Chapter 4
POV: Rhett Blackthorn (villain/rival)
The call came in at 11:47 p.m. I was still in the study, sleeves rolled, a single lamp throwing clean light across the desk.
My father preferred the old ways—loud rooms, louder men, blood on the floor before the talking started.
I preferred precision. Information first.
Consequences second. Always in that order.
I answered on the second ring.
“Talk.”
The voice on the other end belonged to one of the newer soldiers. Young. Breathing too hard. “She’s gone, sir. The barn on Voss land. We left her secured the way you ordered. Someone cut her out. Tracks look like the younger Voss brother was there, but the truck that left belonged to Colt.”
I set the crystal tumbler down without a sound. The whiskey inside barely rippled.
“How many men did I send?”
“Four, sir. Two stayed with the vehicle. Two inside.”
“And the two inside?”
“Alive. They’re here. Waiting on your word.”
I looked at the clock on the far wall. Eleven forty-eight. Plenty of night left.
“Bring them to the lower level. Five minutes.”
I hung up and stood. The study was quiet except for the low tick of the antique mantel clock my grandfather had taken off a man who thought he could cheat the Blackthorns. I liked the sound. Steady. Reliable. Unlike most people.
The lower level smelled of concrete and cold metal.
Two men knelt on the plastic sheeting I kept folded in the corner for nights like this.
Their wrists were zip-tied behind them. One had a split lip.
The other wouldn’t meet my eyes. I walked a slow circle around them, hands in my pockets, and let the silence do the heavy lifting.
“You had one job,” I said. Conversational. Almost friendly. “Keep her breathing. Keep her in place. Wait for the transfer at dawn. Instead I get a phone call telling me the Voss boy drove off with my property.”
The one with the split lip swallowed. “Sir, we didn’t hear the truck until—”
I held up a finger. He stopped mid-sentence. Good. Learning.
I nodded to the man standing behind them.
My personal cleaner. Efficient. No questions.
He stepped forward with the suppressed pistol already raised.
One shot. Then the second. Both bodies folded forward onto the plastic with neat, almost polite finality.
No theatrics. No wasted motion. I watched the blood pool in tidy circles and felt nothing except mild irritation that the night had been interrupted.
“Burn them,” I said. “And find better men.”
Upstairs again, I poured a fresh two fingers of whiskey and unlocked the bottom drawer of the desk. The folder was thick. Black leather. No label. I opened it the way I always did—slowly, like the contents might change if I rushed.
Ember Quinn.
Dozens of photographs. Some professional, pulled from the journalism sites she used under different bylines.
Some candid. Street cameras. Parking-garage angles.
One from three years ago outside a café in Brooklyn where she sat alone with a laptop and a coffee she never finished.
I had paid good money for that shot. The way her hair fell across one eye.
The bruise of exhaustion under her cheekbones.
The exact tilt of her mouth when she thought no one was watching.
I spread them across the desk in chronological order, the way I did every few weeks.
A private timeline of a woman who believed she had stayed invisible.
She hadn’t. Not from me. Not since the night the order came down from the man above my father—the one who never appeared in person and never left a name.
Make her the leverage. Put the ring on her finger.
Walk her down the aisle in front of both families.
When the vows are done, the real work begins.
Love had never been part of the brief. Obsession, maybe.
I could admit that much in the quiet of my own study.
She had a spine most men in this business lacked.
She looked at dangerous people like she was already writing their obituaries.
That kind of fire was rare. Useful. And now it was sitting on Voss land instead of where it belonged.
I picked up the most recent photo—Ember stepping out of a cab in Manhattan two weeks ago, bag over one shoulder, eyes scanning the street the way a person does when they know they’re being hunted. I traced the edge of the print with one finger.
Colt Voss.
The cowboy. The bronc rider with the famous last name and the quiet reputation for finishing every fight he started. Of course it was him. Of course the little lost girl from Shadow Creek had run straight back to the only man who ever made her stupid.
I smiled. Not wide. Just enough to feel it.
“Let the cowboy keep her warm,” I said to the empty room. “I’ll take her back when the war starts.”
The phone on the desk buzzed once. Encrypted. No number. The only contact that never needed one. I answered and waited. The voice on the other end was the same as always—distorted, calm, absolute.
“She’s with the Voss heir,” I reported. “The engagement is still intact on paper. He won’t hurt her. He’s too sentimental for that.”
A pause. Then the soft click of a lighter on the other end.
“Phase two,” I said. “Make the Voss bleed.”
I ended the call and leaned back in the chair.
The photographs stared up at me under the lamp.
Ember’s face repeated across the desk in every expression I had collected—tired, focused, angry, unguarded.
Soon I would add a new one. The one where she understood exactly who had been pulling the strings the entire time.
Outside the study window the Blackthorn grounds stretched black and quiet. Somewhere across the county line a ranch house light was probably still burning. Colt Voss would be playing nurse. Cleaning blood. Asking questions. Thinking he had won something.
He hadn’t.
He had simply borrowed her.
And I was very, very good at collecting what belonged to me.