Chapter 2 – Ben
Chapter
Two
BEN
“I hate to break it to you, but you’re out of time, Benjamin.”
Henry’s voice carried through the east wing of the old Stonewood hunting lodge like a death sentence, low and steady as a hammer falling.
The man didn’t shout. He didn’t have to.
Fifteen years in special forces and another fifteen years as my father’s head of private security for the Stonewood family had carved authority into every damn syllable he spoke.
I looked up from the half-disassembled generator I’d been pretending to fix just to keep my hands busy.
Cold wind slithered in through the warped windowpanes, making the scars across my ribs twitch and burn.
My knee ached. My throat tightened. Something in Henry’s tone told me this wasn’t about maintenance, or schedules, or another lecture about leaving the lodge more than twice a month.
No… whatever this was, it was bad.
He stepped fully into the room, rain-dampened boots thudding against the old wooden floor, a thick leather-bound folder tucked under one arm like it was a weapon. His face didn’t change much these days, but the set of his jaw was enough to make my stomach drop.
“What the hell are you talking about?” I asked, wiping grease on my jeans.
Henry didn’t hand me the folder.
He tossed it onto the table between us like it might bite.
The leather folder hit the old pine with a dull, heavy thud, the kind that sank through your chest and settled somewhere behind your ribs.
Henry didn’t say anything at first. He just stood there dripping cold rainwater from his coat, boots leaving dark, wet prints on the floor.
I stared at the folder like it was a cottonmouth, coiled and ready to strike.
“Go on,” Henry said quietly. “Open it.”
The gentleness in his voice was somehow worse than if he’d barked an order at me.
I dragged it closer but didn’t open it yet. The Gulf Coast rain hammered the roof overhead, relentless and cold. The wet chill soaked through the window frames, seeped into the walls, and found its way in through every crack in this place. It always had.
“What is this?” I finally asked.
Henry’s green eyes softened. It was little more than a flicker of sympathy, but I caught it.
“It’s a clause from your father’s trust. A clause set up to remain valid, even after his death.” He unbuttoned his coat, shaking off the rain and hanging the coat up on the rack to his right. “He wrote this part himself, and he made sure it would be ironclad, no matter what happened.”
My pulse kicked up speed, suddenly thrumming in triple time.
I narrowed my eyes, staring at my father’s former right-hand man, who was still the head of private security for the Stonewood family… for me, since I was the only one besides my stepmother who remained.
“What kind of clause? Why did he create it, and what did he want from me, Henry?”
“This is… old,” Henry added, wincing. “From long before your accident. He wrote it when you were still attending Stonewood Preparatory Academy, right around your eighteenth birthday, if I’m remembering correctly.”
I went stone still.
Before the accident meant before my coma, before my scars, before my brakes mysteriously malfunctioned and my entire life got turned to scrap metal and blood and broken glass when that goddamn deer came through the windshield of my Porsche 911 Turbo and almost killed me.
My father created this clause before I lost three years of my life to black nothingness and waking up on a ventilator to discover that my father was dead and my stepmother had conveniently relocated to a country with no extradition.
I swallowed hard and glared down at the leather folder.
“I was a different person back then, Henry. Surely, whatever this is, it was intended to punish my idiotic teenage tendencies, but I’m not that boy anymore. I haven’t been since the accident. Whatever this is, it can’t be fair to hold me to it—”
Henry exhaled slowly through his nose.
“Ben… your father wasn’t trying to punish you.”
My stomach twisted.
“Somehow, I doubt that.”
“He was trying to save the Stonewood family legacy, and — more importantly — he was trying to save you from yourself.”
I finally flipped open the folder and squinted down at the pages inside it.
There it was: a printed clause, thick with legal jargon, my father’s signature bold along the bottom of the page, and my name typed clean and sharp across the top, alongside a date from over ten years ago.
My throat closed up as I scanned what it said.
“This is completely unfair, not to mention insane.”
Henry spoke again, his voice low and painfully gentle.
“Your daddy loved you, but you were—”
“I was a goddamn disaster,” I muttered, squeezing my eyes shut as my shoulders slumped in defeat.
Henry didn’t disagree.
“You were the party boy prince of Stonewood, even though you were only nineteen,” he said. “Drinks, women, money burning a hole in your pocket… You lived like the world would just hand you everything you wanted forever.”
My jaw flexed painfully. What he didn’t say was that the world probably would have continued doing exactly that, if not for my accident destroying my good looks and turning me into a reclusive monster.
“If only he’d known what was coming, he would never have done this to me.”
Henry’s voice softened even more.
“He was afraid you’d never settle down… that you’d waste the family fortune on fast cars and bad decisions.”
The corners of my mouth tugged up into a humorless smile. Ironic how that turned out.
I had both a fast car and a very bad decision to thank for the map of scars carved into my skin. The brake failure wasn’t my fault, but speeding like a reckless idiot was.
My eyes dropped back to the clause laid out in front of me.
If Benjamin Jacob Stonewood does not take a legally recognized spouse by midnight on December twenty-fourth, upon the year of his thirtieth birthday, all Stonewood assets and holdings will transfer in full to Vivian Leigh Stonewood.
It hit me like a punch to the sternum.
“Why Vivian?” I rasped.
Henry’s jaw tightened.
“Because she was your father’s wife at the time, he trusted her, and because he never imagined she’d become what she became after the accident. I don’t imagine he thought she’d manipulate his medication and cause his death while his only son was in a coma, either.”
The rain pounded harder against the roof of the hunting lodge.
“He couldn’t have known she’d try to pull the plug on you when you were in that coma,” Henry added, his voice colder. “He never believed she’d run the second the board pushed her out, and he had no idea she’d leave the whole goddamn country before his body was even cold.”
A deep ache pulsed beneath the scars on my cheek.
“This clause is going to make my life a living hell, not to mention the life of whoever ends up shackled to me.”
“This isn’t your father punishing you,” Henry said.
“This is your father loving the hell out of you… and having no idea how much you were going to lose. Once she started fucking with his medications, he wasn’t thinking clearly anymore, but he never lost his love for you, or his desire to see you step up and become the Stonewood heir you were always meant to be. ”
I closed the folder, trying to hide how hard my hands were shaking.
“And if I don’t get married before Christmas Eve,” I said, “my stepmother — who we’re pretty goddamn sure killed my father, even if no one can prove it — gets everything that should rightfully be mine.”
Henry gave a grim nod.
“Every building, every acre, every account, every future Stonewood investment, plus Ashgrove House, the hunting lodge… all of it.”
A hollow laugh scraped out of my chest.
“Jesus H. Christ. We’re so fucked.”
Henry stepped closer.
“Ben, listen to me.”
I looked up and arched a brow at him.
“You are out of time.”
The words landed like a hammer blow to my chest.
“I know—”
“And the only option you have left,” Henry interrupted, his voice firm but not unkind, “is the one we planned four years ago, right after you met Chrissy. We have to enact The Game… the bride selection, the tests, the decoys... all of it.” He paused for a long moment.
“And, if you want her as badly as I think you do, then you need to find a way to bring the girl into it.”
My heart stuttered at the thought of the one girl who’d touched me without flinching after my accident, the one girl who’d treated me like a human being instead of a boogeyman or a piece of local lore.
I’d spent the past four years watching her from a safe distance because getting close might break me in ways my accident never could.
Chrissy Jones.
Henry nodded toward the folder.
“You have a deadline, Benjamin, and you have a woman you want more than anything. You just need a way to bring her to you.”
My heart hammered, equal parts dread and desperate hope, but I nodded.
Henry finished softly, “It’s time to set the Game in motion.”
I didn’t breathe for a long moment. Then, I closed the file with a final, decisive snap.
“Do it,” I said. “I’m trusting you to get everything in order. Let the Game begin, old friend.”
Henry nodded once, the motion slow, grave, and loyal.
“Of course, sir.”
And just like that, the countdown to Christmas Eve began.
December 9
The west wing of the hunting lodge was colder than the rest of the place, half because the insulation was older than sin and half because I kept the vents closed so the computers and screens that displayed the security feeds didn’t overheat.
I didn’t need this room warm. I didn’t need it to be comfortable. I needed it quiet and private and cold.
Henry and I had spent the past ten days putting all the preparations we needed for the Game into place, and I was itching to see how things would play out.