Chapter 48
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
Duke
Turns out public humiliation is an incredibly effective business strategy.
Who knew.
Three days after Vivian’s little supervillain monologue in the study, the town meeting at Colter Creek Municipal Hall hits standing room capacity before sunset.
I mean, sure, Ironwood nearly got eaten alive by internal corruption, organized financial sabotage, and family betrayal wrapped in cashmere, but people could at least pretend they’re here out of civic concern instead of small town bloodlust.
They are absolutely not pretending.
The room buzzes loud with whispers and wet coats and coffee Thermoses while ranchers crowd shoulder to shoulder beneath fluorescent lights that make everybody look vaguely haunted.
Sheriff Miller stands near the back wall with two deputies.
Smart man.
Because if tonight goes badly, there’s at least a forty percent chance somebody throws a folding chair.
Beside me, Cody adjusts the cuffs of his dark button down for approximately the nine thousandth time. Stress habit. Annie calls it his “emotionally repressed Batman routine.”
Accurate.
Silas stands near the aisle looking carved out of controlled violence and exhaustion. Hands in his pockets. Expression closed off.
And Annie… she’s terrifying tonight.
She stands near the front table in black jeans, boots, and a charcoal sweater tucked halfway into her waistband, electric blue hair braided loosely over one shoulder. Laptop open. Projector ready. Camera bag at her feet.
Calm.
Too calm.
Which is how I know she’s about to ruin somebody’s entire life professionally.
“Baby,” I murmur beside her, “you currently look like the patron saint of forensic homicide.”
Without looking up, she says, “That’s the nicest thing anybody’s ever said to me.”
Cody almost smiles.
Almost.
Town council members shuffle papers nervously while the mayor clears his throat into the microphone. “This emergency meeting has been called regarding allegations involving Ironwood Ranch operational finances and—”
“They won’t always be allegations,” Annie says calmly.
The entire room stills.
Annie steps forward, plugging the laptop into the projector while conversations die one by one around the hall.
The first spreadsheet appears on the screen behind her.
“You all deserve transparency,” Annie says evenly. “Because the financial manipulation impacting Ironwood didn’t only threaten the ranch. It affected local vendors, staffing stability, land contracts, rodeo sponsorships, and county development projections.”
Dead silence. Even the mayor stops breathing.
Annie clicks to the next slide.
Cody built most of the structural tracing. Annie made it understandable enough to survive public scrutiny.
Which is somehow even scarier.
“These entities,” Annie continues, “were used to reroute operational funds away from Ironwood through layered holding structures disguised as maintenance and agricultural expansion accounts.”
Murmurs ripple through the room. Sheriff Miller folds his arms harder.
She walks everybody through it methodically. Calm voice, facts, no emotional grandstanding, which makes it worse because nothing sounds exaggerated when Annie explains it.
It sounds proven.
Jake’s approval chains hit first.
Gasps.
Tessa’s legal structures hit second.
Shock.
Then Vivian’s indirect oversight connections appear and the room goes so quiet I can hear somebody’s Styrofoam coffee cup crumpling near the back wall.
Nobody interrupts her.
Nobody can.
Because Annie built this presentation well. Every accusation supported by records, every record duplicated, every duplicate archived publicly enough that burying it now would show guilt.
Which means Vivian lost before the meeting even started.
Cody leans toward me. “She’s cornered them.”
“Yeah,” I whisper back.
Then I watch Annie glance toward us, and my heart catches hard in my chest. Because she’s not looking for approval. She’s checking whether we’re still beside her.
Silas notices, too. He moves closer automatically until he’s standing near the edge of the stage beside her.
By the time the meeting ends, the shell company accounts are frozen, outside investors are under investigation, and Ironwood survives by approximately the width of a human stress fracture.
People crowd Annie afterward.
Town vendors shake Silas’s hand.
Ranch staff look relieved enough to cry.
“This isn’t amateur fraud,” Sheriff Miller says grimly. “I can’t believe you managed to catch it.”
Cody says, “Thank you.” Which might be the funniest thing I’ve ever heard.
Eventually the hall empties.
Rain taps softly against the windows now instead of storming. The fluorescent lights hum overhead while workers stack folding chairs near the back wall.
And suddenly it’s just us again.
The four of us standing near the front rows surrounded by exposed secrets and cold coffee cups and the aftermath of surviving together.
Annie finally exhales hard enough for me to notice.
“There,” she mutters. “Public accountability. My favorite coping mechanism.”
I laugh softly. Then stop laughing almost immediately because everything feels different tonight.
Quieter.
We’ve all been running at full speed for so long nobody noticed the cliff edge approaching until now.
Silas steps closer first. “You were incredible.”
Annie looks up at him.
And man… I’ve watched my older brother negotiate land disputes with armed ranchers and stare down men twice his size without blinking.
None of that looks remotely as vulnerable as the way he’s looking at Annie right now.
She swallows once. “We all did this.”
“No,” Cody says softly behind her. “You walked into a room full of people who could’ve turned on you and told the truth anyway.”
Annie’s eyes flick toward him.
“You changed everything here.”
Annie laughs softly under her breath. “Well. That sounds dangerous.”
“It is,” I say.
She looks toward me then. I’m done pretending this thing inside my chest is manageable.
I step closer. Close enough to touch.
“I think I fell in love with you somewhere between financial crimes and emotional collapse,” I admit.
Annie blinks.
I shrug helplessly. “In my defense, you looked very hot exposing billion-dollar corruption.”
That gets a startled laugh out of her.
But her eyes shine immediately afterward.
Cody looks down briefly before speaking. “I tried not to.”
Annie turns toward him slowly.
Cody removes his glasses, rubbing one hand across his mouth as if the confession physically hurts.
“I thought this was temporary,” he continues. “You were supposed to leave eventually. Temporary things are safer.”
My chest tightens.
Because yeah. We all thought that at first. But now I’m certain Annie will stay. She has a home here with us.
Cody looks back at Annie finally. “Then you started mattering more than my own self-preservation instincts.”
Annie’s expression softens so completely it nearly ruins me.
Silas watches all of us silently. Then he reaches for Annie’s hand. “I spent most of my life believing love was responsibility. Something heavy. Something you survive.”
Annie’s fingers tighten around his automatically.
Silas’s voice roughens. “But you walk into a room and suddenly things feel possible again.” He exhales once. “And that scares the hell out of me because losing you would destroy me.”
“You idiots,” she whispers.
I grin faintly. “Romantic idiots.”
“Dangerously attached idiots,” Cody corrects softly.
Silas just watches her as if she hung the moon personally.
Annie laughs once. “I love you, too.”
My entire body goes still.
Beside me, Cody closes his eyes briefly. The words physically hit him somewhere vital.
Annie shakes her head, smiling through tears now. “All of you. Which feels medically concerning.”
I bark out a laugh loud enough to echo through the empty hall.
And then we’re moving at the same time.
I kiss her first because patience has literally never been my ministry.
Annie laughs against my mouth before kissing me back hard enough to steal the oxygen straight from my lungs.
Cody’s hands slide into her hair the second I pull away, kissing her slower, deeper.
Silas waits exactly three seconds longer than the rest of us.
Then he cups her face carefully and kisses her hard.
Outside, rain falls soft across Colter Creek.
Inside the municipal hall, surrounded by folding chairs and exposed corruption and the wreckage of the Harlan family legacy, we choose each other anyway.