Chapter 15
The heavy sense of dread that has sat solidly on my chest since I started my descent of Barker Mountain doesn’t get any better when Helena finally comes into view.
Why can’t I breathe?
Weston gave me exactly what I asked for.
He let me leave.
I practically begged for this, but something about it feels so damn wrong.
The farther away I drive, the closer I get to the house where I grew up, the nearer to Dad, to hugging him, to seeing that he’s actually all right, the more distance there is between me and the man who has somehow captured my heart and the place that now feels like home.
Everything is so twisted up in my head that I can’t tell what direction I’ve been facing or what’s wrong or right anymore.
All the danger that existed when Dad and I found that axe in the door still exists. It may even be worse because it’s been weeks, and apparently, whatever happened with the Rosewoods hasn’t been remedied in a way that wipes his slate clean. So, I should be happy about leaving the mountain and the graveyard that exists there, where Dad might very well find himself.
But the familiar buildings and surroundings do nothing to help soothe me. By the time I pull into the driveway at Dad’s house, I’m practically shaking.
I turn off the engine and climb from the car, staring up at the window that I used to look out every day, making plans for my future that certainly never included living on a mountain with a reclusive killer who is nearly twice my age.
Or falling in love with him.
God, things changed so fast…
And I have so little time here to try to weed through the bullshit and get answers from the one man who might actually give them to me.
I make my way to the door that still bears the deep gash the axe blade left, twist my key in the lock, and listen for the familiar click. Pushing the heavy wood slab open, I expect to feel an overwhelming sense of relief, but instead, tears form in my eyes, my chest tightening enough to make me stagger back against the door, forcing it shut.
Heavy footsteps sound on the tile, and Dad appears from around the corner in the kitchen, his eyes wide, jaw hanging open. “Callista, oh, my God, he let you go!”
He rushes toward me and tugs me to him, tightening his hold so much that it makes it impossible to breathe. I bury my face in his neck, accepting the warm embrace in the arms of the man who was always there.
When I scraped a knee or needed help with my homework. Bringing me a new book when he came home from a business trip. Offering advice when some stupid boy, who didn’t even matter, made me cry. Giving me literally everything I ever needed my entire life.
And this is exactly what I needed in this moment—confirmation that he’s all right.
Proof that Weston hasn’t been lying to me and keeping me in the dark about what’s happened to him. Though, there are clearly many, many other things he hasn’t told me.
Things I need to know.
Dad pulls back and searches my face. “What happened? Why are you here? I thought…”
I squeeze him to try to stop him from rambling. “I’m okay, Dad. He let me come see you. But…” I chew on my bottom lip, uncertain how to tell him this. “I have to go back. He said a day, two at most.”
One of his graying brows rises. “You think I’m letting you go back to that monster?” He clenches his jaw. “Absolutely not. I’m putting you on a flight, getting you as far away from here as possible. There’s no fucking chance I’m sending you back.”
Only a handful of weeks ago, I would have jumped at that offer and agreed. Now, it isn’t so clear-cut, and with such limited time to sort through the clusterfuck he’s gotten himself into, I need Dad to focus so I can get my answers.
I squeeze him again. “Dad, listen to me. You and I need to sit down and have a talk about Rosewood, about The Beast. I need to know what’s really happening…”
He releases a heavy sigh and backs away from me, rubbing his hand over his thinning head of hair, and I notice how deep the lines have grown on his face over the last few weeks since I’ve been gone.
The stress of the situation is getting to him.
Always so strong and stoic, this is the most unhinged I’ve ever seen him, and I can already see him coming up with an excuse not to have this conversation.
I set down my bag, packed with a few days’ worth of clothes and other items I’ll need, then point toward the living room at the back of the house. “You are going to pour us a drink, and then you and I are going to sit down and we’re going to talk about Rosewood.”
He releases a heavy sigh, one full of acquiescence, and nods.
Thank God he is not going to fight me on this.
It’s been hard enough trying to get it out of Weston, and I don’t want to argue with Dad.
Not about this.
Not about anything.
All I want is answers, the truth.
So that, maybe, just maybe, I might be able to get him out of whatever quagmire he’s gotten himself into without any bloodshed on either side.
He motions for me to follow him into the house.
I kick off my shoes and walk down the same hallway I have for thirty years, the eerie quiet surrounding us raising goosebumps on my skin. “Where is everyone?”
Normally, at this time of day, Toni, our housekeeper, would be buzzing around cleaning, making lunch and starting on her dinner plans, chastising Dad for putting his feet up on his desk or the coffee table. Evan, our gardener, would be outside somewhere, trimming the perfectly manicured hedges or moving the expansive lawn Dad prides himself on so much. But none of those normal sounds or smells fill the air.
Dad swallows thickly, then walks over to the bar in the living room and pours two bourbons, turning back to me and handing me one. “I let Toni and the rest of the staff go.”
“You what?”
His hand tightens around his glass, knuckles whitening. “I didn’t want them here. I didn’t want them to get caught up in any potential crossfire.”
“Crossfire? Dad, what the hell? I’ve been trying to get Weston to tell me what’s going on, but—”
He narrows his eyes on me, the green that matches that of my own darkening slightly. “You’re on a first-name basis with The Beast now? What the hell is going on up there, Callista?”
Shit.
I turn away from him and walk to the window, staring out at the mountains in the distance. The same view I grew up looking at my entire life now looks completely different. One peak holds memories of that man, of what he does to me—mind, body, and soul.
My hand shakes as I raise my glass to my lips and take a long sip of the spicy liquor. It burns going down my throat and settles in my stomach, warming me on the inside while I still feel the chill of the air on Barker Mountain on my skin as if I were still up there.
“This isn’t about Weston, Dad. This is about you. Tell me what you did. You wouldn’t tell me before I went up there, but now, I think I deserve to know.”
Not to mention need to if I have any chance of helping him.
Another bone-weary sigh falls from his lips, and he rubs the back of his neck with his free hand, then settles into the oversized leather chair he always favors directly in front of the fireplace. “It was stupid…”
“What was stupid?”
His gaze flicks up to meet mine. “I should have done my research. I shouldn’t have gone after them.”
“Gone after who?”
Between Weston and Dad, all this cryptic talk is going to drive me to violence.
“The Rosewoods.”
I approach him slowly and lower myself onto the couch facing him, setting my drink on the coffee table between us. “From what I can gather, they have some sort of business partnership with the Barkers…”
Devouring more of the journals in the days it took Weston to finally agree to let me come didn’t offer me much more relevant information about the current situation, just confirmation that the two families were thick as thieves for generations. Working in tandem, they established dozens of businesses and enterprises that brought in billions for both families.
Yet, I’ve never even heard the name Rosewood before any of this, which suggests something changed between the years covered in the last volume I examined and today.
And that something is likely important to all of this.
Dad takes a long sip of his drink and nods. “I swear I didn’t know the connection. I thought I understood how everything worked around here. I mean…” He releases a sardonic laugh. “I’ve lived here my whole life, but I never even heard of them before all this.”
At least I’m not alone in that.
“Who are they?”
He offers a shrug, then takes a long sip of his drink. “They own a bunch of trucking companies and warehouses and run the entire Port of Montana facility.”
Which is why I don’t know them.
I’ve spent my entire life in and around Helena.
Though the facility isn’t any more than an hour and a half away, it wasn’t anywhere Dad would have ever taken me for anything.
“So, what happened with them? It’s clear you have some sort of business that I know nothing about. You’ve kept me in the dark about something big my entire life, but I think it’s time you fill me in so I can understand what’s happening.”
The look in his eyes tells me it’s the last thing he wants to do.
“No fighting me on this, Dad.”
He grabs his bourbon and downs half of it, apparently trying to drink his courage. “My import business, it isn’t all completely legal…”
Shit.
I kind of gathered that, given everything that’s happening and some of what Weston said to me, but hearing the words from my own father is something else entirely. But this isn’t the time to chastise him about his life choices and ethics, so I swallow the rebuke sitting on the tip of my tongue in favor of urging him to continue.
“Okay, so?”
“So…” He turns the glass in his hand. “I help people acquire things that they can’t get into the country easily. Things that would spark investigations or sanction from the government.”
“Like what?”
A million possibilities flash through my head.
None of them good.
He stares into his drink rather than look at me. “It could be anything. Drugs, guns, antiquities. Hell, I even have one client who has a thing for ivory.”
“Jesus, Dad, what the hell are you thinking?”
He winces. “It wasn’t always like this. I just…business got bad in the last few years. I had to try something else, offer a service no one else did to bring in new customers so that—”
His gaze cuts to me as he stops himself.
“So that what?”
He shakes his head. “I don’t want you to think this is your fault.”
“How could any of this have anything to do with me?”
“I was paying for your college tuition. I was paying for this house, keeping you in the lifestyle you were accustomed to. If something were to happen to me, I didn’t want you to end up like I was at your age—broke and alone.”
Oh, God.
Bile climbs up my throat, and the sip I took of my drink sours in my stomach. “You did all this for me?”
He gives me a sharp nod.
It makes everything ten times worse—that all of this could have been prevented so easily if he had just told me about his financial situation before he went and did something stupid.
“You should have come clean, Dad. You should have told me it was happening. I would’ve told you I don’t need all this. I don’t need any of it. Just you, safe. But now it’s too late.”
Nodding slowly, tears shimmer in his eyes. “I know, but I’m trying to fix it.”
“What exactly did you do?”
He purses his lips, then downs the rest of his drink with a hiss. “I went behind the Rosewoods’ backs. Instead of paying them a ‘service fee’ to ensure my shipments made it through customs and their warehouses smoothly, I tried to divert products or intercept them before they arrived in the port to remove any contraband.”
Fucking hell.
Circumventing them means massive financial losses, something I bet they’re not very happy about.
“I don’t have to tell you how stupid that was…”
He shakes his head. “No, you don’t. And if I had known they were backed by the Barkers, I never would have even attempted it. Now I’m just scrambling, trying to undo the damage.”
“Do you really think that’s possible?” The tremble in my voice gives away the panic that’s welling inside me, that I’ve been trying so hard to keep bottled up in front of him. “When you came up to get me, you already knew then they’d never let you walk away, right?”
It took me far too long to realize it myself. But they won’t.
The Barkers don’t just accept apologies and reparations and send people on their way. Anyone who crosses them either ends up under Barker Mountain or stays beholden to them forever.
Dad gives me a hard look, the true terror and worry in it matching my own. “I know. I’ll probably be stuck under their thumb for the rest of my life, but at least I’ll have one. And if I can get you out of here, so can you.”
Sweat pours down my back and off my brow, dripping into my eyes, stinging and burning as I slash away at the massive tree lying across the edge of the clearing.
Just one of several I’ve decimated over the last two days.
Swinging this axe and physically exhausting myself has been the only thing I’ve been able to do to keep myself from completely obsessing over the fact that she’s gone, that I let her walk away, drive down the mountain, with no guarantee that she’ll come back other than her word.
What the fuck was I thinking?
It was easier to justify my decision on day one when I was still confident that she needed to see her father to stay content. When I was convinced she needed it to even consider staying here with me like I so desperately want her to do, after the Rosewood situation is resolved.
Nightone was harder.
I couldn’t stay out here indefinitely, driving my axe blade into these poor trees that have done nothing to deserve my ire but stand tall and strong for centuries. Which meant I had to return to the house. To the library. To the bedroom. Neither made my anxiety any better.
Both places are so Callista. Filled with her things, her scent, her presence. So much so that the fact that she’s gone only stands out more sharply, like a knife twisting in my heart. And knowing I’m the one who drove the blade right there by allowing it to happen made it impossible to sleep or work.
Today, my frustration has only grown as the sun moved across the sky, working its way toward evening.
Because she’s coming back.
I expected her by now, before it started to get dark, because coming up that road without light is treacherous on the best day, and the light drizzle starting to fall now that the front has moved in will make it downright deadly.
My blade catches in the log, interrupting the rhythm I’ve been working for hours, attempting to lull myself into some sort of trance that might keep me from flying off the handle and doing something really stupid.
Like going after her.
Bracing my boot on the wood, I wiggle the axe head free and take a moment to catch my breath and turn my face up to the cooling rain.
The same soft movement I’ve heard in the perimeter of the clearing all day starts again.
Gray isn’t even trying to be stealthy today.
He steered clear of me for the first few days after his almost-attack on Callista and has finally grown bold enough to test me out to see if he’s been forgiven.
I ignore him.
Partially because I’m not over what he almost did to her that night but mostly because I have something more important to worry about—what is happening to Callista now.
Worry eats away at me, the pain of it making me wince as I return to my task, trying to push it away long enough to regain control of myself.
I swing the axe again, and woodchips fly with each strike. It only takes a few more before I finally make it through, then kick the piece off to the side with the others.
With the shed already more than stocked, all the work I’ve been doing has produced so much excess wood—both for fire and construction purposes—that I won’t have to touch another tree on this mountain for months.
Unless she doesn’t come back…
If that happens, I may down every single one on this peak out of sheer fury.
Where are you, Callista?
I glance at my watch again, confirming what my biological clock and the darkening night have already told me.
She’s officially late.
Well beyond the time we agreed upon for her return.
My phone buzzes in my pocket, and I grimace, letting my axe fall to the ground so I can pull it out and check the message. Likely another asking about the status of the surveillance equipment.
There are only so many excuses I can make for its continued “malfunctioning,” so many lies I can tell before they won’t work anymore.
Another complication to add to Callista’s non-arrival.
I read the screen, and my legs almost give out from under me. Staggering forward, I lower myself onto the remnants of the tree trunk I’ve been destroying and reread the words, hoping I got them wrong.
You shouldn’t have let her go.
“No. No. No. No. No.”
Shoving to my feet, my boots slip in the growing mud from the increased rain, and I only make it a few steps before I have to stop to think, my head spinning with the different possibilities.
I’ve failed.
Her absence has been noted.
But that doesn’t mean I need to panic…yet.
Taking a deep breath, I fire off a reply that I hope buys me time to get her back to the mountain.
She’ll be back.
That’s what she told me.
What she promised.
Callista is a lot of things, but a liar isn’t one of them.
Don’t be so sure. You seem to have forgotten your place. Perhaps you need to be reminded of it.
My blood runs as cold as the rain falling around me as I reread words because I know them for what they truly are—a very real threat to the woman I’m not so sure I can live without anymore.
Everything has changed.
I stare at the screen, trying to remember what it was like before my entire life was turned upside down, before she came into it and literally flipped everything on its head.
But I can’t.
Because I wasn’t really living then.
I was merely going through the motions. Sleepwalking through each day and night. Caring for the house and the land and doing the dirtiest part of the Barker family work.
And I never could have imagined the decision I made thirty years ago that set me on that path would throw her directly into the crucible.
My hands tremble as I type, my barely contained rage making me see red despite the darkness surrounding me.
You better not touch her.
I send my response, but deep down, I already know what the next reply will say.
It pops up and validates my worst fear.
An empty threat from a man who hasn’t left the mountain in 30 years.
Callista isn’t back when she promised to be.
Something happened to her to prevent her from returning. And it wasn’t her leaving town with her dad like I had feared.
It’s something much, much worse.
I grab my axe from the ground and storm toward the edge of the clearing, unadulterated fury coursing through my veins, making my muscles tighten almost painfully.
There’s only one thing I can do.
I have to go after her.
The thought of leaving the mountain after three decades turns my stomach, but she’s too important. I can’t lose her. No matter how difficult it might be for me to face what waits below.
I run toward the trail leading to the house, but Gray steps out from the tree line, blocking my path and advancing on me slowly, cautiously after our last confrontation.
He knows he did wrong.
The penitent look on his angular face and the soft furrow of his brow are all the evidence I need to know he won’t do it again and how concerned he is about my frantic behavior.
I burrow my fingers into his thick fur, rubbing across his neck as he leans into my touch. “I have to go, boy.”
He quirks his head at me, confusion written in his yellow gaze.
I’ve been with him up here every single day of his life. Never left him. Never left the mountain. But now, I don’t have a choice. I have to go find her, make sure she’s all right, and bring her back—regardless of what or who may try to stand in my way.
Pushing past him, I run toward the house. The sound of his paws hitting the damp earth behind me fills my ears as a river of guilt and regret, the same curse I’ve lived with for so long, suddenly charts a new course.
Away from the lives I took and couldn’t protect back then to the one in peril now.
I should have known this would happen, that growing close to her would only put her in more danger, that allowing things to go this far with her would put a target on her back.
But now, it’s too late to truly keep her safe.
All I can do is try to stop the fallout.
I reach the house, throw open the door, and scramble to find my keys before hauling ass out to the truck parked around the side of the porch.
Gray follows me closely, and as soon as I open the driver’s side door, he jumps into the cab, just as he has a hundred times over the years to accompany me on the drive down the mountain to pick up supplies from the base.
I point to the ground. “No, you can’t come with me this time.”
A wolf in the city would draw too much attention, more than I’m already potentially going to by being there myself.
He offers a soft whine but obeys and leaps from inside the cab and out into the mud, dipping his head as he backs away.
“You watch the place while I’m gone.”
I climb in, tug the door closed, and start the engine, throwing it into drive before I even click my seatbelt into place.
The long, zigzagging road to the base of the mountain typically takes an hour when it isn’t raining, giving me time to think, which is the last thing I want.
Memories of the last time I made this trek and actually passed beyond the border of our property and out into the real world assault me violently.
A different frantic drive.
Another race against time.
One I lost.
I curse and try to push them back, but they force their way to the forefront of my mind.
The loud voices.
The gunfire.
The harsh sting of betrayal.
All of it more painful each time it comes.
I won’t let her get sucked into this. I can’t let her get hurt. Not if I can help it, not if there’s any way to stop it.
I am coming for you, Beauty.
I just hope it’s not too late by the time I get there.