Chapter 20
CHAPTER TWENTY
Silas
Sleep never quite settles.
It rarely does when something on the ranch is out of place, and last night left too many variables unresolved to allow for anything resembling rest.
I close my eyes for a time, more out of discipline than expectation, but my mind continues its work regardless. Tracking timelines, revisiting conversations, aligning what I know with what I don’t.
Annie. The office. Duke.
The way the argument shifted from concern into a tension far less controlled.
That piece hangs around longer than it should.
By the time I get up, the sky is still in that gray space before sunrise where everything looks softer and less certain.
I step outside and let the cold settle into my lungs before I move.
Routine comes first. It always does.
The property lines, the barns, the gates, each one checked in the same order, not because I expect to find something different every time, but because consistency is the only way to notice when everything shifts.
Most people look for problems directly. I look for the absence of what should be there.
Once done, I head back toward the house with a clearer sense of direction than I had last night. There’s no point in circling the problem anymore. It’s time to define it.
The office door is already open. Of course it is.
She’s there.
Annie sits at the desk with her laptop open, papers spread in a pattern that looks disordered until you take the time to understand the logic behind it. Everything is positioned for access, for sequence, for progression from one piece of information to the next.
She doesn’t notice me immediately. That tells me how focused she is.
I step inside without speaking and close the door behind me, giving the room a sense of containment that feels necessary before this conversation starts. Only then do I say her name.
“Annie.”
She looks up.
There’s a brief pause, just long enough to acknowledge what happened last night without addressing it directly.
Her expression doesn’t give much away beyond that. Controlled, measured, waiting to see which version of me she’s dealing with this morning.
“I found something,” she says before I can bring up anything heavy.
“You… did?”
She nods, her lips pursed together in a thin line. “Yeah, and I think you’re going to want to see it.”
Okay, so that’s what we’re doing. “Show me.”
She turns the laptop, angling it so I can see, then shifts in her chair to make space beside her. I step closer, close enough to read the screen clearly, aware of the proximity without letting it become the focus.
The data comes first.
“These are the vendor entry logs,” she says, tapping the screen lightly. “Standard approvals. Most of them match operational needs.”
I follow the entries, scanning quickly. Names, dates, categories. Everything aligns at first glance, which is exactly what I would expect if more was being hidden inside it.
Then she highlights one.
Jake Dorsey. Vendor access approved.
I read it once, then again, cross-referencing automatically with what I know of that week’s schedule.
“Keep going,” I say.
She does.
She walks me through the absence of supporting documentation, the way the approval sits inside a high-volume period where it wouldn’t draw attention, the lack of follow through that should exist if the access had been legitimate.
Her explanation is clean. Structured. No unnecessary speculation.
She’s not trying to prove a theory, she’s showing me a pattern.
“There’s another one,” she adds, pulling up a second entry. “Earlier. Smaller. Same structure.”
I lean in, bracing a hand against the desk as I read. The second instance confirms the first. Different date, same method. Same approval channel.
Jake.
The conclusion forms without needing to be forced.
“This creates an access point,” I say, more to confirm alignment than to state something new.
She nods. “Yes.”
“For someone who isn’t being tracked through normal channels.”
“Yes.”
“And it lines up with the financial discrepancies.”
Her gaze flicks to mine. “It does.”
The room hushes around that, because that’s the moment the pieces stop existing separately. Money bleeding out in controlled increments, unauthorized system access, physical entry points created through legitimate looking approvals.
All of it tied together by one thing.
Internal knowledge.
“This isn’t external,” I say, more slowly now, letting it settle properly. “Whoever is doing this understands how Ironwood operates. They know where oversight relaxes and how to move inside it without triggering attention.”
Annie watches me carefully. “That’s what I think too.”
I nod once.
Agreement is easy. What comes after isn’t.
I straighten, stepping back from the desk to give myself space to think without the immediate pull of the screen.
Jake has been with Ironwood long enough to understand its rhythms. Reliable, efficient, capable. The kind of man you don’t question unless you have a reason.
Now, I have one. More than one.
I glance back at the screen, then at her. “You put this together in a few hours?”
She shrugs. “I had a direction.”
I don’t spend time validating people, I expect competence. I don’t comment on it, but with her it feels necessary. Because she isn’t just competent, she’s essential to this problem.
“That’s why you’re here,” I say.
Her eyes hold mine. “Because I can see it.”
“Yes.”
There’s something in the way she absorbs it. The recognition of her place in this, not just as an employee, but as part of the structure that’s going to hold this together while we fix it.
I look back at the desk, then around the room, grounding myself in the familiar before I say what comes next. “You should’ve come to me last night.”
“Last night wasn’t exactly the time,” she shoots back through gritted teeth. “After you yelled at me for leaving.”
“I didn’t yell…”
She rolls her eyes. “Okay, if you say so.”
“What I meant last night,” I say, “is that if someone’s targeting you, I need to know where you are. Not to control you. To protect the system we’re both trying to fix.”
She studies me, weighing that. “You can’t protect me by managing me.”
“I’m not trying to manage you.”
“You told me not to date Duke when all we did was go out for soup.”
There’s no way around that. “I was out of line.”
The words don’t come easily. They don’t come often.
Her brows lift.
“I don’t get to make that decision for you,” I continue.
“No,” she says. “You don’t.”
“I didn’t like it.”
Shit, the words came out of my mouth before I was ready for them. That level of honesty is a little much.
Her breath changes. “You don’t have to like it.”
“I know.”
For a second, neither of us moves.
The office feels smaller than it did a minute ago. Tighter. Everything shifted without asking permission.
Annie exhales slowly, trying to calm herself, but I catch it, the way her fingers curl against the desk, the way her shoulders square, bracing for something she doesn’t want but isn’t going to run from either.
“You don’t get to…” she starts.
I step closer, which cuts her off mid-sentence.
Her breath hitches. Barely there, but I hear it.
“You’re right,” I say. “I don’t get to tell you who you see. What you do. Where you go.”
Her eyes flick between mine, searching. “Then what is this?” she asks.
I don’t answer right away, because the truth isn’t something I’ve ever been good at saying out loud.
I normally just act.
My hand finds the edge of the desk beside her, boxing her in without touching her, close enough that she feels it. The shift. The intent.
“This,” I say, “is me trying to ignore everything I shouldn’t be ignoring.”
Her lips part.
I don’t give myself time to think it through, to weigh it against reputation or rules or consequences. If I do, I’ll stop, and I’m done stopping.
My hand slides to her jaw, firm but careful, thumb brushing just beneath her ear as I tilt her face up to mine.
“Silas…”
I crash my lips to hers, heat and restraint snapping all at once.
She goes still for half a heartbeat, just enough for me to feel the shock of it, before she surges forward. She’s been holding this back just as hard as I have.
Her hands grip my shirt, dragging me closer as she kisses me back, hungry and a little bit angry.
Good.
I deepen it, angling her head, my grip tightening just enough to feel the pulse beneath my fingers. She makes a sound, low and breathless, that hits somewhere deep and wrecks what little control I had left.
I’ve wanted her. More than I’ve even admitted to myself. The jealousy has been less about Duke and way more about me.
All of it breaks.
She tastes of coffee and something sweeter that doesn’t belong here because that makes me want more than I should.
My other hand slides to her waist, pulling her up from the chair without thinking, closing the last of the distance between us until there’s nothing left but heat and breath and the clash of heat neither of us is pretending to ignore anymore.
And I won’t be able to ignore it again.