Chapter Fourteen
~ Liam ~
The fire snapped in the fireplace like it was chewing through the last of the kindling, each pop and spit a punctuation in a room otherwise silent.
Not a comfortable silence—this was the kind you find after a storm when every animal has already run for higher ground, a silence that can’t decide whether it’s relief or just the absence of anyone left to make noise.
I stood at the kitchen counter with Emilio propped on my left hip, watching Hooper at the table.
He sat hunched in the chair, hands bracketing a coffee mug I’d put there without asking, the navy blue of the sleeve almost black in the low morning light.
His eyes tracked the window, then the baby, then the table, then the window again.
I caught my own reflection in the glass—pale, hair a mess, shoulder slumped like I was trying to make room for the baby and a backpack full of cinderblocks at the same time.
The snow pressed against the glass so flat and white it looked like the whole house was suspended inside a salt lick, waiting for someone to break the surface.
“Is the other car gone?” I said, voice so raw it surprised me.
Hooper nodded. “Took off soon as the SUV did. Burke got most of a plate. Rawley’s got a guy at the sheriff’s office running it down.” He sipped his coffee, made a face like he’d expected whiskey instead of the bitter instant I’d managed to scrounge.
He didn’t complain.
I shifted Emilio, whose only contribution to the morning so far was a series of hiccups and one brief, searing diaper. He’d calmed now, head on my shoulder, face angled toward the window as if he could see through the snow to the last known position of the threat.
I stared at Hooper’s hands. They dwarfed the mug. Each knuckle was a different flavor of scar, and there was something about the way he held the ceramic—like he was keeping the heat alive through grip alone.
I asked, “You think they’ll come back?”
Hooper rolled the mug between his palms. “They don’t send a guy in a suit unless they want to be seen.
That was for us, not for you. They’ll escalate next time.
Legal, most likely. Once Eleanor’s lawyers confirm the marriage certificate, the play shifts.
” He looked at me, dead on. “We’ve got a week, maybe two, before it’s a court thing instead of a driveway thing. ”
I looked at the window. The drive was a blank, the ruts already filling with new snow. “She’ll contest it,” I said. “If she’s got counsel, she’ll argue fraud, or capacity, or that I was coerced. It’s what they do—undercut the story before it’s even told.”
Hooper’s mouth twitched, a half-smile with no comfort in it. “You know her moves better than anyone here,” he said. “That’s why we’re meeting with Rawley this afternoon. You’re going to help us build something she can’t just walk through.”
He said it like he was reporting the weather, no drama, no room for debate.
Emilio made a small, wet sound and shifted in my arms, one tiny hand reaching out and batting at my jaw with the force of a paper airplane.
I repositioned him to the other hip, my arm sore from holding him so long.
The baby smelled like sweat and talc, an oddly reassuring counterpoint to the burnt-dust heat of the stove.
I ran my thumb over Emilio’s shoulder and asked, “You want me in that meeting?”
Hooper looked up at me, really looked, and the weight of it made the room tilt a degree. “I want you in charge of it. No one here knows how this kind of family plays dirty except you.”
I had no response for that. I stared at the seam in the countertop where the laminate curled up at the corner, and tried to imagine any scenario where I was the solution, not the problem.
Hooper waited, not impatient, just still in a way I’d never been able to match. The mug steamed between his hands. “Liam, she’s not coming for you. She’s coming for the story she wants to tell. But we get to write the next chapter.”
I didn’t know what to do with that, so I nodded, eyes on the wood-grain, the baby’s weight an anchor.
We stood like that for a while—me at the counter, Emilio going slack in my arms, Hooper a silent boulder at the table. Outside, the snow blurred everything into nothing. The world was white, then whiter, then gone.
I took a slow breath, held it, let it out. “I don’t know how to win against people who never lose.”
Hooper shrugged. “Then we teach her what losing feels like.” He said it with a certainty that scared me more than any lawyer ever could.
I met his eyes, for a second, and held the look as long as I could before it made my heart go sideways and I had to look away.
In that beat, I realized he wasn’t trying to reassure me, or manage me, or tell me what I needed to hear. He was just stating the facts, letting me have them without a filter.
He saw me as part of the plan, not a project.
It landed with a force I hadn’t braced for.
I tightened my grip on Emilio and turned back to the window, the snow now so dense it was hard to tell where the yard ended and the sky began.
I said, “Okay. I’ll help.”
Hooper stood, left the mug on the table, and walked over to me. He set a hand on my shoulder—warm, real, just enough pressure to say he was there if I needed the reminder.
“We’ll win this,” he said, low and steady.
I let the words hang in the air, and didn’t argue.
The kitchen ticked with the cooling of the stove, the silence no longer threatening, but heavy in a different way—the anticipation of something about to change.
Hooper let go of my shoulder and went to check the back door. I bounced Emilio once, twice, and watched the last of the footprints disappear under the falling snow.
For the first time in years, I felt the shape of a future that might actually belong to me.
And it was terrifying.
That afternoon, the kitchen went from holding its breath to packed full in under a minute. One second I was alone, the woodstove ticking loud, the only movement the slow orbit of Emilio’s hand as he gripped a button on my shirt.
Next second, the back door opened, letting in a gust of cold and three men so wide they could’ve been a moving crew hired to relocate the entire house.
Rawley came in first, boots still caked with snow, the alpha energy turned way up for the occasion. He set his thermos on the table with enough force to make my coffee slosh.
Burke followed, already shucking his gloves, a flick of ice in his eyebrows and a grin that didn’t match the tension in his hands.
Macon brought up the rear, face unreadable, but the way he checked the porch once before stepping in told me he was clocking every detail.
Hooper came in right after, no transition from outside to inside—just a shift in temperature, like the world had flicked the thermostat from “murder” to “debate.”
He moved straight to the baby and me, checked both without saying a word, then claimed a spot at the end of the table, folding his arms with the kind of authority that said: this is where things get solved.
The room shrank.
I had Emilio on my lap, his body heat a shield against the edge in the air, but I felt it anyway—the way all four men settled in, each one bending the space around themselves.
The woodstove had started to overdo it, making the kitchen even closer, the window sweating at the edges from the difference.
Rawley opened his notepad, clicked a pen, and gave me a look that said, “Ready?”
I nodded, not because I was, but because there was nothing to be gained by saying no.
First came the questions: Who exactly did Eleanor keep on retainer? Which firm, which county, what level of “fix” could she buy with a phone call? Did she have law enforcement in the pocket, or just the kind of Beta muscle you could hire off a political fundraiser mailing list?
I answered. I named names, spelled them out, gave last knowns and next best guesses. Rawley took notes at a speed that made me want to look away, each line an arrow aimed at a weak spot.
Then came the softballs—did she have dirt on anyone local or was it all bluff and bluster? Was there anything about her that could be used for leverage, and if so, would she see it coming from a mile out?
I gave them everything. I told them about the holiday dinners where the staff outnumbered the family, about the way her father handed out ranch land like Monopoly deeds, and how no one ever left the table without a debt or a promise of one.
I told them about the fundraiser where she’d outbid the state’s Lieutenant Governor for a bronze bull, not because she wanted it, but because it was easier to display a victory than an emotion.
They asked about her capacity for threat, for escalation. Would she get physical or stick to the legal? I said both, but in public she always used proxies, never blood or fingerprints.
I watched Rawley process it, watched the way Hooper’s jaw locked when I mentioned the Petersons’ old family fixer.
Burke and Macon exchanged a look that would have been missed by anyone who hadn’t spent ages learning the language of worry expressed only in eyelid twitches and the angle of crossed arms.
Nobody interrupted. Nobody made jokes. They let the silence after every answer hang just long enough to draw out the rest.
At some point I realized Emilio had fallen asleep, his face turned in and soft, the world finally so boring that even a baby could risk closing both eyes. His fingers curled around mine, still as a stone.
Rawley finished his page, tore it out, folded it, and said, “You’re the expert in the room, Liam.
If you see anything we miss, you speak up.
” He tapped the notepad. “We’ll paper the marriage, get a judge to sign off, make it so anyone coming through that door without a warrant is the one committing a crime.
” He turned to Hooper: “You’ll coordinate with the sheriff.
Make sure there’s a direct line. No surprises. ”