Chapter 32
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Silas
The problem with Annie is that she makes honesty feel less avoidable.
Most people around Ironwood accept distance as a form of leadership. They mistake restraint for strength because restraint is cleaner, easier to live around, easier to inherit.
My entire life has been built on controlled responses, measured reactions, and useful silence.
Then Annie Wright looks at me as if she can see every fracture line anyway, and suddenly withholding things starts feeling less like discipline and more like cowardice.
Which is deeply inconvenient.
The wind shifts across the fence line, cold enough to carry the scent of pine and damp earth off the lower pasture.
Annie still stands close beside me, one hand wrapped around mine because she refuses to let go and I haven’t found a single reason to either.
Her thumb brushes once against my knuckles.
Small movement. Disastrous effect.
I clear my throat lightly and look back toward the property. “Vivian’s been calling more often.”
Annie glances up at me. “That sounds ominous.”
“It usually is.”
That earns the faintest curve of her mouth, but it fades quickly when she studies my face more carefully. “She’s pressuring you?”
“No,” I say dryly. “She’s attempting a hostile corporate takeover using passive aggression and family obligation.”
Annie snorts softly. I like making her laugh.
“She thinks Ironwood’s image has become unstable,” I continue. “Too much noise. Too many questions. Too much gossip around the ranch lately.”
“Because heaven forbid people have personalities.”
“She prefers predictability.”
Annie cocks her head to one side. “Vivian prefers control.”
“Yes.”
“She’s worried about the investigation?” Annie asks.
“She’s worried about appearances.”
The fence creaks softly beneath my hand as I lean against it.
Annie’s standing beside me under moonlight holding my hand because it matters naturally, and I find myself too tired to keep protecting everyone from the truth of my life.
“She’s been talking about legacy again,” I say.
Annie’s brow furrows. “Legacy.”
“Heirs. Stability. Public perception.” My jaw tightens faintly. “The importance of the Harlan name remaining structured.”
Understanding flickers across Annie’s face. Then irritation. “She’s trying to manage your personal life now too?”
“She always has.”
I don’t usually say these things aloud because saying them aloud makes them sound exactly as suffocating as they are.
Vivian has spent years treating Ironwood as a dynasty that requires careful cultivation instead of a ranch run by actual human beings.
But I’ve been the primary investment since I turned eighteen.
Oldest son. Inherited responsibility. Inherited expectations. Inherited pressure.
The assumption was always simple: eventually I would marry someone appropriate, produce heirs, stabilize the future of the ranch, and continue the line in a way that looked respectable from the outside.
As if human lives become safer once arranged correctly.
“She actually talks about heirs?” Annie asks carefully.
I look out across the dark pasture instead of at her. “Frequently.”
“That’s insane.”
“Not by Vivian’s standards.”
Her grip tightens around my hand. “Silas…”
I exhale slowly through my nose. “The thing about legacy is that people start treating your future like communal property long before you get a say in it.”
Annie goes still beside me.
I don’t know why I said that.
Or maybe I do. Because standing beside her feels dangerously close to wanting things I stopped allowing myself to imagine years ago.
“Well,” she says firmly, “for the record, Vivian terrifies me significantly less now that I understand she’s basically trying to run Ironwood like an haunted monarchy.”
Despite myself, I laugh softly.
Annie’s expression softens. The sound surprised her too. Then her face grows serious again. “There’s more.”
The shift in her tone pulls my attention back fully. “What?”
She hesitates. Which I dislike. Annie’s brave enough that hesitation from her usually means the subject matters.
“The legal overlaps in everything I’m researching,” she says carefully. “They keep tracing back toward Tessa’s firm.”
My chest tightens.
Tessa Grange?
No way. Tessa has been attached to Ironwood for decades.
She handled my father’s estate after the accident. Helped restructure debt loads during drought years. Negotiated land disputes. Protected water rights. Built contracts that kept developers from carving pieces off this ranch when everyone else thought we were vulnerable enough to pressure.
I trusted her.
My father trusted her.
“You think she’s involved,” I say finally.
“I think her firm keeps surfacing around entities tied to the fraud.” Annie’s voice stays measured. Careful. “That’s not the same thing.”
“No.”
“But it’s enough that I can’t ignore it anymore.”
The night goes very still around us.
I hate how defensive my first instinct feels. Not because Annie’s accusing recklessly, she isn’t. Because part of me wants the explanation to be innocent badly enough that I recognize the bias immediately.
That’s dangerous.
Trust becomes weakness the second you stop examining it.
“I don’t know what to do with that information yet,” I admit honestly.
Annie nods once. “I know.”
“I’ve known Tessa most of my life.”
“And that matters.”
“Yes.”
“But so do the numbers.”
My eyes close briefly. Because she’s right. The evidence doesn’t care about emotional history. It only cares about patterns. And the patterns keep getting uglier.
“I’ll look into it myself,” I say at last.
Annie studies my face carefully, probably measuring whether I mean that or whether I’m trying to protect someone.
The answer, unfortunately, is both.
“I’m not asking you to accuse her,” she says.
“I know.”
“I just…” She exhales softly. “Silas, somebody inside these systems understands how to manipulate them professionally. This isn’t random fraud anymore.”
No, it isn’t.
Someone built this.
My hand tightens around hers before I realize I’m doing it.
Annie doesn’t pull away.
The warmth of her standing beside me under this massive dark sky feels dangerously close to peace. Which means it probably won’t last.
Nothing peaceful has survived this month intact.
Eventually I walk her back toward the house and watch as she heads off to bed, looking sleepy and adorable.
I stand there for a long moment afterward, staring at the closed front door like a man who’s forgotten how movement works.
Then I exhale once, hard, and head toward the barn office. Because if I stay standing here thinking about Annie any longer, I’m going to lose what remains of my judgment completely.
The office is dark except for the desk lamp when I step inside.
Security feeds flicker across the monitor wall in muted grayscale. Barn entrances, equipment sheds, rear gates, service roads.
Normal.
Too normal.
I shrug out of my jacket and sit down heavily in the chair.
Then I start reviewing footage again. Frame by frame.
The returned SD card keeps bothering me. Something about it never fit. The timing was too precise. The access too clean.
At first I assumed whoever did it simply knew the ranch well enough to avoid obvious camera coverage.
Now I’m less convinced.
I pull up the barn feeds from the night Annie’s SD card reappeared. Main service lane. Parking area. South side entry.
Everything appears routine.
Employees crossing through frame. Truck lights, shifting shadows, time stamps in the lower corner.
I scrub backward slower.
Again.
Again.
Then stop.
My eyes narrow.
There.
2:13:41.
A ranch hand crosses near the supply entrance carrying feed bags.
I advance the footage.
2:16:42.
The same camera shows empty space.
I sit forward slowly. Something’s wrong with the lighting. The overhead flicker loops identically across two separate timestamp sequences.
My stomach goes cold.
No.
I rewind.
Watch again.
Same flicker.
Same shadow movement.
Same exact frame artifact repeating.
Three minutes.
Exactly three minutes long.
The footage isn’t continuous. It’s looped. Someone edited the security feed.
I just stare at the screen while anger settles into me with terrifying clarity.
Not trespassing or opportunistic access. Not some local idiot testing locks for fun. This was planned, technical, intentional.
Someone didn’t just move through Ironwood. They altered the evidence afterward, which means whoever’s doing this has access to far more than gates and paperwork.
My jaw tightens hard enough to ache. Because suddenly the shape of the threat changes again. I realize something that makes my blood run genuinely cold.
Whoever’s targeting this ranch may already know exactly how close we are to finding them.