Chapter 15 Hawk
HAWK
I stare at the text message glowing against the dark truck interior.
Are you alone?
I exhale through my nose.
The smart move would be to stall. Lie, maybe. But if I tell him I’m not alone, he’ll delay, and I’ll just spend the next twelve hours waiting for the other shoe to drop. I’d rather rip the damned bandage off.
I reply.
Yeah, I’m alone.
The reply comes instantly. GPS coordinates.
I blink at it, jaw tightening. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
I copy the message, drop it into the maps app. The blue pin lands on a rectangle near the northern boundary of the Bellamy property.
I frown and text back.
Where the hell is that supposed to be?
The dots flash.
Put it in your maps. You’ll see.
Already did. Didn’t the dumbass know that’s the first thing I’d do?
What’s there?
This time his answer comes slower.
A favor. Burn the building that’s there to the ground.
My mouth goes dry.
I reread the line twice, hoping it changes. It doesn’t.
I grip the steering wheel hard. “You want me to what?” I say out loud.
I text him back.
Why the hell do you care if some old building’s still standing?
His response is smug.
Because you agreed to one favor. No questions, and no one gets hurt. Those were your terms.
My stomach twists. He’s right. Those were my terms. One favor, no questions, and he wipes my blood off his safe and my prints off his floor.
It sounded easier when I thought the favor would be something simple. A delivery. A phone call. A warning.
Not this.
Not something that smells like family business. God, my father must have his dirty hands all over this.
I send another text.
How can I be sure no one will get hurt?
He replies instantly.
No one will. That building’s empty. But you’ll light it up and send me a photo of the ashes. Then we’re even.
Even? I scoff. Right. There’s no even with criminals like Reyes.
How do I know you’ll keep your word?
You don’t. But you don’t have any other choice.
The phone screen glares white, too bright, and for a second I see my father’s study instead of my truck. Leather and bourbon and the smell of gunpowder that never quite left the air after that night. I hear all the ways he tried to defend his choice.
I did what I had to do, Hawk. There was no other choice.
That phrase again, circling back after fifteen years to sink its teeth in me.
No other choice.
Back then, I thought Austin Bellamy was the villain and I was the cure. He killed an unarmed man, and I swore I’d spend my life undoing that stain.
But now? I’m not so sure the lines are that clean.
I unlock the glove box and stare at the paperwork tucked inside—registration, insurance, a folded map of the property from when we were kids.
I pull the map out, spread it across the console, and trace the boundaries with my finger.
There it is, in the north field by the old irrigation ditch.
An old, weathered barn that’s barely standing.
That building’s been there since my grandfather’s time.
Why does Reyes care about it?
Unless…he knows something I don’t.
The thought slams into me, hard.
I grab the burner again.
What’s in that building?
Three dots flash.
Doesn’t matter. It will be gone soon.
My throat goes tight.
“Jesus Christ,” I mutter.
I’m tired—bone-deep, soul-rotting tired. But under it is anger. I hate that he’s manipulating me, hate that I’m about to dance to his tune because he’s holding my mistakes in a vial.
I drop my head back against the seat and shut my eyes.
No other choice.
But there’s always a choice. That’s what I’ve always believed. That’s what separated me from my father.
At least I thought it did.
Now? I can’t tell the difference.
Maybe that’s how it started for him, too. Maybe he really did think Ted was a danger. Or maybe Ted found something—something my father couldn’t risk becoming public. Something that would’ve cracked this family’s secrets wide open.
The thought gnaws at me like a pebble in my boot.
What if Ted wasn’t a threat to the family’s safety but to its secrets?
I can still see Ted’s face in my mind—the kind eyes, the quiet intelligence. At times I thought he was the only one who truly got me. He was kind to me. And not just to me. He was kind to my siblings as well.
So what the hell did he know?
I think back to that day.
The day when my father shot me.
Then killed Ted in cold blood.
He said he did it to protect us. To protect my mother and sisters from being raped in their sleep.
But Ted was kind to all of us, and though I didn’t know it then, he was gay. He had no interest in harming my sisters. Or me or my brothers for that matter. He was a good man. An honest man.
And my father ended his life. Then he tried to convince me he had done something noble. To protect the family. For the good of the family.
Perhaps he truly believed he had no other choice.
But whatever threat Ted was, he would never have harmed my mother or my sisters. Or any of us, save maybe my father.
The phrase repeats in my head, growing louder each time, until it’s all I hear.
No other choice.
Maybe my father wasn’t just a murderer. Maybe he was a cornered man.
Maybe Ted found something out about the family—about the money, the land, the ranch, something buried deep—and my father silenced him to keep it from surfacing.
But what could it have been?
Our family’s rich, sure. Steel-baron rich. We’ve got influence, but not cartel connections. At least, not that I ever saw.
Unless that’s the point.
The best secrets are the ones that hide in plain sight.
Maybe Ted stumbled across something on the ranch. Old records. A deal gone sideways. Or maybe the Bellamys weren’t always the Bellamys. Maybe the name itself was built on someone else’s grave.
The possibilities churn, each one darker than the last.
And here I am, about to do exactly what my father might have done—follow orders to protect the family name.
The irony is so sharp it almost makes me laugh. I spent my whole life trying not to become Austin Bellamy, and now my eyes aren’t the only thing I got from him.
The difference, I tell myself, is that this time it’s rotted wood and nails. Not flesh and blood.
But the truth sits there anyway. The line between justice and survival is thinner than I ever wanted to admit.
I toss the burner onto the passenger seat and start the truck, but I don’t shift into drive. My foot hovers over the pedal, my hand frozen on the gear.
If I do this, I become him.
If I don’t, I lose everything.
My pulse hammers in my ears.
No other choice.
This isn’t about laws or guilt or even morality. It’s about leverage. It’s about keeping control when someone’s already got the blade against your throat.
I drag a hand down my face, exhaling hard.
The coordinates are still glowing on my phone.
An old barn on the Bellamy property.
Why that barn?
Why our land?
The question needles me until I can’t sit still.
My father may have killed a man to keep a secret.
I’m starting to think that secret might still be buried on our land.
And now someone else—Reyes, of all people—wants it burned.
Whatever’s in that building, it’s not just old lumber.
It’s history. It’s guilt. It’s truth.
And I’m going to find out what it is.