Chapter 8
CHAPTER EIGHT
Silas
Ironwood wakes the same way every morning.
Staff in motion just after sunrise. Coffee brewed by me by five. Horses fed on schedule. Deliveries checked, logged, verified. Radios crackling low. Doors opening and closing with purpose.
Even the quiet has structure here. It’s one of the few things I trust. If anything changes, there’s a reason.
This morning, the rhythm is off.
Duke isn’t in the kitchen when I come back inside for breakfast, which by itself means nothing and also too much. Annie’s office light’s still off, though she’s usually at her desk before half the staff has finished their first cup of coffee.
There’s a low murmur threaded through the hallway when I pass the laundry room, voices pitched just under conversation, the kind that die the second I get close enough to hear actual words.
I don’t stop.
I don’t need to.
By the time I step out toward the barns to find the ranch hands, I already know something happened.
Benji confirms it ten minutes later with all the subtlety of a kicked gate.
He catches up to me just beyond the south paddock, boots hitting gravel too fast for casual conversation, breath carrying the brisk bite of morning cold and coffee.
He’s young enough to still think information burns a hole in his chest if he doesn’t unload it quickly. Usually, that irritates me.
Today, it doesn’t.
“Morning,” he says, falling into step beside me.
“Benji.”
He glances over, trying to sound casual and failing. “You want the feed counts now or after Jake checks the north delivery?”
“Now.”
He gives them to me. Numbers, timing, one missing bag that turns up three seconds later because Terry stacked it in the wrong place. I listen, correct one detail, keep walking.
Benji lasts less than half a minute before he breaks.
“So,” he says, voice lowering in a way that suggests discretion and achieves the opposite, “one of the housemaids was upstairs yesterday.”
My jaw tightens, but I don’t look at him. Benji isn’t one to gossip, so wherever this is going is new. “And?”
“She said she walked past Duke’s room,” he continues, slower now, realizing too late that this isn’t the kind of information I appreciate being handed mid-task. “The door was open.”
I stop walking.
Benji takes two more steps before he realizes I’m no longer beside him, then turns back, already reading the shift in my posture. Most people do.
I don’t raise my voice often, and I don’t need to. By the time I’ve gone still, they usually understand they’ve crossed into something that matters.
“And?” I repeat.
He swallows. “Annie was in there.”
A detail small enough to sound insignificant and crisp enough to cut through the entire structure of this house.
Exactly the kind of thing that doesn’t stay contained.
Exactly the kind of thing that spreads.
“Who else knows?” I ask.
His throat works. “She told one of the other girls. I heard it from her this morning.”
“That wasn’t the question.”
He looks away toward the paddocks, toward the horses moving through their routines, because to him nothing in the world has shifted at all. “House staff talk.”
Of course they do.
A ranch this size doesn’t need a newspaper. It has hallways, kitchens, laundry rooms, truck cabs.
Women who see everything and don’t need permission to interpret it. Men who pretend not to listen and repeat it anyway.
Information here doesn’t move in straight lines. It circulates. Picks up shape. Gains edges.
One moment’s enough.
One open door at the wrong time.
One person walking past who shouldn’t have been there to see it.
And Annie goes from employee to story.
Shit.
My hand tightens around the glove I’m carrying.
It has nothing to do with Duke. That’s what I tell myself first, because it should be true.
Duke’s a grown man. Annie’s a grown woman.
This isn’t a matter of moral outrage or brotherly policing or any of the other easy explanations people reach for when they don’t want to look too closely at what’s actually bothering them.
What’s bothering me is simpler.
She’s new.
She’s already being watched.
She’s already found things in our books I don’t like the shape of.
And now, after one night, she’s vulnerable in a different way. Exposed. Tangled with one of us.
Tangled with the family that signs her paychecks, controls her housing, controls the structure of the place she works, sleeps, and walks through every day.
This is exactly the kind of thing people use. Exactly the kind of thing that turns into leverage.
Exactly the kind of thing I said wouldn’t happen under my roof.
“Go back to work,” I say.
Benji nods too fast. “Yes, sir.”
He heads toward the barn at a pace that borders on retreat. Good. Let him think better of offering me “helpful” information for the rest of the week.
I stay where I am a moment longer, scanning the yard without actually seeing any of it. Trucks, fencing, horses in the far paddock. Morning frost still clinging to the shaded line near the trees.
Everything in its place. Everything moving the way it should.
Except the part that isn’t.
I turn toward the house.
Duke’s in the kitchen when I find him, leaning over the counter with a mug in one hand and a legal pad in the other, reading something he’s only half paying attention to.
He looks up when I come in, and in that first second I know two things.
One: He already knows why I’m here.
Two: He isn’t sorry.
He sets the pad down and lifts his mug in greeting. “Morning. You look like you’ve come to fire someone.”
I shut the door behind me. The latch clicks.
“You spent the night with Annie,” I declare.
No point dressing it up.
He exhales through his nose. I guess I’ve just confirmed the obvious.
“Well,” he says, rolling his shoulder a little, “not technically the night. But yeah. That did happen.”
“She’s an employee.”
“I know she is,” he says with a one-shouldered shrug. “Also a person, which feels relevant.”
“Are you serious?” I ask. “Because this looks a lot like you forgot you’re her boss.”
“Ouch. Alright, that one had some bite.” He sets his mug down. “But no, I didn’t forget. I just didn’t run it through your internal approval system first.”
“Don’t joke.”
“I’m not joking,” he says. “I’m just not panicking.”
I take a step further into the room. “You should be.”
“Should I?” he asks, tilting his head. “Because from where I’m standing, I had a good night with a woman I like. Nobody died, nothing caught fire, and the coffee’s still hot. Feels like a win.”
The flippancy grates.
“This isn’t a joke, Duke.”
“Hey,” he shoots back, “I know it’s not. I’m not treating it like one. I’m just not going to stand here and act like I committed a felony either.”
I hold his gaze. “She’s been here a week.”
“Yeah,” he says. “I can count.”
“She works for this family.”
“I know that,” he counters, one brow lifting. “It isn’t just you in charge, even if you sometimes think it is.”
I step closer, the space between us narrowing. “People are already talking.”
He sighs, dragging a hand through his hair. “I figured that might happen. House staff don’t exactly keep a lid on things. But Annie shouldn’t be judged for this.”
“You know that’s what will happen the second gossip spreads.”
“And that’s fair?”
“This isn’t about fairness.”
“No,” Duke says, with a half-smile that doesn’t quite reach his eyes, “it’s about control. I’m familiar with the theme.”
He holds my stare.
And I know my brother.
I know the difference between his charm and his truth. I know when he’s smoothing edges and when he’s standing on solid ground. I know how often he turns tension into humor because if he doesn’t, the rest of us will choke on it.
This isn’t that.
“I care about her,” he says.
I keep my face still. “You don’t know her.”
Duke huffs a breath, something almost amused threading through it despite everything. “You’ve had, what, three conversations with her and already run a full background check in your head. Don’t pretend you don’t know anything either.”
“That’s not the same.”
“No,” he agrees. “It’s not. Because I actually talked to her like a person instead of a potential problem.”
My jaw tightens. “You talked to her enough to sleep with her.”
He lets out a short laugh, shaking his head. “You make it sound like I tripped and fell into it.” Then, more seriously, “It wasn’t like that.”
“Careful.”
His eyes flick up. “No, you be careful. Because you’re about two sentences away from saying something you don’t get to take back.”
I hold my ground. “Employees are off limits. You know that. Now let’s leave it at that, okay?”
By eleven, I’ve checked two feed invoices, spoken to Jake about a delivery schedule, signed off on repairs to the east fencing, and corrected three staff assumptions before they became mistakes.
None of it settles the pressure building behind my sternum. None of it stills the image I didn’t ask for and can’t seem to get rid of.
Annie in Duke’s bed.
Annie laughing softly in his room.
Annie tangled in something I warned myself to keep simple from the start…
I don’t enjoy the shape of that thought.
So I redirect it where it belongs.
Work.
Tessa Grange arrives at noon.
She’s early by four minutes, which is exactly on time for her. Dark coat, structured bag, hair pinned perfectly.
Every line of her is composed in the way certain people become when they’ve spent decades charging rich families by the hour and learning how to make even concern look expensive.
She steps into my office without hesitation, already reaching into her bag for the contract folder.
“Silas.”
“Tessa.”
She sits across from my desk and opens the file before I’ve even fully lowered myself into my chair.
“This is the revised draft for the north property lease,” she says. “There are a few points requiring clarification before I finalize anything.”
I take the folder and skim the pages.
Most of its standard. Extension language, liability phrasing, environmental access restrictions, insurance coverage.
The kind of contract work that keeps the ranch standing in ways most people never notice until a sentence costs them six figures.
Then I hit the flagged pages.