Chapter Eight #2
“Narrowly escaped. He made it out alive and ran. Story is he hid in the woods for a day and a night until he knew the natives had gone. Then he went looking for his friends, to see if there was any way to take their bodies home to their families.”
She clenched her fingers in her lap, drawn into the easy rhythm of Hawk’s voice and the meaning behind the tale. “And?”
“McCrae was still alive. Hurt bad, but alive. Your great-great-grandfather carried him out himself—hauled him for miles and miles, over this rough terrain—and got him to the nearest village that happened to have a doctor.”
A cold sensation moved through her, close to vertigo, like the ground was unstable the closer the ripples got to her own family. “Did he make it?”
“No.” Hawk’s voice dipped low, gentle. “I know that because the doctor who treated him was my forefather.”
She blinked.
“Family legend on my side is that he did everything he could to save McCrae. But it wasn’t enough.”
The weight of the story settled over her. Not only the horror of her great-great grandfather surviving a brutal attack, or that he’d carried his friend countless miles trying to save him.
What she never could have guessed was that her and Hawk’s family histories had become tangled together more than a century before either of them were born. And now they were walking the same mountains their ancestors once had.
“So Eli was the only one who made it back.” Her voice wavered, almost quieter than the music of the stream.
“He was the only one who made it back,” he repeated, punching the point home. “Which meant he was the only one who knew about the gold. Story goes that the three prospectors vowed the only people they would ever tell about the mine were their sons.”
Her breath caught. “So there was gold?”
He nodded. “Winthrop couldn’t bear to ever return to the area after what happened and what he’d seen.
But he wasn’t going to let his friends die for nothing.
He couldn’t carry all of the gold on his own in addition to getting McCrae out.
But what he could carry, he split three ways.
Gave a share to each of the dead men’s families. And he kept the rest for himself.”
“That sounds fair.” A surge of pride rose inside her, an odd emotion when the story was so thick with tragedy. But knowing that her ancestor was honest, just as her own father had been, touched her.
“It was fair. But it didn’t stop some people from being angry about it.” Hawk picked up a small stone from the ground beside him. He turned it over in his fingers but didn’t look at it. “Eli invested what he kept. He did it well too—built it into a fortune that could span generations.”
He gave her a direct look.
She bowed her head.
“That’s your family’s fortune. A hundred and some years of good decisions built on top of one man’s share of gold.”
Her chest burned with more pride. “And the McCraes and Callahans?”
“Didn’t do the same. Some say they mismanaged it. Or they had worse luck.” Green eyes met hers. “Or never got a fair share to begin with.”
She swallowed a sudden lump in her throat, already shaking her head, rejecting that possibility.
He dropped the stone into the stream with a soft plop.
“Whatever the truth, those families didn’t end up wealthy.
And watching the Winthrops build an empire while their own families struggled…
well, people started saying Eli knew more than he ever let on.
That he’d found the main vein and never told anyone.
That there was a mine out here somewhere he’d kept for himself, and the gold he split three ways was just a fraction of what he actually found. ”
The water rippled by, sparking with sunlight and shimmering around the rocks.
She let out a sigh. “And that’s the legend.”
“That’s the legend. People have been looking for that mine for over a century.” He studied her in a way that made her think he was holding back, like he was weighing his words. “Which makes me wonder…what it is you’re actually out here looking for, Sinead.”
She didn’t answer right away. She stared at the steam curling off the spring’s surface as she turned the story over in her mind.
And feeling her father’s part in all of it.
He’d never said a word about the three prospectors or gold. She never knew where her family’s wealth had originated—it never mattered when the important part was the businesses they’d built over the generations that continued to expand and adapt to the changing world.
But if people in this area knew the tale, her father might have known too.
Not once in all his years had he spoken of it.
He’d let her grow up assuming Winthrop Holdings had simply always existed, built on some vague foundation of shrewd nineteenth-century investments, the way old money was always claimed to be built.
He hadn’t told her any of it, and when he died, only left her a note that said nothing more than look where the ridge bends twice. And sent her out here alone with a shovel and absolutely no hint about what she was supposed to find.
Unless this was a test.
Once the thought formed, she couldn’t shake it. Her father had spent her entire life doubting her.
She knew that as well as she knew her own name. Knew it, in every board meeting he’d let her sit in but never speak at. Every decision he’d made without consulting her until it was finished. Every time his stare passed over her like he was searching for someone else to take her place.
He never believed she was strong enough. It didn’t matter how many deals she made on the side, amassing more wealth for Winthrop Holdings. No matter how many places she traveled, how many languages she spoke or how competently she carried herself in rooms full of men twice her age.
Because she hadn’t been born a son.
Maybe this was his last attempt to see if she could prove herself and pass this test.
Maybe he’d sent her into these mountains, alone, with nothing but a cryptic note and a century-old family secret because some part of him needed to know—even from beyond the grave—whether his daughter had it in her to survive what two other men hadn’t.