Chapter 1 #2
"No. I'm the dangerous thing here, little brother," Jesse muttered under his breath—Bo Hollister was about to learn that the hard way.
Jesse cut the water. In the sudden silence, he could hear Beckett moving around in the equipment shed, probably sharpening something that didn't need it.
Beckett always got quiet after their father's "business meetings.
" The boy was only eighteen, but he'd already learned to disappear inside himself when the talking stopped and the screaming started.
Jesse had been Beckett’s age the first time Bo had dragged him along to watch a "negotiation.
" A small-time dealer who'd been skimming product, thinking he could outsmart the Hollister family.
Jesse had watched from the corner of a warehouse that stank of motor oil and piss, as his father systematically broke the man's fingers while asking the same question over and over: "You think I'm stupid? "
The man had screamed himself hoarse before finally admitting where he'd hidden the stolen guns. Afterward, Bo had bought Jesse a steak dinner and explained the lesson: respect was earned through fear, and that was established with merciless demonstration.
"Some men need to be reminded of their place in the world," Bo had said, as he cut into his ribeye with surgical precision. "We provide that service."
Jesse had thrown up in the restaurant parking lot afterward and had never forgotten that lesson. Or the helpless look in the man's eyes when he'd realized Bo Hollister had no intention of stopping until all the bones in his hand were broken.
The next day, Jesse had walked into the local Army recruiting station. He’d left Texas a scared kid. He’d returned a battle-tested warrior with a mission and a target.
The walk from barn to house took Jesse past landmarks that marked his childhood like gravestones.
The chicken coop where their rooster, Satan, ruled his domain with the same iron fist Bo used to control Fredericksburg.
Past the vegetable garden their mother tended with religious devotion, as if perfect tomatoes and hot peppers could somehow balance the scales.
Past the workshop where their father taught his sons that a man's reputation was built on two things: what he was willing to do, and what others believed he was willing to do.
Jesse had learned in Delta Force that reputation was a living thing.
It fed on fear and grew fat on whispered stories.
In Fredericksburg, children scattered when a Hollister-branded truck approached.
Shopkeepers found sudden interest in their inventory whenever one of the brothers walked through their doors.
Even the sheriff—elected with Bo's money and kept in line with constant and sometimes painful reminders—avoided The Devil's Acre Ranch unless absolutely necessary.
The Hollister name opened doors and closed mouths.
It bought silence and sold intimidation.
He found a clean shirt in his dresser and dragged it over his head, catching his reflection in the mirror. Jesse stared at his reflection, eyes hard and unforgiving. He had no doubt that many in town saw him as simply his father’s son.
Good. Bo would never see him coming. The resemblance was camouflage, making Jesse seem controllable and predictable.
Let the old man think Jesse was the perfect soldier, the next generation lieutenant following orders and cleaning up the mess.
Underestimation was a blade Jesse had been honing for years.
At six-three and two hundred pounds of ranch-hardened muscle, Jesse Hollister looked exactly like what his father wanted: a legacy molded into flesh, a lethal weapon he could use at any time.
Women crossed the street when they saw him coming.
Men avoided eye contact. Children hid behind their mothers' skirts.
That resemblance was also a curse Jesse wore like a brand.
People saw his face and immediately knew his name and reputation, stepped carefully around him.
He'd inherited Bo's height, his broad shoulders, the kind of physical presence that filled doorways and commanded attention.
The same pale blue eyes that could go from flat calm to lethal in a breath.
The same unblinking stare that made grown men reconsider their next words.
The mirror showed him what everyone saw: a man built for violence, with callused hands that could break bones as easily as they could rope cattle.
Scars marked his knuckles from fights he'd never asked for but always ended.
A thin white line cut through his left eyebrow—Knox's doing, from a training session gone sideways when they were teenagers.
Another scar, tracked along his jaw carved by shrapnel from an RPG.
His body was a map of military engagements and Hollister family business. A constant, inescapable reminder driving him toward one goal: removing the threat to his family, the local ranchers, the townsfolk. His target? His own damned father.
Opening the bottom drawer, he reached underneath and removed the manila envelope velcroed to the underside of the drawer.
Inside were newspaper clippings, copies of bank statements, photographs of maps and routes, and other evidence he'd collected since he returned home—stories about Hollister "business associates" who'd disappeared, about suspicious accidents and convenient heart attacks.
About families who'd packed up and left town in the middle of the night, taking nothing but what they could carry.
This wasn't just a catalogue of his father's crimes, it was his greatest hits album.
A ledger of debts unpaid. Jesse studied them the way Bo examined land acquisition maps, learning his father's patterns, his weak points, the people who might want vengeance badly enough to help when the moment arrived.
The latest clipping was three weeks old. Maria Santos, thirty-four, found dead in her apartment after missing rent payments on the restaurant her family had run for two generations. It was an apparent suicide, according to the sheriff's report.
Jesse had attended Maria's funeral, standing in the back while her mother wept and her sisters held each other upright and her young son asked why Mama wouldn't wake up.
He'd wanted to tell them the truth—that Maria Santos hadn't killed herself, that she'd been murdered as surely as if someone had pulled the trigger.
That her restaurant sat on land Bo Hollister wanted, and Maria had refused to sell.
But speaking up would have destroyed the cover he'd spent years building, so he kept his mouth shut and added her name to the list of those wrongs he would right. One shot, one kill.
The funeral was at Saint Mary's, the same church where Jesse had been baptized as an infant, back when his mother still believed prayer might save them all.
Father Miguel gave a beautiful eulogy about Maria's devotion to her family and her community, about how her bright light had touched so many lives.
What he didn't mention was that he'd been the one to find Maria's body, that he'd called the sheriff instead of the ambulance because one look told him she was already gone, that the "suicide note" had been typed rather than handwritten—suspicious to anyone who cared to look.
But Father Miguel knew better than to ask inconvenient questions.
The church received a generous donation from an anonymous benefactor the week after Maria's death.
Enough to replace the leaking roof and repair the stained-glass windows that had been damaged in last year's hailstorm.
Blood money, laundered through God's house.
He folded the clipping and put it back with the others.
The day he’d burn down his father’s empire was rapidly approaching.
His plan was taking shape: eliminate Bo Hollister, protect his mother and brothers, and sever his family's ranch from the cartel's grip.
The first part was simple—a bullet would do it.
The other two were the problem. Some days it felt insurmountable.
But if his time in the Delta Force had taught Jesse anything, it was that "impossible" just meant you hadn't found the right angle yet.
The study door stood open. Bo sat like a king behind his mahogany desk—a piece that had cost more than most Fredericksburg families made in a year—examining papers with the focused attention of a man who owned half the county and planned to own the other half by Christmas.
At fifty-two, Bo still looked like he could break a man in half with his bare hands.
Prison had carved away any softness he might have once possessed, leaving behind muscle, scars, and the absolute certainty that strength and power were the only currency that mattered.
His father was the epitome of the end justified the means, and the law didn’t factor into the means.
Jesse's earliest memory of his father was from the day Bo had come home from prison.
Jesse had been seven years old, standing beside his mother when this stranger with cold eyes and wild tattoos strolled through their front door.
His mother had cried with joy and called it a blessing.
But Jesse had known better. He could hear the strain in her voice and feel her trembling as she held his shoulder. His childhood was over.
Bo had spent his first week home reasserting his authority over the ranch, over the family, over every aspect of their lives.
He'd fired the ranch manager his wife had hired in his absence, brought in his own crew of ex-cons and criminals, and began putting to work the masters in criminal behavior that he’d earned in prison.
It wasn’t long after that strange men with odd accents and swarthy complexions began showing up randomly on the property, often at night.
Those men had nothing to do with the cattle or the horses that had been on the ranch as long as Jesse could remember.
And then Bo started training his sons for the family business.
Knox had been four years old when his father came home.
Jesse doubted he remembered a life other than this, and outwardly Knox seemed immune to the violence and the corruption.
He’d seemingly been born with a mask. By the time Beckett came along, Bo had his two elder sons under his thumb.
But it hadn’t been easy. Even as a child, Jesse had fought it every step of the way, receiving beatings and punishments until he learned to hide his resistance behind a mask of compliance.
"The Morales ranch is officially signed over." Bo held up a deed transfer without looking away from his paperwork. "I can’t believe he held out as long as he did. But I finally convinced him." The old man's chuckle scraped out like steel on concrete.
Jesse's jaw tightened. Convincing. That's what they called it when a man was beaten beyond recognition and his fingers broken one by one until he agreed to sell his family's land for a fraction of its value.
When his wife was made to understand that accidents happened to pretty women who didn't know their place.
When his children learned that some monsters were real and often wore human faces.
Jesse had stood sentry outside the barn, listening to his father work. He hadn't lifted a finger. But Bo put him there for a reason—backup if things went south, and proof that the Hollisters didn't move alone.
He'd heard Morales’ screams, as the man begged and then broke.
"Good." The word tasted like copper pennies, like blood in his mouth from biting his tongue to keep from saying what he really thought.
"Sit down."
Jesse took the chair across from his father's desk.
The leather was expensive, butter-soft, bought with other people's suffering.
Everything in this room spoke of power carefully accumulated and ruthlessly maintained.
There were first edition books that Bo had never read.
Crystal decanters filled with whiskey that cost more per bottle than most people earned in a week.
A gun safe disguised as a tall gentleman's humidor, containing enough firepower to outfit a small army.
Jesse knew what was in that safe. He'd inventoried it just last month when a new shipment arrived from across the border.
It was full of Glocks and AR-15s, hunting rifles with scopes powerful enough to take down a man at half a mile, and even a few military-grade pieces.
Weapons that would find their way to gang members in Houston, cartel enforcers in El Paso, or anyone with enough cash and few scruples.
His father's empire ran on cattle and guns.
The cattle provided him a cover—legitimate breeding stock, well-maintained herds, sales that could be documented and taxed.
The guns gave them money and power. Nobody questioned a successful cattleman who employed a large number of hands, bought land, or had trucks rolling in at all hours.
Bo had figured out the perfect con: hide a weapons pipeline behind honest ranching and pay or threaten the law to look the other way.
Jesse settled deeper into the chair and watched his father shuffle papers like a pirate tallying his plunder.
Bo had perfected the art of hiding in plain sight.
But Jesse had learned something that Bo never had: every system had a fatal weakness, no matter how big or powerful.
Whether it was a careless courier who used a cell phone, or a criminal who ruled with an iron fist and liked to get his hands dirty long after he should have distanced himself.
You just had to be patient enough to find the weakness, exploit it, and tear it down.