from the workbench. "Guidry's not leading from the front. He's coordinating from somewhere behind both attacks—somewhere he can see everything without being seen."
Understanding dawned in Hollow's eyes. "You're going to find him."
"I'm going to bury him."
The brothers scattered. Engines roared to life. Within minutes, the compound had emptied, bikes screaming toward two different battlegrounds across Greenville.
Burial didn't follow either group.
Instead, he pulled up the map of Greenville's south side in his mind—the one Diane had helped him build, block by block, from her years of flower deliveries. The auto shop was here. The bar was there. And somewhere between them, in a position that gave sight lines to both locations...
The water tower.
It sat at the intersection of Industrial and Maple, abandoned since the city built the new one five years ago. High enough to see both attack sites. Isolated enough for a getaway. Perfect for a man who coordinated violence from a distance.
Burial kicked his bike to life and rode.
The streets were chaos—sirens in the distance, the echo of gunfire from two directions, the kind of violence that made civilians lock their doors and turn off their lights.
He wove through it all, taking back roads and alleys, approaching the water tower from the one direction Guidry wouldn't be watching.
The rear.
He left his bike two blocks out and continued on foot, moving through shadows with the silence of a man who'd spent a decade walking through graveyards at night. The water tower loomed ahead, its rusted ladder climbing into darkness.
Two men at the base. Lookouts.
Burial took them without a sound.
The first dropped with a knife through the kidney, his partner's shout dying in his throat as Burial's arm wrapped around and squeezed until the struggling stopped. Two bodies, arranged neatly in the shadows. The gravedigger's work, done with the efficiency of long practice.
He climbed.
The platform at the top was cramped, barely enough room for three men. Two more guards up here, their attention fixed on the distant glow of fires and the occasional crack of gunfire.
They never saw him coming.
Burial took the first one over the railing, a quick shove that sent him tumbling into darkness. The second spun, hand going for his weapon, but Burial was already inside his guard—knife finding ribs, twisting, withdrawing as the body crumpled.
And there, at the center of the platform, hunched over a tablet that showed feeds from both attack sites, was Andre Guidry.
The operations manager looked up, and for one moment his quick-thinking mind seemed to process exactly what had happened—the lookouts gone, the guards eliminated, the Tail Gunner standing between him and the only ladder down.
"You're supposed to be at the bar," Guidry said.
"I'm supposed to be wherever I'm needed." Burial stepped closer. "You coordinate attacks like you coordinate gambling sites. Mathematical. Precise. Always from behind, where nobody's watching."
"It's efficient."
"It's predictable." Another step. "A man who manages twelve rotating locations learns to think in patterns. Timing. Positioning. You find the spot that gives you oversight without exposure, and you work from there."
Guidry's hand moved toward his pocket.
"Don't." Burial's knife caught the moonlight. "You're fast, but you're not that fast. And even if you were—" He gestured to the empty platform. "Who's going to help you?"
The operations manager's jaw tightened. But he was smart enough to know when the odds had turned against him.
"Raymond will burn this town to the ground," Guidry said. "You kill me, you kill Thibodaux, it doesn't matter. He's got resources you can't imagine. Connections that go deeper than—"
"Raymond sent you to prove the network survives." Burial cut him off. "To show that losing his collector doesn't mean losing control. That's why you hit two targets at once—spectacle. A message."
"And?"
"And he's not here." Burial's voice went cold. "He sent you to do his fighting while he hides behind whatever hole he's crawled into. That tells me everything I need to know about Raymond Hebert."
"It tells you he's smart."
"It tells me he's scared." Burial closed the distance. "Thibodaux's dead. You're about to be dead. And when Raymond realizes his logistics man isn't coming back, he's going to understand that the Destroyers don't play by house rules."
Guidry moved.
He was fast—faster than Burial expected from a man who worked with spreadsheets and schedules. A pistol appeared from somewhere, swinging toward Burial's chest.
But Burial had been reading this man all night. Watching his patterns. Anticipating where he'd go, what he'd do, how he'd react when cornered.
The rear guard's whole job was seeing what others missed.
He caught Guidry's wrist before the gun could level, twisting hard. Bone snapped. The pistol clattered to the platform. Guidry screamed—a sharp, surprised sound—and Burial drove him backward into the railing.
"You work from the back because you think it's safe," Burial said quietly. "Because you think the people in front of you will absorb all the danger while you coordinate from the shadows."
He pressed harder. Guidry's back bent over the railing, his ruined wrist clutched to his chest.
"But you made one mistake." Burial leaned close. "You forgot that the Destroyers have someone who works from the back too. Someone who's spent his whole life reading what's behind him."
"Please—"
"The florist. Diane Leary." Burial's voice dropped to a whisper. "She's mine. And everyone who threatens what's mine ends up in the ground."
He pushed.
Andre Guidry, Raymond Hebert's operations manager, tumbled over the railing and fell four stories to the concrete below. The impact was audible even from the platform—a wet, final sound that ended everything the man had been.
Burial stood at the railing, looking down at the body.
Raymond's logistics were gone. His coordination, his scheduling, his ability to manage twelve rotating gambling sites with mathematical precision—all of it dead on the pavement.
The network was bleeding.
His phone buzzed. Hollow.
"East side's clear. Three of Raymond's down. The auto shop's intact."
"The bar?"
"Crossroad's handling cleanup. We took some hits, but nothing fatal."
Burial looked at Guidry's body one more time. "I've got the operations man."
"Alive?"
"No."
A pause. Then, Hollow's flat voice: "Good. Cottonmouth wants a debrief. Compound in an hour."
"Copy."
He climbed down from the tower, stepping over the bodies of Guidry's lookouts on his way to his bike.
The night was quieting now—sirens still wailing in the distance, but the gunfire had stopped.
Raymond's coordinated assault had failed, his operations manager was dead, and the Destroyers still held their ground.
But this wasn't over.
Raymond Hebert was still out there. Still hiding. Still thinking he could outlast the club through patience and resources and the belief that the house always wins.
He was wrong.
Burial rode back to the compound, the wind cutting cold across his face.
He thought about Diane, waiting in the safety of the compound walls.
About the wildflower she'd put on his chest and the way she'd whispered his real name in the dark.
About everything he had to protect now—not just territory, not just brotherhood, but something softer. Something alive.
The gates opened as he approached. Brothers nodded as he passed, their faces grim with the aftermath of violence. Two of them had blood on their cuts. One was limping.
But they were standing. They were alive. And the enemy had lost another piece.
Diane was waiting in the garage bay, her face pale in the fluorescent light. When she saw him—whole, unhurt, still breathing—something in her expression cracked.
"You're okay," she said.
"I'm okay."
"Guidry?"
"Dead." He parked the bike and crossed to her, pulling her against his chest without caring who saw. "He won't coordinate anything ever again."
She held onto him, her hands fisting in his cut.
"Raymond's still out there."
"I know." He pressed his lips to her hair. "But he's running out of people. Thibodaux's gone. Guidry's gone. He's got one enforcer left and whatever hired muscle he can scrape together."
"And then?"
"And then we finish it."
She pulled back to look at him, her eyes fierce despite the fear still lingering in them.
"I'm not going to hide while you fight."
"I know."
"I mean it, Burial. If he comes for the compound—if he comes for me—I want to be standing next to you. Not cowering in some back room while you protect me."
He studied her face—the determination, the courage, the backbone he'd recognized from the moment she threw that vase.
"You'll be standing next to me," he said. "I promise."
She nodded, some of the tension easing from her shoulders.
Around them, the compound was settling into the grim efficiency of aftermath. Brothers checking weapons. Wounded being tended. The quiet murmur of men processing violence and preparing for more.
Raymond Hebert had sent his operations manager to prove the network survived.
But a man who hides at the rear of his own operation is invisible to everyone except the one brother whose job is watching backs.