Chapter 34
SEBASTIAN
I stand in my office, looking at the files Caroline compiled while I was in Montana. Phone records. Security footage. Witness statements. Everything points to Adam Johnson as the source of the leak.
Twenty-two years old. We hired him last spring because he is great with horses. The kid’s quiet and keeps to himself. Nothing remarkable until you look closer and see a thirty-second call from his phone to a number registered to the Marshalls’ ranch the night before our raid.
One call. That’s all it took to set up an ambush that got my father shot and turned my life upside down.
My phone buzzes. Nathaniel.
“Adam’s in the barn. When do you want to handle this?”
I look at the clock. Four thirty. Lennox will be out riding for at least another hour. The other ranch hands will be finishing up evening chores. Good timing, public enough that word will spread, private enough that we can control the situation.
“Now.” I head down to the barn, my jaw tight with barely controlled fury. This kid sold us out. He gave the Marshalls information that nearly got people killed. And for what? Money? Threats? Some misguided sense of loyalty to our enemies?
Nathaniel waits outside the barn with Pete and two other senior hands, Miguel and Stetson. Men who’ve been with us for decades. Men I trust with my life.
“He’s inside?” I ask.
“Stall eight. Doesn’t know anything’s wrong.” Nathaniel hands me his phone, already connected to a call.
“You found him?” Dad asks.
“We found him. You ready for this?”
“Been ready since I got shot. Make him talk, Sebastian. I want to know everything.”
I hand the tablet back to Nathaniel and walk into the barn.
The kid’s exactly where Nathaniel said, brushing down a mare who’s been worked hard today. He looks up when he hears my boots on the concrete, smiles like nothing is wrong.
“Mr. Drake. I didn’t know you were back from Montana.”
“Got back yesterday.” I move closer, keeping my body language casual. “How’ve things been here? Any problems while I was gone?”
“No, sir. Everything’s been smooth. Pete’s got us running a tight schedule.”
“Good. That’s good.” I lean against the stall door. “Pete tells me you’re one of our better hands. Says you’ve got a real talent with horses.”
“Thank you, sir. I try.”
“How long have you been with us now? Six months?”
“About that, yes, sir. I started in the fall, to help with roundup.”
“You like working here? Feel like part of the team?” I ask. I lean against the stall door.
Something flickers in his expression. Wariness, maybe? “Yes, sir. It’s a good operation. Fair pay, good conditions. I’m grateful for the opportunity.”
“Grateful enough to be loyal? To protect what we’ve built here?”
“Of course, Mr. Drake. I wouldn’t—” He stops, seeing my expression change.
“Wouldn’t what, Adam? Wouldn’t betray us? Wouldn’t sell information to our enemies? Wouldn’t set up an ambush that got my father shot?”
The color drains from his face. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Yes, you do.” I straighten, and Nathaniel appears in the doorway with Pete and the others. Blocking Adam’s exit. “You made a phone call the night before the raid. Thirty seconds. To a number registered to the Marshalls’ ranch. What did you tell them?”
“Nothing! I didn’t, it wasn’t—” He’s backing up now. The mare senses his panic and shifts nervously.
“Don’t lie to me.” My voice goes cold. I want to yell, but we’ll have a mess on our hands if this horse gets spooked. “We have the phone records. We have the number. We know you talked to them. So the only question is, what exactly did you say?”
“Mr. Drake, please.”
“What. Did. You. Say.”
His back hits the far wall of the stall. Trapped. “They approached me. Said they knew things about my family, about my past. Said they’d make problems for me if I didn’t help them.”
“So you chose to betray us instead?”
“I didn’t have a choice! They were going to, they said…” He’s shaking now. “They said they’d hurt my little sister. She’s only sixteen. Lives in town with my mom. They knew where she goes to school, what route she walks home. They showed me pictures of her.”
“So you gave them information about our raid. Told them when we’d be coming, which routes we’d take, how many men.” Nathaniel’s voice is hard. “You set up your own crew to be ambushed.”
“I didn’t know they’d actually shoot anyone! I thought, I thought they’d just…” Adam slides down the wall, his face in his hands. “I thought they’d scare you off. Make you back down. Not actually hurt anyone.”
“My father has a bullet wound that says otherwise.” I grab Adam by his shirt, haul him to his feet. “You almost got people killed. Good men. Your friends. The people who trusted you.”
“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean—”
“Sorry doesn’t fix this.” I shove him against the wall. “Who contacted you? Who’s your handler at the Marshalls?”
“I don’t know his name; he just calls himself T. Calls from different numbers, always burner phones. Says if I don’t cooperate, my sister—”
“Where’s your sister now?”
“Home. In Madera. Why?”
I pull out my phone, call Caroline. “I need security on a sixteen-year-old girl in Madera. Adam’s sister. Name?”
“Kayla,” Adam whispers. “Kayla Johnson.”
“Kayla Johnson. Get her and the mother to a safe location. Now. Don’t tell them why, just get them somewhere Marshall can’t reach.” I hang up, look at him. “Your sister will be safe. But you’re done here. Pete, get him off the property.”
“Wait, no, please, I need this job, my family needs the money.” Adam is begging now, desperate.
“You should have thought of that before you betrayed us.” I turn away, disgusted. “Get him out of my sight.”
Pete and Miguel grab the kid and start hauling him toward the barn exit. He’s still pleading, still making excuses, but I’ve stopped listening.
Nathaniel appears beside me with the phone and hands it to me.
“You believe him?” Dad asks.
“About being threatened, yes. About not knowing they’d shoot, that I’m less sure about.” I run a hand through my hair. “But it doesn’t matter. He made his choice. Now he deals with the consequences.”
“What about his sister? Caroline going to get her?”
“Already handling it. We’ll put them up somewhere safe until we’ve dealt with the Marshall situation.
” I wait for my father to say something, but he’s quiet.
And when my father is quiet, it’s dangerous.
“This doesn’t end with Adam. Thomas Marshall is escalating.
Threatening families. Using teenagers as leverage.
They’re not just stealing cattle any more. ”
“No. They’re trying to destroy us. Completely,” Dad says. “We need to respond. Hard. Show them we’re not backing down.”
“Agreed. But carefully. Last time we went in hot, you got shot.” I move out of the barn into fading daylight. “Let me think about this. Figure out the right move that doesn’t get more people hurt.”
“Don’t think too long, son. The longer we wait the more they’ll interpret it as weakness.”
“I know.” I end the call and hand the phone back to Nathaniel. “Look into Adam and his family, see how bad off they are, and let me know. Don’t do the exit paperwork yet. Take him to his sister, I’ll figure out what to do with him.”
“Getting married made you a softie?” Nathaniel asks with a quick arch of his brow.
“Nate, if it had been Caroline, or one of the twins, we would have done the same thing. This family can’t fault him for trying to protect his,” I say.
“My thoughts too. I just wish he’d come to us first. What about the authorities? Should we go to them? Sheriff? Police?”
“Not yet. Adam’s family being threatened complicates things. Makes him a victim as much as a perpetrator. Plus, getting law enforcement involved means questions about why we raided the Marshalls’ property in the first place.” I start walking toward the house. “We handle this internally. For now.”
“Sebastian?”
“That’s final.” I stop, turn back. “But I want security doubled. Every hand who works this ranch gets vetted again. Deep background checks, financial records, family situations. Anyone who could be compromised, we need to know now.”
“That’s going to cost a fortune.”
“Good thing we’ve got more than one fortune. We’re under attack. Thomas Marshall is playing dirty, using families as weapons. We need to know our people are loyal. Really loyal. Not just compliant because they’re scared.”
Nathaniel nods. “I’ll coordinate with Caroline. Get the process started.”
“Good.” I pause a second at the fence, hand on a post. “Nathaniel? Keep this quiet from Lennox for now. She’s got enough to worry about, without adding Marshall’s threats to the list.”
“You sure that’s smart? She should know what’s happening.”
“I’m sure. She’s just got back from Montana. Just said goodbye to her family. I’m not dumping this on her immediately.” I continue toward the house. “Give her a few days of relative peace.”
I go straight to my office, close the door and lean against it. My hands are shaking, adrenaline from the confrontation, fury at Adam’s betrayal, fear about what Thomas Marshall might do next.
They threatened a sixteen-year-old girl. Used her as leverage to force Adam to betray us. That’s a line crossed that can’t be uncrossed. And it means they’re desperate. Desperate people do dangerous things.
My phone rings. “Got the girl and mother. Taking them to the house near Austin. They’re scared but cooperating. What do you want me to tell them?” Caroline says as doors close on a vehicle.
“Tell them the truth, that someone threatened Kayla to get at us. That they’re safe now. Adam will join them tonight. And that we’ll take care of them financially until this is resolved.” I run my hand through my hair and sigh.
“How long is that going to be?” she asks quietly.
Good question. How long will it take for us to deal with our neighbors once and for all?
“However long it takes. Keep them safe, Caroline. And keep this quiet. I don’t want anyone knowing we moved them.”
“Understood.” The call ends without a goodbye. I should be offended, but that’s Caroline.
I sit at my desk and pull out the files on Marshalls’ operation. Try to see angles, options, ways to respond that don’t end with more bloodshed.
But every scenario I run ends the same way: escalation. More conflict. More blood.
Marshall has made his move. Now we have to respond. The question is how much we’re willing to risk to win.
A knock on the door.
“It’s me.” Lennox’s voice, and my worry settles.
“Come in.”
She enters, still in riding clothes, her hair windblown, cheeks flushed from the ride. Beautiful and real and utterly unaware of the storm building around us.
“Everything okay?” she asks, reading my expression. “You look tense.”
“Just ranch business. Nothing urgent.” The lie comes easily. Too easily. “How was the ride?”
“Good. Duchess missed me. Took her a mile before she stopped trying to test boundaries.” Lennox moves closer, studies my face. “What happened while I was gone? And don’t say nothing. I can tell something’s wrong.”
I should tell her, I argue with myself. She has a right to know the ranch is under threat, that we’ve found the leak, that the Marshalls are using families as weapons.
But I’ve just got her back from Montana. Dumping this on her now feels like breaking a promise I made to be better.
“We found the leak,” I finally say, honesty winning out. “One of the newer hands—Adam. Marshall is threatening his family, forcing him to give them information about the raid.”
“What happened to him?”
“Caroline has the sister and mother on their way to Austin; Adam’s on his way there, and until we can resolve this, that’s where he’ll stay.” I stand and move to the window. “It’s handled.”
“Is it? Because you look like there’s more to it.”
“Marshall made this escalate; we have to respond.”
“How?”
I turn to face her. “I don’t know yet. But they’ve gone from disputing the property line to cattle rustling to blackmailing my ranch hand in little over a month. Something needs to be done.”
“Talk me through it. I might not have any ideas, but at least you can sort it out,” she says as she sits in the chair.
“Please, Lennox. We’ve just started making our relationship mean something. Let me keep you out of the ugliness for as long as I can.”
She studies me for a long moment, and I see the calculations happening behind her eyes. Trust versus self-preservation. Partnership versus protection.
“Okay,” she finally says. “But if this gets worse, if the danger escalates, you tell me. You don’t hide things because you think I can’t handle them. Deal?”
“Deal.”
She stands and moves closer, her hand finding mine. “We’re supposed to be partners now. That means facing things together. Even the ugly things.”
“I know. I’m just, I’m trying to give you space to breathe before reality crashes back in.”
“I don’t need space. God, I shot a man for this family, Sebastian.
As far as I know he’s dead, so can you stop trying to shield me from reality?
I may have murdered someone, and that alone should terrify me, or I should at least feel something, but I don’t.
Because I did it to save myself. I don’t scare easily, Sebastian Drake. ”
She’s right. She’s proven it again and again, taking Janie’s place at the auction, surviving my cruelty, recovering the cattle, facing my family’s suspicion, her family’s questions. She’s steel wrapped in softness.
“I know you don’t,” I say. “That’s not why I’m trying to protect you.”
“Then why?”
“Because you’re the only good thing in my life right now. And it would kill me if I lost you to something I can prevent.”
The words hang between us, raw and vulnerable.
“You won’t lose me,” she says quietly as she gently places her hand on my cheek. “The only way you lose me is if you go back to being the man who threatens and controls instead of trusts and protects.”
She kisses me, gently, and I feel some of the tension leave my body. I hold her tighter, needing her close. My cock comes to life against her thigh, and Lennox smiles against my mouth before she pulls away.
“Come on,” she says as she lets me go. “It’s almost dinner time. Whatever you’re planning can wait until tomorrow. Tonight, let’s just be us, and I want to deal with that later.” She winks and grinds her hips against me, making me moan.
“You’re a sadist, you know that?” I let her pull me toward the door.
“Payback’s a bitch.” She laughs as we walk to the kitchen.