Chapter 11
POV: Rhett Blackthorn
The mirror showed a man who already owned the ending.
I straightened the black tie with careful fingers, watching the knot settle perfect against the crisp white collar.
The suit was custom—Italian wool, sharp enough to cut.
Outside the upstairs window of the Blackthorn main house the old cattle barn had been transformed.
White chairs in neat rows. Flowers that had cost more than most of the men in attendance would see in a year.
A temporary aisle of dark runner leading to an altar that looked more like a sentencing block than a place for vows.
Fitting. Today was not a celebration. It was a transfer of property.
Ember Quinn would walk that aisle in less than an hour.
I smiled at my reflection. The expression sat easily on my face.
She had spent the last two days under my roof, silent, watchful, the cut on her temple still visible under the makeup my people had applied.
She thought she was playing a longer game.
She thought the files hidden in the lining of her jacket—yes, I knew about the hard drive—would somehow rewrite the script.
She did not understand that every move she made had been anticipated.
The cowboy had thrown my ring into the dark.
Cute. I had another waiting. After the vows I would put it on her finger myself and then begin the slower work of breaking whatever pieces of her the Voss heir had not already claimed.
I had collected her for years. Photographs.
Surveillance stills. The quiet satisfaction of knowing she read the cowboy’s pathetic texts while I watched from a distance she never suspected.
Obsession was a pale word for it. She was the one thing the Blackthorn name had not been able to buy outright. Today that changed.
A soft knock sounded at the door. One of the junior men stepped in, eyes down. “Guests are seated, sir. The girl’s ready in the east room. She’s asking for five more minutes.”
“She can have three.” I adjusted the cufflinks—heavy platinum, Blackthorn crest. “Tell her the aisle is waiting.”
He left. I poured two fingers of whiskey I did not need and drank it anyway.
The burn settled nothing. In my mind I was already past the ceremony.
The private suite upstairs. The moment the door locked and the polite mask came off.
She would fight. I was counting on it. The fight would make the eventual surrender sweeter.
The cowboy would be somewhere in the trees by then, watching the only woman he had ever wanted become legally and publicly mine.
That image alone was worth every inconvenience of the last week.
My phone buzzed against the dresser.
Encrypted. No number. The only contact that never required one.
I answered and waited.
The voice on the other end was the same distorted calm as always.
New orders. Short. Absolute. The timeline had moved.
Certain guests were to be steered to specific seats.
The toast after the vows was to be delayed by exactly four minutes.
A secondary team was already in position should the Voss contingent attempt interference.
And one final instruction that landed colder than the rest: the girl was to remain unharmed until the puppet master himself gave the word.
The smile slid off my face.
I stared at the phone after the line went dead.
For the first time since the engagement had been announced, the script felt like it belonged to someone else.
I was the heir. This was my wedding. The leverage had been my idea—or so I had been allowed to believe.
The realization settled slow and ugly. I had been moving pieces on a board I did not own.
I set the phone down harder than necessary and walked to the window that overlooked the rear approach to the barn.
Afternoon light cut across the tree line in long gold bars.
Guests in dark suits moved like mourners between the cars and the open barn doors.
The whole scene had the heavy, hushed quality of a funeral.
Appropriate. Something was about to die here. I had simply misidentified the corpse.
That was when I saw the truck.
Black. Familiar. Parked deep in the tree line with a clear sight line to the barn’s side entrance. Engine still running—I could make out the faint shimmer of exhaust in the cooling air. No one stood near it. No doors open. Just the vehicle itself, patient as a loaded gun, waiting.
Colt Voss.
The cowboy had come to watch.
A new smile found my mouth, thinner than the first and twice as sharp.
Let him watch. Let him sit in that truck and see her walk toward me in white.
Let him hear the vows. The orders from above had changed the timing, not the outcome.
Ember Quinn would still leave this barn with my name.
The files she carried would not matter once the right people were dead and the territory was ready for new management.
I smoothed the front of my jacket one last time and turned from the window.
The aisle was ready.
So was I.
And somewhere in the trees the last man who thought he could take her from me was about to learn how funerals really ended