Chapter 10
I wake to the soft glow of dawn seeping through the wooden shutters. The light stretches across the ceiling in pale gold bands. Below, voices rise through the floorboards—sharp, insistent, unwelcome.
Marcus.
I roll onto my side, pressing my face into the cool pillow. The sage-colored sheets twist around my legs, evidence of another restless night. I haven't slept much after Legion.
The argument downstairs grows louder. Colt's voice cuts through, defensive and firm. They're discussing me, of course. Marcus wants to come up here, Cash is tellin’ him no. Marcus has a hard time with rules. But here in the Ashby house, we have a pretty hard and fast one.
No one but family comes upstairs. Ever.
This bedroom might’ve been a stage all growing up, but these days it is mine, and mine alone. No photographs allowed. No social media tours. No carefully staged moments for followers to dissect. After twenty-three years of performin’—and the death of my mother—I carved out this one private corner.
I swing my legs over the edge of the bed, my bare feet meeting the wide-plank floor as the memory of Legion's hands on my skin lingers from the dream Marcus just pulled me out of, and I head to the closet.
The door opens silently. I walk in, scanning the rows of hanging clothes—endless skirts and prairie dresses, boots lined up like soldiers. The uniform of the Ashby heiress, curated for maximum engagement. Hashtag AuthenticRanchLife.
But I’m not in here lookin’ for clothes. I’m lookin’ for secrets.
At the back of the closet, behind winter coats and formal gowns, sits a small panel.
I slide the pocket door open, revealing the elevator door.
It opens when I use my mother’s code and inside there is a single button to press.
The doors close and the elevator descends smoothly.
Forty feet down, past foundation and earth, into solid rock.
It's been a while since the overwhelmin’ urge to see the treasures down here were strong enough to make me actually descend, but today, I crave these secrets like they are life itself.
The safe room is exactly as I saw it last. Temperature-controlled. Enough airflow to create a wind. Windowless, with dim lightin’ that won't damage the hundreds of thousands of photographs that live here in negative form. All cataloged, preserved, and protected.
There are thousands more on contact sheets and archival paper.
I walk between the shelves, past boxes labeled with dates and subjects. Twenty-three years of my childhood, all neatly archived. Every milestone, every "candid" moment, every outfit change.
Sometimes I do look at them—not recently. But sometimes.
Today, though, all I want is what’s in the safe.
It stands against the far wall, ancient and imposing. Eight feet tall, six feet wide, the combination dial is worn smooth from decades of use. It’s been here since before the house was built on top of it. A relic from the early 1900s, something that belongs in a black-and-white bank-heist film.
I stand before it, turning the dial with practiced precision. The mechanisms inside click and shift. It’s filled with private treasures. But I'm not here for those, either.
I'm here for The Book.
I lift it carefully, lovin’ the weight of it in my hands. The red leather cover is soft from handling, the pages thick and heavy.
Then I take it over to the velvet couch in the corner, lower myself down, and open it up.
The first page stares back at me like it always does—a single black and white image of a dust-streaked toddler squattin’ in the dirt.
Blond hair catches the sunlight, standing up in wild tufts.
His small hands grip a matchbox car, but his eyes—those impossibly blue eyes when not dulled to monochrome—look directly at the camera.
Legion Kane. Maybe three years old.
I turn the page with care. The progression is familiar—close-ups of those eyes, narrowed against prairie sun. A series of candids where he doesn't know he was being watched.
Climbing fences, throwing rocks at nothing, sleeping under a tree with his arm flung over his face.
The pages whisper as I turn them. Eleanor arranged these photos by some internal logic only she understood. Mostly age, but there’s several series that span decades, and then the progression will loop back on itself and seemingly start over.
Here's Legion at seven, his school photo taken from an angle no school photographer would choose—slightly below, catching the light in his lashes, making him look celestial and feral all at once.
Then Legion at nine, ten, eleven—leaning against fences, looking outward, always outward, as if searching for hole in a fence he can’t ever escape. His features sharpening with each passing year, baby softness giving way to angles that now cut like glass.
Me and Legion, fourteen and sixteen. She knew. She'd found us… somehow. Her camera capturing moments we thought were ours alone. Kisses stolen behind hay bales. Our bodies stretched beneath stars. My head on his chest, his hand in my hair.
She never said a word. Never confronted me. Just... documented.
My fingers tremble slightly as I turn to the next section. After I left for college when I was eighteen and he was twenty. After I stopped meetin’ him at the silo.
Four years of silence between us while I played the part of perfect college equestrian at Emory & Henry—good lighting, good posture, just enough ribbons to keep my mother’s social timeline humming along.
Four years.
Four missing years where I had no contact with him at all. It nearly killed me, but were in our we-can’t-do-this-anymore era and I was determined to…
To what, Savannah? Prove that you could live without him?
What a waste of time.
Anyway, it was during these missing years that the photos changed from candid shots to composed, intentional, and intimate portraits.
Intimate. I hate that word.
Legion is now in Mother's Drybone studio.
Professional lighting catching the planes of his face and the stretch of his shoulders.
The ink that started appearing when he was sixteen grows as I turn pages.
The battle on his chest, the conquering of demons on his back go from being an image to being a composition.
Each photo reveals more than the last.
Shirt discarded in this one. Jeans riding low in the next. In some, there's nothing but shadow preserving his dignity.
She never photographed his dick, but she got his ass. Many times. All the photos are black and white. Artistic and beautiful.
And in every single one, his eyes hold the same hollow sadness.
Did she pay him? Is that why he did this? Was it money?
I've studied these pages for years and still don't know.
When I reach the last photo, I hold my breath. I always do.
None of the photos are dated, but this one is. It's not her handwriting, either. It's his.
Six months before Eleanor died, she and Legion were in an Ashby truck together. They were on a road, it's summer. Not sure which highway, though I've searched them all over the past seven years, trying to figure it out.
The windows are down. Hair blowin’ all over the place. They're taking a couple's selfie as Legion drives across the sun-drenched badlands.
They are both smilin’. Mother looks... happy. Forty-eight years old and radiant beside him.
I pause.
I reflect.
I accept.
And then I close the book, resting my palm on its cover.
This book isn't motherly.
It isn't innocent.
It isn't okay.
It was never shared. Never monetized. Never digitized.
The one secret Eleanor Ashby never spun into gold was Legion Kane.
The one child she photographed relentlessly and didn't use to make money.
Him.
Not me.
Him.
To the world, she was the mother who made me a brand.
In private, she was the woman who collected a boy like butterfly wings pinned to velvet.
I have questions I will never get answered.
Because only two people know what this book truly is and one of them is dead. I will never ask Legion about this book. Ever. Some secrets should stay buried, even as they haunt us.
I get up, slip the Book of Legion back into the safe, and lock away the secrets that feel too heavy to carry upstairs.
My fingers linger on the dial before I turn away and then the elevator hums as it returns me to my closet, to my life, to the performance.
By afternoon, I'm in the outdoor arena, my heels and lower legs pressing the hidden buttons on Cassia's warm body that will tell her to yield, or shoulder in, or half-pass as we practice the only thing I got out of college—dressage skills.
Meaningless in the grand scheme of things, but very impressive when dropped into an Instagram reel with trending music.
That’s not why I do it, though I do share videos like that on occasion.
I do it because dressage is a partnership between horse and rider at the highest level of trust. No words are spoken.
You’re not allowed to speak during a dressage test. No clicking, no whoas, no words of encouragement when your equine partner does it just right.
The dressage horse is the only animal in the world that has learned to be fluent in a language where hands are syllables, and legs are words, and heels are sentences.
My mare's hooves stir dust that floats golden in the sunlight. My instructor, Madeline, nods approvingly from the center of the ring. "Beautiful extension, Savannah. Now collect her and prepare for the flying change."
I gather the reins, feeling Cassia's powerful muscles respond beneath me. This is the only honest conversation I have most days—between my body and hers, a language of pressure and release. No words needed. No lies possible.
The rhythm of her hooves against packed earth drowns out everything else until I spot him—Marcus—leaning against the black fence rail, arms crossed, watching. His pressed shirt looks ridiculous against the backdrop of working ranch buildings. His polished shoes already dusty.
"Let's take a break," Madeline suggests, noting my sudden tension.
I ignore her, asking Cassia for a flying change instead. Left to right, her legs switching mid-air with balletic precision. I want Marcus to see me controlling something this powerful, this beautiful. I want him to understand I'm not just a pretty face for his campaign posters.
"Savannah." His voice carries across the arena. "We need to talk."
Madeline looks between us, professional enough not to show curiosity. "Perhaps we should end early today?"
"That would be best," I say, patting Cassia's neck. "Thank you, Madeline."
I dismount in one fluid motion, my boots hitting the ground with a soft thud. Taking Cassia's reins, I lead her toward the barn without acknowledging Marcus. His footsteps follow behind me, crushing gravel.
"You've been avoiding me all day," he says, catching up.
"I've been busy."
"Too busy for your fiancé? After what happened last weekend?"
I keep walking, focusing on Cassia's dark mane turning copper in the sunlight. The barn door looms ahead, promising temporary sanctuary.
"Savannah." His hand catches my elbow. "My father is furious. Three donors pulled their support this morning."
I stop so abruptly that Cassia tosses her head in surprise. Turning to face Marcus, I drop my voice low enough that the stable hands can't hear.
"If you do not leave right now and stay away until I call you back, I will break things off publicly."
His eyes widen, then narrow. The political calculation happens instantly behind them—what it would cost him if I walked away. Millions of followers. The Ashby name. The land. The money.
"Is that a threat?" he asks, voice smooth as river stones.
I say nothing. Just stare at him with the emptiness I learned from my mother's camera lens. Sometimes silence is the only power we have.
He straightens his cuffs—a nervous habit I've cataloged along with all his other tells. "We'll talk when you're being reasonable."
I watch him walk away, his shoulders stiff under expensive fabric. Only when his car disappears down the drive do I exhale, pressing my forehead against Cassia's warm neck. She smells like sweat, and summer dust, and everything real.
Inside the barn's cool shadow, I untack her methodically. Each motion practiced until it feels like prayer. The leather saddle creaks as I lift it to the rack, and something in me creaks too—some weight I've been carrying too long.
I bathe Cassia until her coat gleams, speaking softly to her about nothing.
The hose water runs cool over her legs, washing away arena dust. She stands patient, trusting, as I focus on her and only her.
This fourteen-hundred-pound animal who could crush me, but chooses to be my ballet partner instead.
After grooming, I turn her out to graze in the east pasture. Watching her for longer than necessary. She lowers her head to the grass, peaceful and unburdened by expectations.
I don't make a conscious decision. My feet just carry me to the Range Rover, no need for keys, I leave them in glove box when I'm at home.
I don't change out of my riding clothes—the white breeches, the tall boots still flecked with water from Cassia's bath.
My hair is coming loose from its braid and I make no move to fix it.
The engine purrs to life, expensive and obedient. I back out too fast, gravel spittin’ under my tires. Cash's truck is by the main house. He'll know I've gone somewhere.
Let him wonder.
I drive without admitting where I'm going, even to myself. But my hands know. They turn the wheel toward the county road, away from town. Toward the creek bed that separates Ashby land from Kane land.
The road narrows, trees pressing closer on either side. My hands grip the wheel tighter. The diamond on my left hand catches the sunlight, throwing prisms across the dashboard. I should have taken it off. I should turn around. I should call Marcus and apologize.
I don't.
The trailer comes into view and I hit the brakes so hard the seatbelt locks across my chest.
What the hell?
Where Legion's dilapidated single-wide should be stands something else entirely—a brand-new double-wide with fresh charcoal black siding, a wide covered porch, and… shutters.
What the actual fuck is happening here?
I look around. Did I take a wrong turn?
No. There's the Kane mailbox. Still sad and still crooked.
Where the hell did this house come from?
I sit frozen, engine idling. Part of me wants to reverse, pretend I never came. But then the door opens, and out bounces Mercy.
She waves at me from the porch. Smiling.
I don't think I've ever seen that child smile.
"Hey, Savannah!" she calls. "Come inside and see our new house!”