Chapter 44
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
Silas
The storm gets louder after Jake says Vivian’s name. Or maybe I just stop hearing anything else.
Rain hammers the barn roof hard enough to shake dust loose from the beams overhead. Wind tears through the open aisle between stalls carrying the scent of wet hay, mud, horses.
And betrayal.
For one brutal second all I can see is my aunt standing in the front row at my father’s funeral with one hand on my shoulder and the other wrapped around Ironwood’s future as if it already belonged to her.
All those years.
All those goddamn years.
Beside me, Annie goes pale beneath the barn lights. Duke looks ready to kill someone barehanded. Cody’s gone into that terrifyingly still headspace he gets when emotion becomes too dangerous to show externally.
Jake watches all of us carefully.
Me especially. He’s waiting to see what kind of man I become next.
That’s his mistake. Because I already know.
I step forward slowly. Jake straightens automatically. Predators recognize each other eventually.
“You’re done here,” I say.
The rain crashes harder outside.
Jake’s expression stays controlled, but I catch the shift in his breathing now. The awareness. The recalculation. “You don’t get to decide that.”
“I do.” My voice stays low. Even. “You’re leaving Ironwood tonight.”
Jake laughs softly through his nose. “That would be difficult considering half this ranch still answers to me.”
Duke moves. “Try that sentence again.”
“Duke,” Cody snaps.
Because Duke currently looks one inconvenience away from felony assault.
I don’t take my eyes off Jake.
“You’re going to walk out of here,” I say. “Then you’re going to sit with Sheriff Miller and every lawyer Ironwood can afford while we hand over the records you were too stupid to delete properly.”
Jake’s jaw tightens.
Good.
Hit something.
“You sabotaged my ranch.”
“Your ranch?” Jake echoes calmly. “Interesting choice of wording considering Ironwood’s tied up in the family trust.”
There’s Vivian again.
Every sentence leads back to her somehow.
“She used you,” Annie says suddenly.
Jake finally looks toward her. And there’s an almost pitying look in his expression now.
“She understood reality,” he says. “Ironwood’s been dying slowly for years. Expansion costs alone—”
“We were stable before you started siphoning funds,” Cody cuts in.
“No.” Jake shakes his head once. “You were surviving. There’s a difference.”
The rage comes back hot this time, because he’s talking about Ironwood as if it’s numbers on paper instead of the place my father built with bleeding hands and eighteen-hour days.
A cage instead of a home.
“You don’t know a damn thing about this ranch,” I say.
Jake’s smile turns thin. “I know exactly what it’s worth.”
Wrong answer.
Very wrong answer.
I step closer again.
Close enough now that Jake has to tilt his head to hold eye contact.
“You listen carefully,” I say. “Because this is the last courtesy you’re getting from me.”
The barn goes silent around us. Even the horses seem restless now. Hooves shifting softly against stalls. Metal clinking somewhere deeper in the aisle.
“You walk away tonight,” I continue. “Or I stop being polite about what happens next.”
Jake studies me for one long second. Then he smiles. “Oh. There he is.”
I know exactly what he means.
The version of me built for violence, for survival, for protecting what’s mine.
The one Vivian helped create.
An engine roars to life outside. Everybody turns instinctively toward the sound. Truck. South lot. Moving fast.
“What the hell?” Duke mutters.
Jake moves.Straight toward Annie.
Everything happens at once after that.
Jake slams hard into Cody, knocking him sideways just enough to break formation. Duke lunges immediately.
I hear Annie gasp behind me, then somebody grabs her.
My entire body locks.
A figure comes out of the shadows beside the stalls with one arm hooked violently around Annie’s waist and the other clamped across her mouth.
She fights. Hard.
Camera crashing against the concrete, boots scraping, elbows driving backward.
“Move,” the man snarls.
The voice hits me first.
Familiar. Wrong.
Then Annie goes completely still for half a second.
Benji.
Fury detonates through me so hard it whites out my vision. Benji drags Annie backward toward the rear barn exit while Jake bolts toward the aisle.
Duke goes after him.
Cody recovers almost immediately and cuts sideways toward Annie with terrifying speed, intercepting the angle before Benji can reach the doors.
And me?
I become the storm.
I hit Benji hard enough to send all three of us crashing into the stall gate.
Metal screams.
Annie tears free the second the grip loosens enough and stumbles sideways gasping for air.
Benji swings at me.
Big mistake.
I catch his wrist mid punch and drive him face first into the wooden support beam hard enough to crack it.
He grunts violently.
Somewhere behind me I hear Duke roaring Jake’s name across the barn while boots thunder through mud outside.
Cody reaches Annie first. “Annie.”
She’s shaking.
Cody cups the back of her neck, checking her over with efficient movements. “Are you hurt?”
“I’m okay,” she breathes.
Lie.
Not physically, maybe. But I know trauma when I see it.
And then Annie looks toward Benji. He won’t meet her eyes.
“Oh wow,” she says softly.
“You should’ve stayed out of it,” he mutters. “I tried to warn you. I did everything I could to make you uncomfortable.”
I hit him again for that. For being the boogie man hiding in the shadows.
This time it’s hard enough that Cody actually grabs my arm. “Silas.”
I barely hear him.
All I can see is Annie standing there trying not to shake apart while rain pounds the barn roof and betrayal bleeds through the entire goddamn ranch.
Benji spits blood onto the floor. “She wasn’t supposed to matter this much.”
My vision narrows.
Annie goes pale again beside Cody. And suddenly I understand.
They never saw her as a person. Just leverage. An obstacle. A variable. A temporary woman they thought they could scare away before anybody got attached.
Too bad for them.
Because now?
Now Annie belongs to us.
So no one can touch her again.