Chapter 47
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
Annie
The thing about powerful women is that they never arrive looking panicked.
They arrive moisturized.
Vivian Harlan steps into Ironwood’s study wearing winter white cashmere and pearls piercing enough to qualify as weaponry.
Rainwater glitters along the shoulders of her coat. Her silver hair sits perfectly smooth despite the storm outside.
She looks like civilization.
Which is funny considering she walked in carrying the emotional equivalent of a flamethrower.
The room goes still the second she enters.
Silas stands near the fireplace with his arms folded tightly across his chest.
Cody sits at the desk, laptop open beside him, expression stoic in that terrifyingly quiet way he gets when he’s already six steps past homicide.
Duke leans against the bookshelf near the doorway, jaw tight, fingers drumming once against his thigh before going still.
I’m on the couch between all of them wearing one of Silas’s sweaters, drowning in enough residual adrenaline to legally qualify as a controlled substance.
Vivian’s eyes land on me.
Then her attention moves to the brothers.
“Tell me,” she says calmly, “that Sheriff Miller has not involved County investigators yet.”
Silas doesn’t answer.
Vivian exhales slowly through her nose. “This situation requires discretion.”
Cody finally speaks. “Jake Dorsey attempted corporate sabotage and coordinated criminal fraud.”
“And Benji assaulted Annie,” Duke adds coldly.
Vivian’s expression doesn’t change. “We will handle this privately,” she says. “Quietly.”
My stomach twists. Women like Vivian don’t fear wrongdoing nearly as much as they fear exposure.
“No sheriff,” Vivian continues. “No public filings until legal counsel reviews everything. Ironwood cannot survive scandal of this magnitude.”
There it is.
The family name.
The precious goddamn legacy.
Silas unfolds his arms slowly. “That’s not happening.”
Vivian’s gaze snaps toward him. “You’re not thinking clearly.”
“I’m thinking perfectly clearly.”
“This family has survived because I protected it.”
Cody lets out one laugh. “You embezzled from us.”
Vivian’s composure shifts.
Duke straightens away from the bookshelf. “You manipulated ranch finances for years.”
“I stabilized operations.”
“You stole.”
Vivian’s eyes narrow. “Careful.”
“No,” Duke says. “You be careful.”
The room changes after that.
I feel it physically. Like standing outside right before lightning hits nearby.
Vivian looks between the brothers slowly, disbelief beginning to crack through her usual composure as she realizes this is the one thing she never expected from them: unity.
She built their obedience so carefully she forgot men eventually grow beyond cages.
“We know about the shell companies,” Cody says.
Silence.
“The investor coordination,” Silas adds.
“The acquisition pressure,” Duke finishes. “Tessa confirmed it all.”
Vivian goes still enough to become frightening.
Cody reaches over calmly and closes his laptop with one precise movement. “We hired Annie because the finances stopped making sense.”
Vivian’s eyes cut toward me again. “You brought an outsider into family business.”
I stand before I fully decide to. The movement draws everyone’s attention. “You were bleeding the ranch deliberately.”
Vivian’s mouth tightens faintly. “You have an extraordinarily inflated sense of your understanding.”
“No,” I reply softly. “I just pay attention.”
Vivian steps farther into the room. “Ironwood was becoming unstable long before any financial restructuring occurred.”
“Restructuring?” Duke echoes incredulously.
“You boys were making emotional decisions.”
Silas laughs once under his breath. “You mean independent decisions.”
Vivian ignores him. “Expansion costs were climbing. Public expectations were unsustainable. Staffing inefficiencies alone—”
“You made the ranch look weaker than it was,” Cody cuts in. “So we’d keep depending on you.”
Vivian’s silence confirms more than denial ever could.
“You tried to frame me,” I say.
Vivian finally looks directly at me. “You inserted yourself into matters beyond your understanding.”
“No,” I say again. “I uncovered them.”
“She disrupted your control,” Cody says softly.
Vivian turns toward him. “I protected this family after your father died.”
Silas steps forward now. “You controlled us after Dad died.”
“I kept this ranch alive.”
“You made us afraid every time we disagreed with you,” Duke snaps.
“That isn’t the same thing.”
“It is when you’re eighteen and grieving,” Silas says.
“You think your father would approve of this?” she demands. “Public scandal? Criminal investigations? Staff panic? Land vulnerability?”
“No,” Cody says carefully.
Vivian stills.
Then Cody finishes softly: “But he also wouldn’t approve of you stealing from us.”
Vivian’s gaze moves slowly across the three brothers standing together now, and I watch the exact moment realization hits her. She lost them.
The softness disappears.
What remains underneath is pure strategy, and suddenly every instinct I have goes alert.
Vivian turns toward me fully.
If power brokers can’t reclaim control, they find someone to punish for the loss.
“You,” she says softly, “have caused catastrophic damage to this family.”
I smile. “No,” I say. “I documented it.”
Vivian steps closer. “I could ruin your career in six phone calls.”
Behind me, I feel all three men go still simultaneously.
“I could make sure nobody reputable hires you again,” she continues smoothly. “Accounting firms speak to each other. Boards speak to each other. Recommendations disappear quietly all the time.”
Fear should probably happen somewhere around now. Instead, I feel strangely calm.
I tilt my head. “Try.”
Vivian’s eyes narrow.
I step closer too.
“If you think I survived my parents, corporate finance, and this family’s ongoing psychological thriller just to get intimidated by pearls and country club politics,” I say softly, “you’ve dramatically misunderstood me.”
Duke makes a strangled sound somewhere behind me that might actually be pride.
Finally Vivian smooths one hand lightly over her coat sleeve. “Very well. This will not end the way you think it will.”
Then she walks out.
I don’t realize how tightly wound my body is until my knees suddenly threaten mutiny.
“Jeez,” Duke mutters.
“You okay?” Cody asks.
I laugh softly. “Define okay.”
And then Silas is in front of me, one hand sliding carefully along my jaw like he’s confirming I’m real. His thumb brushes beneath my eye.
“You stood up to her,” he says.
I shrug weakly. “I have unresolved authority issues.”
Duke barks out a laugh.
Cody’s mouth finally softens.
And then Duke kisses me, both hands wrapping around my waist like relief itself.
“You terrifying little menace,” he murmurs against my mouth.
He lifts me with that casual brute force I never stop craving and sets me on the edge of the desk. I hear papers crumple, a pen rolling, the quick gasping breath in my own lungs as all three of them crowd in.
I could swim in the heat radiating off their bodies.
I brace myself for Silas’s mouth first, but it’s Cody who kisses me. It’s always shocking, the gentleness in him now. The soft pressure, like he’s tasting a memory.
“You always taste like trouble,” he whispers into my mouth.
Always. Like I’m a flavor he invented.
A hand is already between my legs, shoving up the heavy wool of the borrowed sweater, tracing the elastic of the underwear I definitely did not pick for seduction.
White, ribbed, probably shrunken from a violent dryer cycle.
Cody’s fingers are long, methodical. He finds me wet with embarrassing ease.
I blush in front of all three of them and then Silas is behind me, sliding the sweater up and off so fast I barely register the cold breeze against my skin before his hands are there, covering me, stroking a thumb across the top of my breastbone.
It’s greedy and tender at the same time. Silas is anger, protection, and sex knotted together so tight it might detonate if he let go for one second.
I don’t get a chance to process because Duke is pushing between my knees, mouth hot, words hotter: “Lie back.”
The tone, low, hoarse, a twitch of violence at the edge, reminds me exactly why I’m soaking through the useless cotton barrier. I do it, sliding back across the polished wood.
A pair of hands cage my arms above my head. Cody again, holding me down, thumb tracing the inside of my wrist in time with my pulse.
“Relax, Annie,” he whispers.
I arch, meaning to twist away, but only end up grinding into Duke’s open hand.
“No,” I correct, “I can’t…” But whatever excuse I’m going to make is destroyed by the first sweep of his tongue.
His stubble scrapes the inside of my thigh, maddening and soft, and his hands clamp under my knees to anchor me.
Cody’s grip tightens on my wrists but he makes a shushing sound, soothing, a slow drag of his nose beside my ear.
I want to spit defiance but all I can do is whimper as Duke devours me, every lick calculated to drive me insane.
I shut my eyes, see nothing, only showreels of body and light, the buzz of sweat collecting at my temples. My hips buck and Silas is there, one arm looped under my shoulders, holding me down.
I twist to get at his mouth but he won’t let me; he just watches with this ferocious tenderness as I come undone.
Duke’s tongue works over me, slow then impossibly deep, the kind of rhythm that says he’s not stopping until I’m destabilized at a molecular level. His tongue gets everywhere it can reach; he’ll come up for air when he’s buried inside my taste, not before.
I feel myself slip, a frantic sensation clawing at the base of my spine. My head thrashes left, then right. Silas’s fingers spear through my hair, anchoring, holding me open so I don’t miss a second.
“Breathe, Annie,” he murmurs, and I do, every inhalation punctuated by a shudder or a curse.
I come hard, embarrassingly fast, so high my vision whites out for a split second and I have to bite my lip to keep from screaming. Duke doesn’t stop, not even when I flinch and sob.