Chapter 32 Chaos
Chaos
My brother and stepdad are leaning against Tate’s truck when I pull up. I climb off my bike, joining them in a standoff of crossed arms and frowns.
Tate is pissed at me, which is nothing new. I’m used to being the disappointment in my family.
Never could keep my shit together when I was younger, and that got worse after Mom died. The last person who saw anything good inside me left this world, so I figured, why not embrace the chaos?
Everything was spiraling; I could too.
Mom was the heart of this place, and when she died, I couldn’t find the heartbeat in the land anymore. It was empty and incomplete.
Now, looking around, I realize I was too busy staring at my losses to see what was right in front of me, because Mom and Grandpa are still here in ways that can’t be denied.
Like the bright purple barn. A beacon at the center of the property. Mom picked the color, and Tate hated it. It’s one of the few battles she won, and to this day, it stands, painted the same color she chose. Chipping. Worn. But purple. She thought the animals deserved a splash of color.
Mom was raised by generations of ranchers, so she was a tough woman. As evidenced by the tough men she chose to love. But she was gentle with me and Kincaid. She was kind to others.
Her heart was bigger than anything the three of us deserved.
Then there’s Grandpa. His legacy lives in the beams of his house. In the long-standing fenceposts. It’s in every plank of wood, whether it’s been replaced or not. He’s the foundation of what this became.
Mom’s and Grandpa’s presence permeates this place, and even if I don’t plan to stay, I’m going to protect it for them.
Tate glances at my bike, frowning. He always had a lot to say about bikers growing up. They’d roll through town, wreaking havoc, and he’d bitch about it for months after. He claimed they were bad news, as if he was one to judge.
At least my club contributes to our community. We look after our own. While Tate rules Lanceleaf through fear and blackmail.
I tuck my hands into my pockets, facing off with my stepdad. “You called me here to talk. Talk.”
“Why the hell would we bring you here?” Tate scoffs. “You asked to meet with us. Figured you decided to finally give up gracefully.”
My eyebrows pinch because I didn’t ask them to meet with me. But clearly, they aren’t responsible for this either.
Something’s not right. I pull my hands from my pockets and flex my fingers. Someone set us up.
I’m about to grab for my gun when the rumble of an engine comes from the distance. A familiar orange truck crests the horizon with a trail of dirt behind it.
“Gordon Elliott,” I grumble, putting the pieces together. “Let me guess, your lawyer was the one who told you I wanted to talk?”
“Yeah.” Kincaid steps forward.
“Same. Probably figured that was the easiest way to get us all in one place.”
“Fucking prick.” Kincaid stands at my side, the closest we’ve been in years, while we watch Willa’s father make his way down the road.
No matter what happens tomorrow, Gordon is out of the picture. If Tate and Kincaid win, they’ll sell the land. If I do, I’ll make sure Gordon is paid off and cut out. He’s done as far as the ranch is concerned.
So why did he arrange this meeting?
What’s his plan?
We’re quiet as Gordon takes the final turn into the ranch. We stand in a line, watching Willa’s father pull to a stop beside my bike.
His metal door creaks when he swings it open. The window rattles as he slams it shut.
“You called us here?” Tate is the first to speak.
“Figured it was time we all had a little chat.” Gordon’s smug grin makes me want to cave his face in. “Get us all on the same page for once.”
“You’ve been cut out,” Tate says. “You’ll get back your investment when we sell the land, but other than that, you’re done.”
For the first time, I see how bad the blood is between my stepdad and Willa’s father. Not that they were ever the best of friends. One was always manipulating the other. But I didn’t sense it turning into this. When I was younger, they had an understanding.
“I don’t think I am done yet.” Gordon smiles, but there’s nothing nice about it. “Willa made a mistake.”
“She’s no longer part of this,” I warn him, looking from Tate to Willa’s dad. “Leave her name the fuck out of your mouths.”
Gordon throws up his hands in a mock surrender. “We had an arrangement long before she went running back to you, Dean. You can be angry all you want, but Willa knew what she was agreeing to. She was as much a part of that deal as I was.”
“Because you were blackmailing her with shit she didn’t do.”
“She’s no angel.”
“She’s no killer either.” My teeth clench as my nails dig into my palms.
Three steps, and I could so quickly turn him into a bloody mess in the dirt.
“She sure has your panties in a twist.” Gordon’s head cocks to the side, checking me out. “She got you wrapped around her finger quickly. Is my daughter that good at keeping you happy, Dean? You don’t even care that she had your brother first?”
I reach for my gun, and Kincaid throws an arm across my chest, stopping me.
“He’s baiting you. Think about it.” Kincaid’s jaw tenses, and I hate that he’s right.
Gordon is baiting me. But what’s even stranger is that my brother cares to stop me from pulling the trigger. When we were younger and on better terms, he looked out for me as much as I looked out for him. It’s been a long time since that’s been the case.
“Guess blood really is thicker than water.” Gordon looks between us. “Too bad that doesn’t mean shit when it comes to business. Which is why I’m here to set some things straight. Consider it a favor for Tate breaking our agreement.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?” Tate’s cheeks are red, his eyes twitching with anger.
Gordon steps forward, arms crossed over his chest. “We had a deal. I help you bury the ranch in debt, and you make sure this land is worth it to us someday.”
“That’s what we’re doing.”
“You’re taking the easy way out. This land is worth more for what’s under it than what’s on the surface. We had an agreement on how this would be handled.”
Tate’s jaw clicks. “Things change. This is the cleaner path.”
“For you.” Gordon’s eyes narrow.
“It’s too late to go back. We already have investors lined up to buy the land once the judge allows the sale to go through.”
“I know. Which is why I’m done trying to negotiate with you.
I’ll take it up with the real owner instead.
Or should I say, the rightful one.” Gordon reaches into his back pocket, pulling out a folded stack of papers.
“It’s not the original. That’s already been handed off to Dean’s lawyer. But you get the picture.”
“What is that?” I ask while Tate snatches the papers from Gordon’s hand.
“What are you doing with this?” Tate seethes, flipping through the document and tossing it in the dirt.
“My daughters are more like me than you realize. Prettier, but just as dangerous.”
“Watch your fucking mouth,” I warn him.
“You should be thanking me, Dean.” Gordon grins. “I just handed your lawyer all you need to take ownership of this ranch. Your grandfather’s missing will. Although, it never really was missing, was it, Tate? Just misplaced?”
Kincaid scrambles, picking up the papers off the ground and unfolding them. We both read the words in his hands, and Gordon is right. It’s a will signed by my grandfather. A will I thought didn’t exist.
“I know I was supposed to make that disappear—like the poison we used to kill the cattle. But I had this feeling you might decide to back out of our bargain, so I made sure to hold onto it just in case.”
“Why would you help him?” Tate’s eyes narrow on me. “Dean isn’t going to agree to sell mineral rights either.”
“I don’t need him to agree. Like you said, there’s no going back to the original plan. All that matters now is fucking you over. I’ll get my piece either way. Dean will have to buy me out if he wants me gone.” Gordon shrugs.
“You—”
“You fucked me over.” Gordon cuts Tate off, stepping forward. “Did you really think I wouldn’t do something about it?”
My mind is spinning as I grab the stack of papers from Kincaid’s hands and read through the will. Grandfather named me the beneficiary of his estate. He left me the ranch. Everything. For the last year, I’ve been fighting a battle I’d already won. The ranch was mine all along.
The shock on Kincaid’s face tells me I’m not the only one who was in the dark about this.
Folding the papers, I shove them into my back pocket.
“You’re welcome,” Gordon says smugly.
“This doesn’t make us good.”
Gordon shrugs. “I can live with that. All I want is my cut and to watch him fall.”
Tate’s eyes widen as Gordon looks at him again. Everything shifts, and I sense the tension snapping the moment before it happens. One second, we’re standing in a circle, the next Tate is reaching behind him for a gun that was tucked under his shirt.
Gordon sees it too, hurrying for the truck and ducking behind it. But Tate is quicker, and Gordon takes a bullet to the leg before finding cover.
“You aren’t getting away with this,” Tate says, spinning so the gun is aiming for me. “And you aren’t getting shit.”
I duck down, narrowly avoiding the three shots Tate aims my way. Kincaid takes a stray bullet when Tate misses, but it barely grazes his arm.
We duck behind the tractor beside the house, holding our guns to our chests as Gordon and Tate continue their shoot-out.
“Let me guess, you didn’t know about the will?” I ask Kincaid, both of us breathing hard.
“No.”
“Fuck. He always was up to something.” My teeth clench. “And you never could see through it.”
“What was I supposed to do, Dean? It’s not like you were here holding things down when Grandpa died and shit really fell apart.”
“You still played your part in this.”
“Yeah, and where were you?”
I hate that he’s right. He was here, and I wasn’t. It isn’t enough to forgive him, especially for what he did to Willa, but we’re the product of what our parents made us. Both fucked up in our own ways.
Tate tries to glance around the tractor but pulls back when a bullet hits the wheel.
“For what it’s worth, I thought Willa really did choose me at first,” Kincaid says. “I didn’t know she was just protecting you until after you were gone. And then I was just fucking pissed. At her. At you. At everything.”
“So you treated her like shit?”
He shrugs. “I didn’t say what I did was right. It just is what it is.”
That much, I believe.
“This doesn’t make us good,” I remind Kincaid. “Far from it.”
“Yeah, figured.” He huffs.
Gunfire ceases, and I look in time to see Tate take a bullet to the chest. Red blooms on his shirt as he stumbles backward. His angry gaze moves from Gordon to me, and even with Gordon still firing, he aims at my head.
He aims at the person he’s really mad at.
Because my mother showed me affection.
Because I was the heir to the ranch.
Because I wasn’t his blood, and he couldn’t manipulate me.
Rage fills his eyes as he aims for me, but I’m faster. I lift and shoot once without an ounce of regret. The bullet lands in the center of his forehead.
Tate falls, and I turn my attention to Gordon, but he’s already too weak to lift his gun and try to shoot me. It slips from his hand as he bleeds out in the dirt.
I storm over to him, grabbing him by the collar. “You don’t get to die this fucking easy. You deserve to pay for what you did to Willa.”
“What I did to her?” He grins, blood pooling between his teeth as he chokes. “I didn’t pull the trigger. I didn’t shoot my daughter.”
Blood freezes in my veins. I wasn’t talking about who shot her, but he is. Which means he knows who did it. It wasn’t someone from Vegas like I thought.
“What are you talking about?” I shove the gun against his temple. “Who shot Willa?”
“They’re just like me,” Gordon whispers, his smile dimming. Before he can say more, he’s gone.
“Fuck,” I yell, shoving Gordon to the ground as I push to my feet.
Tate’s body is twisted on the porch while Gordon lies dead in the dirt. Kincaid stands stock-still between them, looking from one to the other with blood on his hands.
Maybe I should pull out my gun now and finish him off too.
My brother hasn’t been on my side in years.
He hurt Willa. He fucked up my life. Still, that pesky bit of my mother’s faith whispers in my ear, and I know he wasn’t the one who staged this mess.
They pulled his strings just like they did hers.
Just like they did mine.
I might never forgive my brother, but I’m not taking his life. I’d rather have him suffer long and hard anyway. Like Willa did for all those years.
“Who was he talking about?” I ask Kincaid. “He knew who shot Willa.”
My question seems to snap him out of his shock.
Kincaid looks over at me, shaking his head. “I didn’t see it.”
“See what?”
He wipes his hand down his face. “When Grandpa died, Eden came to me. Things were falling apart with Willa long before that, but she waited until then to get close.”
“Yeah, and you fucked her.”
“That’s not what I’m talking about.” Kincaid shakes his head.
“Eden works at the law firm that drew up Grandpa’s will.
She had to know that it existed. Gordon couldn’t trust Willa because she and I were having problems. But Eden was still willing to help him.
She was so determined to keep it all together.
It started to change her. She was so… angry.
I didn’t realize she’d take it this far. ”
“How far did she take it?”
“This morning, I noticed one of my guns was missing when I went to grab this.” He holds his gun in his hand.
“I didn’t think anything of it because it was possible I set it aside and forgot to put it back.
But I didn’t. I remember putting it back.
There’s only one person who knew the code to that safe.
I told her when I was teaching her how to shoot a few months ago. ”
“Eden?”
“She was always jealous of Willa. I thought it would get better when Willa finally left, but it didn’t. It just changed. I think— Fuck.” Kincaid starts to pace, and my arms prickle with that same feeling I got right before I went to prison.
I knew something was going to come down on us, so I drove straight for it. I took the fall before anyone else sensed it happening.
My throat is sandpaper when I meet Kincaid’s gaze. There’s nothing but fear there, and all the pieces come together.
How Ghost couldn’t track any of Zane’s men to Texas.
How Kincaid’s gun went missing.
How the person disappearing into the night got away so easily when I rolled up on my bike.
How Gordon said the person who shot Willa is just like him.
It was in front of us all along.
“Eden shot her sister.”