Chapter 10 Graham #2
Rose’s kitchen was small and functional. No decorative touches, no Pinterest boards brought to life. A coffee maker that had seen better years, mismatched mugs, a window above the sink that looked out over the east paddock.
I made coffee while she dried her hair. She emerged in jeans and a flannel, toweling the ends, and stopped when she saw the two mugs on the counter.
“You found the good beans,” she said.
“Behind the oatmeal. Third shelf.” I handed her a mug. “You hide them like a squirrel.”
“I hide them from Kaya. She’d go through a bag a day.”
We stood in her kitchen and drank coffee and looked at each other, and it felt like the most natural thing in the world. Like we’d been doing it for years instead of minutes.
“Everything okay?” I asked, because a thought had crossed her face, quick, gone before she could catch it.
Rose sipped her coffee. Weighed whether to let me in.
“Vendor invoice from Ridgeline Supply came in higher than the quote,” she said.
“Fencing materials. Denise is handling it, but...” She shrugged like it was nothing, but her grip on the mug said otherwise.
“Running a ranch is basically just watching money leave your account and hoping the horses don’t notice. ”
“How much over?”
“Twelve thousand for a job quoted at eighty-five hundred. Denise thinks it’s a rush surcharge and extra hardware. She’s calling them today.” Rose set down her mug. “It’s fine. It’s always fine. That’s what I tell myself, and eventually the math cooperates or it doesn’t.”
Ridgeline Supply. I filed the name away. Not because I suspected anything, not yet. Just because the numbers didn’t sit right.
I left Rose’s cabin around nine, feeling lighter than I had in years.
The feeling didn’t last long.
I was crossing the yard toward my cabin when the memory hit. Denise’s voice in the dark, words I’d been pushing to the back of my mind because they didn’t fit into the world I’d been building with Rose.
She doesn’t suspect anything.
It’s actually working in our favor.
By the time Rose figures out what’s happening, it’ll be too late.
I stopped walking.
I couldn’t go to Dex with this. Dex would tell me to stay out of it, to protect the brand, to let Rose handle her own business. And maybe he’d be right about the last part, but he’d be right for the wrong reasons.
I needed someone who thought in systems. Someone who could look at the fragments I’d overheard and see where they fit in a larger pattern.
I needed Olivia.
I found her in the main house, tucked into the corner of the lounge with her laptop and a cup of tea that had probably gone cold an hour ago.
Olivia existed in a state of permanent productivity.
Even on a ranch retreat supposedly designed for unplugging, she’d carved out a workspace and was running reports.
“Got a minute?” I asked.
She glanced up, took one look at my face, and closed the laptop.
“Sit down,” she said.
I sat across from her at the dining table and rubbed a hand over my jaw, trying to figure out where to start.
“This stays between us,” I said. “Not Dex, not Jamie. Nobody.”
Olivia’s expression didn’t change. That was one of the things I valued about her.
Ten years she’d worked for me, first as a production assistant, then coordinator, then operations manager.
She’d held the business together through two rebrandings, a tax audit, and the Natasha fallout. Nothing rattled her.
“What’s going on?” she asked.
I told her about Denise.
All of it. The phone call I’d overheard a week ago through the cracked office door, the fragments that had burrowed into my brain and wouldn’t let go.
Rose mentioning a fencing company called Ridgeline Supply that had charged twelve thousand for an eighty-five-hundred-dollar job, and Denise brushing it off as a rush surcharge.
Olivia listened without interrupting. Her eyes narrowed exactly once, when I mentioned the markup, and I watched her brain switch into the mode I’d seen a hundred times before. The mode where numbers became a story.
“A forty percent surcharge on fencing materials,” she repeated quietly. “That’s not a rush fee. That’s margin.”
“That’s what I thought.”
“How long has Denise been managing the ranch finances?”
“Since the beginning from what Rose has said.”
Olivia was quiet for a moment, her fingers tapping a rhythm on the table that meant she was running calculations I couldn’t see.
“If she’s inflating vendor invoices by even twenty percent across the board, supplies, feed, equipment, maintenance, on a property this size, you’re talking about tens of thousands a year. Over six years?” She shook her head slowly. “That’s not petty theft, Graham. That’s systematic.”
“I know.”
“Have you told Rose what you overheard?”
“No.”
She studied me. “Why not?”
“Because right now I’ve got a phone call and a gut feeling. Rose trusts Denise more than she trusts me. More than she trusts anyone. If I go to her with suspicion and no proof, she’ll defend Denise and throw me out. And she’d be right to, because I’m the one who’s been lying to her about who I am.”
Olivia’s expression shifted. The look of someone who understood the math of the situation and didn’t like the answer.
“You need proof,” she said.
“Aye.”
She pulled the laptop back toward her and opened it. “I can start looking. Public records, Colorado Secretary of State business filings, vendor registrations. If someone’s set up shell companies to funnel ranch payments through, there might be a paper trail.”
“Can you do that without raising flags?”
“It’s public information. Anyone can search it.
” She was already typing, navigating to the state database.
“Give me every vendor name Rose has mentioned. Anything Denise has referenced, companies, suppliers, contractors. Even casual mentions. The more names I have, the more cross-references I can run.”
I thought back through every conversation I’d had with Rose. “Ridgeline Supply is the one I’m sure about. Rose also mentioned a farrier service, something Creek, maybe? And there was a hay supplier she said had raised prices twice this year.”
“That’s a start.” Olivia typed the names into a document. “I’ll pull the filings, look for anything that connects them. Shared agents, overlapping registration dates, addresses that don’t match real businesses. If it’s there, I’ll find it.”
The weight I’d been carrying since that hallway eased, just slightly. Not relief. Just the feeling of not being alone with it anymore.
“Olivia. Thank you.”
She looked up from the screen. “Don’t thank me yet.
Public filings only show what people want on record.
If whoever set this up was smart enough to use layers, holding companies, out-of-state registrations, nominee agents, I might not find anything from a laptop in a ranch house in Colorado.
” She held my eyes. “I’ll do what I can.
But I want you to be realistic about what I can actually access from here. ”
“Understood.”
“And Graham?” She closed the laptop halfway, her expression going serious in a way that went beyond the professional concern I was used to.
“If this is what you think it is, if someone is genuinely embezzling from Rose, then at some point, this is going to need more than me running searches on my lunch break. This is going to need a professional. Forensic accountants, financial investigators, people who can subpoena bank records and trace fund flows. I can look for the smoke, but I can’t kick down the door. ”
“I know. But let’s see what you find first.”
She nodded, opened the laptop again, and was already back to typing before I’d fully stood up.
I was almost to the door when she spoke again.
“For what it’s worth?” Her eyes stayed on the screen. “You’re doing the right thing. Messy, complicated, probably going to blow up in your face, but the right thing.”
“You sound like Dex.”
“Dex would’ve told you to stay out of it.” The corner of her mouth twitched, the closest Olivia came to a smile when things were serious. “I’m telling you to let me help.”
I left her there, backlit by the laptop screen, already pulling apart a problem she hadn’t known existed ten minutes ago.
Outside, the sun was still shining. The mountains were still beautiful. Rose was in the barn. I could hear her voice carrying across the yard, low and steady, talking to the horses the way she did every day. Like they were the only ones who got the real version of her.
I wanted to walk over there. Lean against the stall door. Watch her work and pretend the world was as simple as the one we’d built in her cabin this morning.
Instead, I went to find Hank and asked if he needed help with the fence line.
Because, while I wasn’t lying to Rose anymore, I was keeping something from her, and I hadn’t figured out yet whether that was wisdom or cowardice.