Chapter 14
RHETT
The house is too quiet when I walk back in.
I pour a glass of Iron Oak Cabernet I don't taste and stand at the study window, looking out at the vineyard going dark row by row.
The fury I feel isn't only about land or legacy, though God knows it's about that too.
It is about the thought of anyone trying to grind down something Sadie built with her own hands.
Not just Sadie. Her mother's name, three payments from gone, built back up out of nothing but stubbornness and skill. I turn the wine glass a quarter turn on the desk, still untouched.
I learned a long time ago how to carry things alone. My mother taught me that without meaning to, dying young enough that grief just became a habit I never broke. The Collins scandal only gave the habit somewhere new to go.
I meant every word I told her on those porch steps. Whatever Camille's after, I intend to find out, and Sadie is not facing it alone.
I've made promises before, to shareholders, to Harrison, to men who wanted numbers, not sentiment. This one felt like something I should have said six years ago and didn't have the nerve for.
I set the glass down and pull the folder my attorney sent over earlier in the week, the one I haven't let myself look at closely until now.
The cut line in the East Vineyard. Two filings from Ashford Water Holdings, one against the Beaumont land under my own name, one against the land under Collins Cellars, filed against an LLC nobody but me and my attorney can trace back.
Two properties, two families, one woman circling both like she already knows something the rest of us don't.
I lay it out the way I would any deal that didn't add up. Somebody wants this land, or wants what's underneath it, and they've been patient enough to work both sides of the fence line at once.
That kind of patience doesn't come cheap. Whoever's behind Ashford Water Holdings has money and time, and they're not spending either one carelessly.
I don't like not knowing which one of us they're really after. I like even less the idea that it might be both.
I pull up the county map on the desktop and trace the property line between Beaumont and Collins Cellars, the one Sadie and I walked at dusk not long ago.
On paper it's a thin dotted line, nothing more. On the ground it's the only thing separating two families who've spent years pretending they don't need each other.
If somebody's circling that line looking for a way in, they picked the wrong two properties to underestimate.
I think back to Harrison's call the week the line was cut, the one where he told me to handle the Collins situation quietly and let it go. I didn't listen then either.
I close the folder hard enough that the papers shift inside, then drag it back under the lamp and open it again, like the filings might read different the second time.
Whoever's behind Ashford Water Holdings is betting on both families staying quiet and separate, the same way we've stayed apart for years. That bet doesn't work anymore.
I don't wait for morning. I pick up the phone and call my attorney, checking the clock only after it's already ringing.
He answers groggy, and I don't apologize for the hour.
"I need to know who's funding Ashford Water Holdings.
Not what they're filing. Who's behind it.
Tonight if you can manage it, first thing if you can't."
I'm still standing there, folder open under the desk lamp, when Beck lets himself in without knocking, the way he's done since we were kids.
"Rosa told me Ashford Water Holdings paid us a visit." He drops into the chair across from my desk, boots up on the corner of it like he owns the place. "You want to tell me what that was about, or am I guessing my way through it?"
"She's fishing. Water rights, property lines. Wants something and hasn't said what."
"And Sadie?"
"What about Sadie."
Beck gives me a look that says he's not buying the flat tone. "You stood in your own driveway and told a stranger Sadie Collins is under Beaumont protection in every sense of the word. Loud enough half the crew heard it before they'd even finished loading up for the day."
I don't answer that. There's nothing to say that won't give away more than I want to right now.
"Harrison's not going to like it." Beck says it carefully, watching for how I take it. "Last I heard he wanted the Collins situation handled quiet. This wasn't quiet."
I pick up my phone and dial Harrison's number right there, not breaking eye contact with Beck while it rings. My free hand finds the coil of rope still hanging off the desk chair from checking fence line this morning, and I twist it once around my knuckles while I wait for him to answer.
Harrison picks up on the third ring. I don't wait for a greeting. "Whatever you heard about today, I'm not walking it back. Sadie Collins is under my protection, and if that costs us the quiet you wanted, that's the cost." I hang up before he can answer.
Beck raises an eyebrow but doesn't say a word.
Beck lets the silence sit a minute, the way he does when he already knows the answer and is waiting to see if I'll give it to him anyway. Then he says the thing that matters.
"You have not looked like this, like you are fighting for something, since before she left."
I turn from the window. "What's that supposed to mean?"
"It means you ran this ranch like a man serving a sentence." He says it plain, no teasing in it now. "Showed up. Did the work. Never once looked like you wanted anything past the next harvest."
He shrugs, easy, but his eyes stay steady on mine. "Today you looked like a man who'd burn the whole place down before he let something happen to her."
"Wouldn't be the first time." He says it light, but there's weight under it. "You took the blame for that fence gate I broke before I was old enough to own up to it myself. Some things don't change."
I don't have an answer for that either. Not one I'm ready to say out loud.
"Careful, Rhett." Beck stands, claps a hand on my shoulder on his way to the door. "A man doesn't come back from wanting something that bad. Not clean, anyway."
"Who says I want to come back."
Beck stops in the doorway, looks at me over his shoulder like he's known the answer to that longer than I have. "Nobody. Just making sure you know there's no version of this where you get her halfway."
"I don't do halfway." I say it flat, no room in it for argument. "Never have."
He doesn't wait for a response. The door clicks shut behind him, and I'm left standing there with the glass I still haven't touched, listening to the hallway clock mark off seconds nobody else is around to hear.
The folder's still open under the lamp, the property line still glowing on the screen where I left it. The land hasn't changed in the last ten minutes. I have.
I should go to bed. Instead I sit down at the desk and pull up the old photo files I haven't opened in years, the ones backed up off some phone I don't even own anymore.
It takes the files a minute to load. I sit there in the low light of the desk lamp, glass empty now, waiting for a decade to catch up with me.
Sadie at nineteen, sitting on the lowest branch of the Old Oak, boots swinging, laughing at something out of frame. Sadie with grape stains on her hands, holding them up to the camera like a badge of honor.
The two of us, young and stupid, her arm slung over my shoulders, both of us grinning like the whole world was still ahead of us and none of it had gone wrong yet.
My thumb stalls on the trackpad.
There's one from a Fourth of July, the whole valley gathered for the fireworks over the lake, Sadie mid-laugh with a sparkler in one hand, caught in the second before she noticed the camera.
I press my thumb hard against the edge of the desk, grounding myself before I scroll to the next one.
Then there's one from the summer before everything fell apart. She's laughing at something off camera, sun catching her hair, and I'm looking at her instead of the lens.
I close the laptop. The image stays behind my eyes anyway.
Beck thinks I'm falling for her again. He's wrong.
I never stopped. It was always going to be her. That's not a question anymore. It's settled.
I've built an empire on knowing exactly what I want and going after it without apology. I'm not going to start hesitating now.
Whatever Camille Ashford wants, she picked the wrong season to find a weak spot in this family. My attorney will have an answer by morning. Harrison will get over it.
I pick up the empty glass, set it in the sink instead of pouring another.
Because I already know what I'm willing to risk to keep Sadie Collins safe. The partnership. My standing with Harrison. Every deal this family has on the table.
If it comes down to it, I'll choose her over all of it. No second thought.