Ten
CASS
These weren’t the angry tears from the kitchen. These were deep and wrenching, the kind that came from someplace primal—the kind that had only come twice before in my life. When my mother died. When I realized the stroke had taken most of who my father used to be.
Grief tears. The kind you cried when you lost something you couldn’t get back.
And Brody. God, Brody. My brother, tangled up with criminals. Stupid, impulsive Brody, who’d tried to shake them down and ended up trapped in something he couldn’t escape. For a year, suffering in silence, too scared and ashamed to ask for help.
I thought about all the times I’d been frustrated with him. The eye rolls. The assumption, always present, that he’d never really grow up, never be someone I could depend on. Had he sensed that? Had my relentless self-sufficiency made him feel like he couldn’t come to me?
I’d spent so long being the strong one that I’d never noticed I was pushing away the people who might have needed me.
When I’d cried myself out, I washed my face and went to find my brother.
He was sitting on the edge of his bed, head in his hands, like a man waiting for execution. “Walker’s gone,” I said. “And I know everything.”
His face went white. “What do you mean, everything?”
“I mean I know about the ring. Carlos Vega. The Rusty Spur. The payments, the information you’ve been feeding them. I know you saw something at an auction a year ago and tried to shake them down, and they turned it around on you.”
His face crumpled. For a moment he looked exactly like the eight-year-old who’d come to tell me he’d broken Mom’s favorite vase—terrified and ashamed and desperately hoping I could make it okay.
“How did you find out?”
“Walker told me. Before I threw him out. He’s some kind of law enforcement, working undercover. The broker story was a cover.”
“Jesus.” He dropped his head back into his hands.
“I knew something was off about him. But I never thought—“ He looked up, red-rimmed eyes devastated. “There’s no getting out, Cass. If I leave, they’ll expose everything. The deposits, the meetings, the information. It’s enough to make me look like a full partner.
And if I go to the police, it’ll destroy the ranch just as surely as if I’d stolen the cattle myself. ”
“What about what Walker said? About you being coerced?”
“Who’s going to believe that? I’m the idiot who tried to blackmail them in the first place. I made this bed.”
“That’s not how this works.” I sat beside him, took his hand. “You made a mistake. A stupid one. But that doesn’t mean you deserve to be trapped forever. There has to be a way out.”
“There isn’t.”
“Then we’ll make one. We’re Hendersons. Our great-grandfather built this ranch from nothing during the Depression. Our grandmother saved it during the drought of ’56. You think a bunch of criminals are tougher than all that?”
He was quiet a moment. “You sound like Mom.”
“Good.”
“She used to say that. ‘Hendersons don’t quit, we just get more stubborn.’” His voice cracked. “I’ve spent a year thinking she’d be ashamed of me. The screwup son who got mixed up with cattle thieves and was too much of a coward to ask for help.”
“Brody.” I waited until he looked at me.
“She wouldn’t be ashamed. She’d be furious that you carried this alone.
And then she’d roll up her sleeves and help you fix it, same as I’m going to.
You’re not the screwup son. You’re the one who’s about to do something braver than anybody in this family has ever asked of anybody.
” I squeezed his hand hard. “She knew you had it in you. She told me once. ‘That boy’s got more heart than sense, and one day the heart’s going to win.
’ This is the day, Brody. This is the heart winning. ”
For the first time, something like hope flickered in his eyes. “You really think we can beat them?”
“I think we have to try.” I pulled him into a hug, felt his shoulders shake. “You’re my brother. Whatever happens, we face it together. That’s what family does.”
We sat there a long time, two siblings who’d spent years drifting apart finally finding their way back.
That night, my phone buzzed with a text from Walker.
I know you don’t want to hear from me. But I know what really happened with Brody. It’s not what you think. Please let me explain.
I stared at it for a long time, the screen glowing in the dark.
Every instinct told me to delete it. To cut him out completely, handle this alone the way I handled everything. He’d lied to me, used me, broken the trust I’d so reluctantly given.
But he’d also told me the truth, eventually. He’d confirmed Brody was a victim, not a villain. He’d given me information I could use.
And I remembered what Brody had said: *You’re the one who handles everything alone. Maybe that’s part of the problem.*
Maybe asking for help—even from someone who’d hurt me—wasn’t weakness. Maybe it was another kind of strength.
*I’m listening,* I typed, and pressed send before I could change my mind.