Chapter 8
POV: The Puppet Master (villain)
The screens glowed soft blue in the otherwise dark room.
Six of them, arranged in a clean arc across the far wall.
High-resolution feeds pulled from cameras the Voss family still believed were offline.
I sat in the leather chair I preferred for nights like this—spine straight, hands folded, a single glass of water untouched on the side table.
Patience was a muscle. I had spent decades strengthening it.
On the center screen the main house porch sat quiet under the porch light.
Ember Quinn was there, wrapped in one of the cowboy’s shirts, knees drawn up on the swing.
Colt Voss occupied the other end, body angled toward her like a man who had already decided the world would burn before he let her leave again.
I watched the way he leaned in. The way her hand found his shirt without permission.
The way the Blackthorn ring disappeared into the dark when he threw it.
Perfect.
I pressed the intercom on the desk. “You’re seeing this?”
A voice answered from the speaker—low, careful, the tone of a man who understood that mistakes in my presence were rarely repeated. “Yes, sir. The federal warrant has been delivered as instructed. Agents are holding at the gate.”
“Good. Let them wait. The longer the cowboy feels the walls close in, the more predictable he becomes.”
I switched the main feed to an older recording—timestamped seven years earlier.
A different porch. A different night. Ember at nineteen, bag over her shoulder, climbing into a car that was not hers.
Colt standing in the dirt behind her, fists clenched, already learning the shape of loss.
I had watched that moment live from a much closer distance.
I had chosen the exact hour the news of her parents’ “accident” would reach her.
I had placed the mentor in her path with the right combination of kindness and purpose.
Journalism had been my suggestion, delivered through a mouth that was not mine.
Give the girl a crusade and she would sharpen herself into the perfect blade.
And she had.
“She’s performing exactly as designed,” I said to the unseen associate.
Clinical. Almost fond. “The investigation. The anonymous tips. The seven years of silence that kept the cowboy off balance. Even the way she returned—bleeding, furious, still trying to protect him. I killed her parents cleanly.
A tractor rollover on a steep grade is rarely questioned in ranch country. From that moment every choice she made was a path I had already mapped.”
On another screen the east barn still smoldered.
The earlier attack had gone precisely to plan—enough damage to force the Voss hand, not enough to end the fight before the real spectacle.
I zoomed in on Ember’s face from an earlier timestamp: the moment she found the burned photograph in the office files.
The fracture in her expression had been exquisite.
She was beginning to understand that the board was larger than she had believed.
She was not yet ready to see whose hand had been moving the pieces.
The associate cleared his throat. “The engagement timeline, sir?”
“Mine from the beginning.” I steepled my fingers and watched Colt’s mouth move on the silent porch feed.
Whatever he was saying made Ember’s shoulders lock.
Possession. Desperation. Love turned into something that could be weaponized.
“The Blackthorn heir believes the idea was his father’s. Rhett believes the ring was leverage he chose. Neither of them understands that the wedding was designed to force both families into the open at the same moment. Let them destroy each other in public. When the smoke clears,
the territory will need a new steward. One who has been patient enough to wait for the ashes.”
I switched feeds again. A wider shot of the ranch perimeter showed the three federal SUVs still idling at the gate, lights low.
The warrant with Ember’s name would keep the cowboy occupied—legal pressure layered on top of the physical attacks.
He would spend the coming hours choosing between protecting her from badges or from bullets. Either choice weakened him.
“She still thinks she can control the ending,” I continued, voice mild.
“That is the most useful part of her design. Give a clever woman enough rope and she will build the gallows herself. The files she carries, the ones she believes will expose everyone, were curated years ago. Half of them are true.
Half of them point exactly where I need the remaining players to look. When the wedding begins, every enemy of mine will be in one place, watching the same aisle.”
The associate waited. He had learned not to interrupt when I was thinking aloud.
I leaned forward slightly. On the porch feed Colt had closed the distance between them.
Ember’s hand was still fisted in his shirt.
The federal interruption was seconds away—I could see Jax moving through the house on a side camera—but the damage was already done.
The cowboy had thrown the ring. He had made the claim.
He would not let her walk toward another man without bleeding for it.
Exactly as required.
“The final phase starts now,” I said. “Trigger the wedding. Move the date forward if necessary. I want every remaining Blackthorn and Voss of consequence under the same roof. I want the cowboy in the trees with a clear view of the aisle. Let him watch her walk. Let him believe he can still stop it.”
A soft pause on the other end of the line. Then, “And if she refuses to go through with it?”
I almost smiled. The expression felt foreign on my face after so many years of careful neutrality.
“She won’t refuse. She believes the wedding is the only stage large enough to burn the truth into the open. She will walk toward Rhett Blackthorn with my files in her bouquet and conviction in her spine. That conviction is the last gift her parents’ deaths gave her. I simply directed it.”
I ended the connection and returned my attention to the screens.
Ember and Colt were frozen in the moment before Jax’s interruption—foreheads nearly touching, the air between them charged with everything they had refused to say for seven years.
I watched it the way a man watches a controlled burn: appreciative of the heat, certain of the boundaries.
The territory had been divided too long. Old blood. Old grudges. Inefficient. When the wedding vows began and the shooting followed, the board would reset. I had already chosen the shape of what came after.
I lifted the glass of water, considered it, and set it down again without drinking.
On the central screen the porch door opened. Jax appeared. The federal warrant arrived on cue.
I folded my hands and waited for the next move.
The cowboy would make it soon enough.
They always did