Chapter 25
T hat motherfucker.
I knew he was playing a long game; I just hadn’t fully figured out which one until now.
Charlie had barely closed the door before I was crossing the room, the zoning board rejection letter still in my hand.
I read it again. Slowly this time. Line by line.
Government language always dressed itself up in neutrality—clean font, white space, terms like “ineligible” and “noncompliant” as if they weren’t razor blades in bureaucratic drag.
And I was willing to bet good money that Thatcher was behind it.
I sat down, opened my laptop, and pulled up the encrypted folder where my private investigator had dropped the report two days ago—the one I hadn’t opened yet, because I’d told myself it didn’t matter—that I was overreacting. That Charlie was allowed to date whoever the hell she wanted.
But now? Now I wanted every fucking detail .
The subject line was simple:
RE: Background – T. Prince.
I clicked. Prince. What a fucking joke.
The file was ten pages. I read it with the same attention to detail I gave any high-stakes contract—slow, exacting, looking for the cracks buried between the lines.
Thatcher Allen Prince, age 31. Born in Naples, Florida.
Parents divorced. Mother remarried twice.
One biological sister, two stepbrothers.
Graduated from Tulane. GPA: 3.1. Double majored in Business and Environmental Policy.
Interned with a corporate PR firm. Hopped from startup to startup.
Eventually landed at a boutique real estate development company—Mariner Horizon Group—where he was now listed as Lead Acquisitions Liaison for Southeastern Coastal Development.
A pretty title for a snake in flip flops.
Mariner Horizon. Of course. The same company lobbying for the historic preservation district changes in Bellwater Cove.
The same group that sponsored the zoning review panel’s “community initiative” last year.
The same developers quietly buying up every property between Beach Plum Avenue and Driftwood Point—properties that suddenly couldn’t renew commercial permits.
Because their new rules didn’t allow it. Because they’d written those rules.
My jaw locked.
Thatcher didn’t just charm her. He came to her with purpose .
He’d been targeting her before Charlie even laid the tile in her goddamn kitchen.
And she had no fucking clue. She thought he was some casual guy with a strong jawline and a laid-back smile.
A safe rebound. A warm body. She didn’t know she’d invited a fucking vulture into her life.
I scrolled down.
He lived four streets over from the bakery, in one of those aggressively rehabbed coastal lofts that cost way too much for the square footage. Address: 11 Honeysuckle Way. Lease start date: March 1st.
Two months before Charlie moved back full-time —which meant he got here first. He chose that unit, and every jog he took past her bakery, every time he “just happened” to be nearby—it wasn’t coincidence.
I stared at the lease start date and wondered, bile rising, Had she been there? Did she stay in his loft, thinking he was this great catch? Drink his wine? Let him touch her with hands that were always working a fucking angle?
I scrubbed a hand down my face. Closed my eyes. I wanted to go downstairs, right now, and tell her.
But I didn’t.
I needed more. I needed proof, a strategy, something I could walk into a courtroom with—or a board meeting—or a goddamn town hall full of second home retirees and locals who didn’t know they were being manipulated by development vultures.
I clicked download on the full dossier and saved it to a drive. Then I opened a new tab and started searching public zoning records. If Thatcher Prince wanted a war, he’d picked the wrong fucking woman to target.
Charlie might not be mine, but I sure as fuck wasn’t about to let him win—I’d take him down like a king laying siege for Helen, and I wouldn’t stop until his gates fell and his name was ash. And I just might pull a Trojan horse out of my sleeve.
I didn’t tell anyone I was leaving. Didn’t need the questions.
I traded gym shorts for slacks, a pale blue Oxford, and my comfiest pair of loafers—business casual armor for a town that liked its sharks smiling. No tie. Top button undone. I didn’t want to scare the locals, but just get them talking.
I climbed in the golf cart, threw my laptop bag in the back, and took off toward the village center with just enough speed to keep my hair pulled back by the wind. It was time to start digging.
The storefronts of Bellwater Cove glowed soft in the late-afternoon haze, with their quaint pastel storefronts and window boxes dripping with summer blooms. The idyllic facade made it easy to forget that this place had powerful undercurrents beneath the porch swings—old money moving hands in silence and people like Thatcher Prince feeding on the cracks.
I started at the little print shop two blocks down from Charlie’s bakery.
The woman behind the counter—gray curls, tortoiseshell glasses, attitude like steel-wool—told me she’d been operating since 1996.
She had her permit grandfathered last year without so much as a hiccup.
I thanked her, complimented her business cards, and moved on.
Then I stepped into the jewelry store. A woman with frosted lipstick and a name tag that said “Lou” told me she’d had her permit renewed last year. “No issues,” she said. “They were real sweet about it. Said I was part of the historic fabric.” Whatever the hell that meant.
Next was a yarn boutique. Then the record store. Then the art gallery that doubled as a co-op espresso bar. All still running. All grandfathered in. No issues. No denials. No threats from the zoning board.
Every single one of them said the same thing: “Yeah, the process was a little slower than usual, but they said it was no big deal. Just paperwork.”
Except it was a big deal for Charlie—and, apparently, for Arlo Greaves, the proprietor next door to the bakery. The frame shop was closed when I got there, but the new “Sold” sign in the window was clear enough. In smaller font beneath it: Buyer Represented by Cove Title Group.
I recognized the name. It was a dummy company, one of the shell LLCs used in Mariner Horizon’s last two development flips. They weren’t even hiding it anymore.
That’s when I crossed the street. The bookstore was still open.
I walked into dim light, floor fans running, the smell of dust and old paper bleeding out through the screen door.
A man behind the register—early fifties, beard, denim apron—looked up from his paperback and nodded when I stepped in.
“Need a beach read or something more ambitious?” he asked.
I smiled. “Looking for a story, actually. But not the kind on your shelves.”
He raised an eyebrow. “You here about the zoning stuff?”
That earned a raised eyebrow from me. “That obvious?”
He grinned. “You’ve got the face of someone who’s read too many emails and not enough fiction. And I saw you looking at Arlo’s for sale sign and Charlie’s place across the street.”
“Ah, yes. I’m her attorney, Fitz Whitmore. She just got her use permit denied.”
He grimaced. “That’s some horseshit. That place’s been serving sugar longer than I’ve been shaving. Used to be a candy shop when I was little.”
“Do you know the story behind the frame shop getting sold?”
“Bits. But Maya’s the one you want.” He jerked his chin toward the back.
A woman appeared from the hallway behind the register—sharp-eyed, wearing a cream linen blouse, with a notepad tucked under her arm. She was already scribbling. “So you’re digging into zoning permits and the issues they’re having across the street.”
“Just getting started.”
“Well.” She smiled. “Let’s compare shovels.” She reached out to shake my hand.
“I’m Maya Torres,” she said. “My husband’s Beau, nodding to the man at the register.
I’m with the Bellwater Beacon . And I’ve been following the zoning bullshit since they started redrawing the district last year.
Those godforsaken developers want to come in here and build up luxury condos.
” She shook her head in frustration. “The whole world is turning into luxury condos—nature and local charm be damned.”
She took a breath and, with a nod of agreement from me, she kept on her rant.
“They’re claiming to preserve Bellwater, but all they’re doing is rewriting the map to profit from who’s left behind.
How absurd is it that they could reject local shops that have been here for years but then build a bunch of condos in the same space since it would be zoned as ‘residential’. ”
“Exactly.” We talked for the next half hour, her eyes burning the whole time. I was tucking away all the history and background she could give me, thinking that I may hear something useful.
But then she dropped the hammer without even knowing it . “I bet Louise is sure glad she sold the properties when she did,” Maya lamented. “She was the one who owned the antique store that used to be in Charlie’s bakery.”
I puzzled on her comment for a second, and then asked, “Propertie s ?” I emphasized the plural in a questioning tone.
“Oh yes. Louise Ellery. She also owned the coffee shop next door. There were two storefronts, but they were connected, literally. There was an interior door between the two for years. She sold packaged snacks and teas and coffee beans out of both.”
My mouth went dry. “Are you sure?”
“Yes, honey. I’m from here. I used to go in there all the time,” Maya said, flipping her pen between her fingers. “You could walk straight from the espresso counter into the corner with the vintage postcards and the glass candy jars. It was weird, but it worked. Everyone just called it Ellery’s.”
“And that connection…” I rubbed the back of my neck. “That would mean the property had continuous food-use activity during the exact window the zoning board cited as a lapse.”