Chapter 2
CHAPTER TWO
JESSE
"You got something on your mind, boy?"
Bo's voice held the deceptive calm of deep water, hiding the dangers beneath the surface.
Jesse had witnessed that tone freeze grown men mid-sentence, watched it make hardened criminals piss their own pants.
But he'd long ago learned to read the warning signs—the slight tightening around his father's eyes, the way his fingers drummed once against the desk before going still.
Those were the tells that said Bo was testing him, assessing for weakness, ready to pounce on any sign of disloyalty or doubt.
"Just thinking about Morales."
And calculating how much longer I can stomach this before I put a bullet in you, were the words he didn’t say aloud.
"The man's got kids." Jesse kept his voice level, empty of emotion.
"What the hell does that matter? The man had land we need." Bo leaned back in his chair, studying his eldest son with the attention of a scientist examining an interesting specimen. "You having second thoughts about the family business, Jesse?"
The question hung in the air like smoke from a house fire. Jesse had learned to lie better than most. His father could smell deception like a bloodhound tracking a fugitive.
"No, sir."
"Good. Because we got bigger fish to fry than some two-bit cattle rancher.
" Bo pulled out a map of the Hill Country, spreading it across the desk.
Red dots marked properties already under Hollister control.
Blue dots highlighted the targets still in play, most especially the one ranch in Gillespie County his father hadn't yet acquired.
Jesse examined the map with the clinical precision he'd once reserved for mission briefings. The Blue Fork Ranch, owned by the Bishop family, sat on the southern edge of the county like a defiant middle finger, unmarked and untouched.
It straddled Highway 87, a key route of their operation. With their land, Bo would control an unbroken chain from the border to Interstate 10, perfect for moving weapons north and money south. Pull that piece from the board, and the corridor was compromised.
When Bo locked onto a target, the countdown began. The Bishops' fate was already sealed. They just hadn't realized it yet.
This was the opening Jesse had been so patiently waiting for, the vulnerability he would exploit. It was only one ranch, one family, but they had the power to dismantle his father's empire and break the cartel's stranglehold on the county in one stroke. It was perfect for what Jesse had planned.
Anticipation charged through him while cold certainty took root behind his ribs. It wasn’t satisfaction, not yet, but the grim resolve of a man who'd finally found the thread that would unravel everything.
"The Bishops have been holding out too long," his father continued. "It’s time to make them an offer they can't refuse."
Jesse knew the pattern. First came the polite offer to buy. Then the not-so-polite insistence. Then the demonstration of what happened to families who didn't know when to fold.
The Bishop name was highly respected in Fredericksburg, an old ranching family with a spotless reputation.
The kind of people who still believed the law meant something.
They ran a large herd of cattle, bred saddle horses, and generally kept to themselves, which in Bo's world made them either useful or dangerous.
More than that, Jesse knew about the girl.
Raven Bishop. He'd spotted her around town, her sharp eyes cataloging every detail, every interaction.
She was only a year older than Beckett, and she'd been tailing Jesse for weeks now, though she probably thought she was being subtle about it.
Jesse had caught her twice, her beat-up Ford truck maintaining a careful distance while she documented his movements.
Raven Bishop was playing a dangerous game, and she didn't even know the rules yet.
"What's the timeline?"
"This week. I want their signatures before Sunday.
" Bo traced the Bishop property line with one thick finger.
"They got prime grazing land, good water rights, and a strategic location for moving product. Martin Bishop is already taking a few payments from me to look the other way when we cut through their land. But I’m looking at a major increase in traffic according to our partners in Mexico and now I want to control that land. "
Bo Hollister served as the cartel’s well-compensated middleman, his operation growing by leaps and bounds.
He refused to move drugs or people, not out of any moral compass but from the belief that using the same system for all of their illegal traffic would draw too much attention.
Regardless, the money was obscene. Cash arrived in duffel bags and a portion was deposited in local banks as business receipts.
It left the accounts in wire transfers to the Cayman Islands.
Enough was left in cash, held in a large vault underneath the barn, to buy judges, sheriffs, state legislators, even federal agents.
Enough to make the Hollisters untouchable in every way that mattered.
But the true cost was measured in more than dollars.
Jesse thought about the gang violence in San Antonio, Austin, Dallas, and other points throughout the southwest. The school shootings, the bodies that kept piling up from weapons that had passed through this network.
Every gun his father moved meant someone's mother getting a call in the middle of the night that would destroy her world.
Bo counted the money and never looked at the bodies downstream of his operation. But Jesse did. He kept track of every single one.
"If he’s taking payments, does he know about our operation?"
"He knows we’re moving something. The man’s not stupid." Bo's expression darkened. "That's what makes him dangerous. Smart people pay attention and ask inconvenient questions no matter how much you pay them."
"You want all three of us there for this one?"
"Just you and me. Knox is handling the Sanderson problem, and Beckett's got school." Bo folded the map with military precision. "Besides, this should be easy enough. Bishop is no fool. He'll come around with the two of us."
Jesse nodded. Occasionally, his father tried the carrot first—cash, favors, and promises—before resorting to the stick. But make no mistake, he preferred the stick, and that came wrapped in violence and blood.
Jesse wanted to call it what it was: theft, dressed up with legal paperwork and justified by the mantra "might making right".
"One more thing." Bo's voice carried the casual tone that meant the most important part of the conversation was just beginning. "Word is the Bishop girl's been asking questions around town. Nosy little thing, apparently."
Jesse's pulse kicked up, though he kept his expression carefully neutral, already calculating angles. "What kind of questions?"
"The wrong kind." Bo opened his desk drawer, revealing the chrome-plated .45 that never left his side. He didn't touch it, just let it sit there like a sleeping snake. "It might be worth having a conversation with her. For educational purposes, you understand."
Jesse definitely understood: Bo wanted him to terrorize the Bishop girl, maybe worse, all in service of the empire.
But the assignment itself was valuable as it would give him an excuse to be around the Bishop place by himself.
Another piece of the puzzle clicked into place. One more obstacle eliminated.
Perfect cover.
The image of Raven Bishop flashed through his mind. Her dark hair and piercing eyes, moving through town with the kind of confidence that came from not yet knowing how dangerous the world really was. She was young, maybe nineteen or twenty.
He briefly wondered why she was asking dangerous questions, but quickly put it from his mind. Her “why” didn’t matter, only the opportunity it provided to him.
"I'll take care of it."
"See that you do." Bo stood, signaling the end of their meeting. "And Jesse? It’s time to put that extensive military service to work here. A man who can't do what's necessary ain't much of a man at all."
Jesse rose from his chair, jaw clenched against what he actually wanted to say. "Yes, sir."
He made it halfway to the door before Bo's voice stopped him.
"Your mother's making pot roast tonight. Family dinner, six sharp. Don't be late."
Jesse nodded and stepped into the hallway, closing the study door behind him.
His mind was already three moves ahead as he climbed the stairs to his room.
A girl who asked questions. A remote ranch that Bo coveted.
A father who thought his son was broken and controllable.
The pieces were finally aligning and his father would never see the bullet coming.
Two years of waiting, of planning, of playing the dutiful son, of swallowing his rage while his father destroyed families. It was finally time to make his father regret ever coming home from prison. Soon, very soon, he’d have his father in his crosshairs. One shot, one kill.
Somewhere in the house, he could hear his mother humming while she cooked, the sound fragile and desperate as prayer.
It was "Amazing Grace," the same hymn she'd sung when Jesse was a boy. She’d been beautiful once before Bo had come back into her life.
He'd seen the pictures. She'd been a young woman with hope in her eyes and a smile that didn't look like it cost her something to maintain. Now her smile was fragile. From the outside looking in, she was forty-eight going on seventy, a compliant tool in Bo’s manicured cover story.
He knew, though, that it was just another mask in the family.
After he’d joined the Army, when Bo was away, his mother had snuck letters to the post office to him overseas.
They spoke of her hope and desperation, her concerns for Knox and Bennett, and her pride that he’d found a way out.
He knew the risk she was taking putting those things in writing and had come to understand it was her way of clinging to hope.
Since he’d come home, they had taken to having coffee together in the morning and playing gin in the evenings, only having real conversations when Bo was safely out of town.
She never questioned where the money came from.
Never openly acknowledged that her husband was a monster and her sons were being trained to follow in his footsteps.
She instead hummed hymns in the kitchen, cooked elaborate family meals, and pretended everything was fine. A dutiful wife with a role to play.
Outside, the Texas sun climbed toward its noon throne, promising another scorching day in a summer that refused to break. Jesse walked toward the barn, past a bloodstain that would eventually fade but never quite disappear. Just like everything else at The Devil's Acre.
His phone buzzed with a text from Knox: Sheriff's asking questions about Morales. Told him the man decided to relocate for his health.
Jesse typed back: Copy that.
Jesse stared at the message until the screen went dark, then slipped the phone into his pocket.
Across the pasture, cattle moved in lazy patterns through grass that grew green and thick on land irrigated with well water and blood.
In the distance, he could see the red clay road that led to town, where decent people lived honest lives and told themselves that evil was something that happened to other people in other places.
Jesse walked past the workshop where his father had taught him to reload ammunition and sharpen knives.
Past the storage shed where they kept the industrial bleach and lime that made bodies disappear.
Past the garden where his mother grew vegetables with the same desperate precision other people used to pray.
Everything at The Devil's Acre served a purpose.
Even beauty was weaponized here, turned into camouflage for the ugliness underneath.
Visitors saw a successful ranch, all manicured lawns, perfect fence rows and fresh paint.
They didn't see the soundproof basement beneath the barn or the furnace that burned too hot or the patch of ground where nothing would ever grow again.
Soon, the Hollister name would darken another doorstep. Another family would learn that in Fredericksburg, Texas, there were two kinds of people: those who bent the knee to Bo Hollister, and those who got buried under The Devil's Acre.
Jesse stopped at the edge of the pasture, gripping the fence post until his knuckles went white.
Somewhere in town, Raven Bishop was gathering evidence she thought would matter.
She had no idea she was about to become leverage in a war she didn't know existed.
His father wanted him to silence her. But Jesse had other plans.