Chapter 17
Tourniquet killed his engine a block from Greer's office building, letting the afternoon settle around him. The street was quiet—construction workers knocked off early, businesses closing for the weekend. Exactly as Paige had predicted.
She'd mapped this perfectly. Every detail. Every pattern.
His woman had given him everything he needed to end this.
"Positions," Permafrost's voice crackled through the earpiece.
"Whiteout on the street. Clear approach, no security visible."
"Tundra and Ironside at the fire exit. Parking lot's empty."
"Copy." Tourniquet checked his weapon. Fifteen rounds, one chambered. More than enough. "Moving in."
He crossed the street with purpose, not stealth. A man walking into a building he had every right to enter. The front door was unlocked—office hours, legitimate business, nothing to hide.
The lobby was empty. Elevator out of service, just like Paige had said. He took the stairs two at a time, footsteps echoing in the concrete stairwell.
Second floor. End of the hallway. Corner office.
Through the frosted glass, he could see movement. A figure at a desk, bent over paperwork. The silhouette of a man who still thought he was untouchable.
Tourniquet tried the door. Locked.
He didn't bother knocking.
One kick. The lock shattered. The door swung wide.
Mitchell Greer looked up from his desk.
The contractor was exactly what Tourniquet had expected—late forties, tan, calloused hands, the easy confidence of a man who'd built his life on other people's losses.
Parcel maps spread across the drafting table.
Acquisition files stacked in neat rows. The paperwork of a predator who'd learned to dress his violence in permits and proposals.
"What the—" Greer was on his feet, reaching for a phone. "Who the hell are you?"
"North Star Savages." Tourniquet stepped into the office, closing the distance. "You burned something that belonged to me."
Recognition flickered in Greer's eyes. Then fear.
"The florist." His voice cracked slightly. "This is about the florist?"
"Her name is Paige."
"Look, whatever she told you—" Greer backed toward the window, hands raised. "It was business. Just business. The property was—"
"You burned three buildings. Destroyed businesses that families had owned for generations. Put people in hospitals." Tourniquet's voice was flat, clinical. "You did all of that because one woman wouldn't sign a piece of paper."
"I can pay. Whatever you want. Name a number."
"There's no number."
"Then what do you want?"
Tourniquet stopped five feet from the contractor. Close enough to see the sweat beading on Greer's forehead, the rapid pulse in his throat, the desperate calculation behind his eyes.
"I want you to understand something," Tourniquet said. "Before the end."
"Before the—" Greer's face went white. "You can't. I'm a legitimate businessman. I have connections. The county commissioner—"
"Doesn't answer calls from dead men."
The words hit like a physical blow. Greer's composure shattered.
"Please." The bravado was gone, replaced by something raw and ugly. "I'll leave. I'll sign everything over. The development project, the properties, all of it. I'll disappear."
"Like the owners you forced out? The woman whose arm you broke? The families whose businesses you burned?" Tourniquet shook his head. "They didn't get to disappear. They had to live with what you did."
"I never hurt anyone personally. It was always—"
"Always someone else." Tourniquet's voice hardened. "Shale. Beale. Janney. You sent men to do your violence while you sat in this office and shuffled papers. You never had to see the damage."
"That's not—"
"You treated people like zoning obstacles. Like problems to be solved with enough pressure." He stepped closer, and Greer flinched back against the window. "You never expected the obstacles to fight back."
"I'm sorry." The words came out broken, desperate. "Whatever I did to your woman—I'm sorry. I didn't know she was—"
"Mine?"
Greer nodded frantically. "I didn't know she was yours. If I'd known the Savages were involved—"
"You would have what? Asked permission before you burned her life?" Tourniquet's hand found his weapon. "You don't get to apologize for destroying someone because you didn't know she had protection. She was always worth protecting. You just didn't care."
"Please—"
"You sent men to beat her. To burn her shop. To threaten everyone she cared about." The gun came up, steady as a surgeon's hands. "And now there's no one left to send. Just you and me and everything you've done."
Greer's eyes went to the door. The window. Searching for escape that didn't exist.
"The fire exit's covered," Tourniquet said. "The stairwell's covered. You're not leaving this room."
"Then take me to the police. I'll confess. Everything—the arsons, the intimidation, all of it. I'll go to prison."
"Prison." The word came out cold. "You burned a veteran's flower shop. A hardware store that had been in the same family for thirty years. A laundromat owned by a woman who had nothing to do with your development project." He shook his head. "Prison's not enough."
"What is enough?"
Tourniquet thought about Paige. The way she'd looked standing in front of her ruined shop, smoke still rising, four years of work reduced to ash. The steel in her eyes that hadn't broken. The strength that had only grown harder under pressure.
"Nothing's enough," he said. "But this is what I can give her."
He raised the weapon.
"Wait—" Greer's hands came up, palms out, the universal gesture of surrender. "Wait, please, I have money. I have—"
The first shot took him in the chest.
Greer stumbled backward, shock replacing fear. His hands found the wound, came away red. He looked at the blood like he couldn't understand what it meant.
"You..." The word was wet, strangled. "You actually..."
"I told you there was no number."
The second shot dropped him.
Mitchell Greer crumpled against his own drafting table, scattering parcel maps and acquisition files across the floor. The paperwork of his empire, soaking in the blood of its architect.
Tourniquet stood over the body, weapon still raised, waiting.
But there was nothing left to wait for.
The contractor who'd burned three buildings, destroyed countless lives, and terrorized a community was gone. Not with lawyers or investigations or the slow grind of a justice system that had already failed. With violence. With finality. With the only language men like Greer truly understood.
"Target down," Tourniquet said into his earpiece.
"Copy. Extraction in sixty seconds."
He looked around the office one final time. The maps. The files. The evidence of a predator's ambition, laid out in neat rows like it was just another construction project.
He pulled a lighter from his pocket.
The papers caught fast. Fire spreading across the desk, climbing the walls, consuming everything Greer had built with the same indifference Greer had shown to the people he'd destroyed.
Poetic. In a dark sort of way.
Tourniquet walked out of the office, down the stairs, into the Friday afternoon that had no idea what had just happened in the building behind him.
Tundra met him at the fire exit, eyes sharp, weapon ready.
"Clean?"
"Clean."
"The fire?"
"Greer's last project." Tourniquet kept walking, toward the bikes waiting in the alley. "Let it burn."
The extraction was smooth—three bikes disappearing into Friday traffic, three brothers who'd never been there. By the time the first smoke alarm triggered, they were two miles away. By the time the fire department arrived, they'd be twenty.
Tourniquet rode in silence, letting the wind scour away the smell of smoke and blood.
It was done.
Greer was dead. His organization was ashes. The threat that had loomed over Paige since the moment she'd refused to sign his papers—gone. Eliminated with the same surgical precision the Savages brought to everything.
But the satisfaction he'd expected didn't come.
Instead, there was something quieter. Something that felt almost like peace.
He thought about Paige. Waiting at the compound. Trusting him to come back, the way he'd promised.
He thought about the shop she'd build. The life they'd make. The future that had seemed impossible three weeks ago, when he'd walked into a flower shop for funeral roses and found something worth fighting for.
He thought about her hands in his. Her voice saying his name—his real name—like it belonged to her.
Come back to me.
The compound appeared through the trees.
And Tourniquet finally let himself breathe.