Chapter 3
I sit at the breakfast table, running my finger around the rim of my coffee mug.
It's seven-twenty. The silver spoons clink against porcelain.
The staff move silently around us, refilling coffee, removing plates.
Every sound echoes in the high-ceilinged dining room. Every movement feels choreographed.
"More coffee, Miss Ashby?" Miss Charlot asks.
I nod, not trusting my voice. The dark liquid pours, steam rising like a spirit escaping. I watch it curl and vanish.
Cash sits at the head of the table—Eleanor's chair. He's reading something on his tablet, barely acknowledging me. Three weeks since Legion walked out. Three weeks of this pantomime of family.
Wyatt stumbles in, twenty minutes late and riding some chemical high.
His eyes are too bright, pupils pinned. Cocaine, probably.
Could be pills. With Wyatt, it could be anything—he never did have any self-control.
At least he showed up. As soon as Legion left, Wyatt came back to the family table like a vulture returning to a carcass.
"Morning, sunshine," he drawls at me, dropping into his chair. His hand shakes slightly as he reaches for the coffee.
I don't answer. Just take another sip from my mug.
The emptiness to my right is what gets me. That's where Colt always sat. My brother, my confidant. The one person in this house who actually saw me.
And now he's gone. Off with Destiny and the baby, somewhere out of reach and out of touch. Somewhere with a new life that doesn't include any of us.
I can't blame him for escaping. I just wish he'd taken me with him.
But the silence he left behind is deafening. There's no one to catch my eye when Cash says something particularly pompous. No one to kick me under the table. No one watching my back.
I feel his absence like a phantom limb. An ache where something vital used to be.
And then, the new emptiness—the absence that Mercy left behind.
I never expected to miss a nine-year-old girl I barely knew three months ago.
But I do. I miss her questions about everything—why the chandelier has exactly twelve crystals, why we have three different kinds of forks, why the horses get turned out twice a day.
She brought something to the house that hasn't been here in decades.
Innocence.
And sisterhood, in a way. Growing up with three brothers never gave me that softness. The boys were all competition, and protection, and testosterone. But Mercy was different. She made the ranch feel less like a museum exhibit and more like a home.
Less like a cage.
Now she's at Rimrock, and the house echoes with her absence. I find myself listening for her footsteps on the stairs, expecting to see her burst into a room asking about dinosaur bones, or horse anatomy, or whatever new obsession she'd developed that day.
And not even Puddles can make up for it. Though the puppy misses her dearly, too.
Surprisingly, it’s Cash that Puddles looks to for attention now. Not me. And he allows it. Hell, he’s embraced it. Says the dog has the breeding to be a proper retriever and is planning on taking him duck hunting this fall.
So… again. As always… it’s just me and my horse against the world. Even more so now. No Mama, no Colt.
No Legion.
Just empty spaces where people used to be.
My phone lights up with a notification.
I tap it open immediately, grateful for the distraction. Rimrock Academy is trying out a new AI system this year that sends thirty-second "magic moment" clips each morning—snapshots from the previous day. They call it "parent portal glimpses."
I'm not her parent, but I'm on the approved list.
Small miracles in a time of self-destruction.
I watch as Mercy walks between classes, her uniform crisp, her backpack bouncing slightly.
The camera catches her in the library, bent over a book with intense concentration.
Then talking with Eliza, her assigned "sister"—a fifth-grader who started as a school requirement but has become something real.
They're laughing about something, heads bent together over a shared secret.
I see the changes in her already, subtle but unmistakable.
Her shoulders aren't as tense. She smiles easier now.
There's a confidence in her stride that wasn't there before.
She's becoming a different child from the one I knew at the old trailer—the one who was taught to shoot and 'check sixes' by a gang of outlaw bikers.
A Cinderella story, if Cinderella had a tattooed brother and a messed-up family history.
I watch the video twice more, happiness and longing tangling in my chest. Would Mercy hate it if I stopped by to say hi?
It's not like I have a job or anything important to do.
I manage the Ashby social accounts. I post pictures and videos of perfect moments that never actually happened.
That's my sole purpose in life when the Kanes aren't in it.
I don't want to bug her or make her feel 'watched'. That would be the worst. But I miss her. And not just because of the way she brightened the ranch up, but because she's my connection to Legion.
Mercy and I talk every night—we catch up every evening, at least until she replaces me with a gang of giggling schoolgirls. It should be enough, but it's not. Last night I asked her to tell Legion I said "Hi."
Just that. Just "Hi."
But between Legion and me, it's code. It means: I'll be there tonight. I'll wait thirty minutes at the silo. If you show up, we can fuck.
This is how it's always been between us. Little messages that appear out of nowhere. Subtle signals that mean I'm thinking of you. I want to see you. Come see me tonight.
I wonder if he'll show. I wonder if he's still angry.
Not gonna lie, the hate fucking is amazing.
The first time, anyway.
But I don’t want to hate-fuck him forever.
I want to love that man so hard. I want to be his everything.
Thirty minutes at midnight will never be enough time to say everything I need to say with my body, since words always fail us.
"You're quiet this morning," Cash says suddenly, watching me too carefully over the rim of his coffee cup.
I don't answer him. Just sip my own coffee and stare at the window, where Montana stretches out forever, vast and empty and full of places to hide.
Cash sets down his cup with that practiced precision he does everything with. The gesture itself is a performance—the way his pinky lifts slightly, the way he places it exactly in the center of the saucer. Everything Cash does is calculated, even when no one's watching.
"The cattle auction's next week," he says, not looking at me directly. "You will be there, right, Savannah? It's time to choose bloodlines for the coming year."
I stare at my plate, pushing eggs around with my fork. The yolks have congealed into a cold, rubbery mess, a metaphor for my life.
"We've got those Wagyu-Angus crosses to consider," he continues, as if I've shown any interest. "And that new bull from Calgary—"
"I know how the auction works, Cash."
He clears his throat, folding his napkin into a perfect square.
"Well. It's good you're here for it. Especially with everything that's happened.
" His voice shifts, adopting that patronizing tone he uses when he thinks he's being insightful.
"Legion being gone... it's a good thing, Savannah.
For everyone. Mercy's safe now. You're back where you belong. This was the right call."
I don't respond. Don't agree. Don't even look at him.
The silence stretches between us like a living thing until Wyatt snorts from across the table. "Right call," he mimics, voice slurred slightly.
It used to be that Wyatt would make an attempt to hide his addictions. Back before Eleanor died. Now, he just doesn't care for the pretense, I guess.
"Like that Kane girl's gonna turn out any different than her trash brother or that knocked-up sister." Wyatt's laugh has always been a mean sound with no humor in it. "She's a lost cause. Just like all of them. Demons and whores—"
"You would know about lost causes, wouldn't you, Wyatt?
" My voice comes out quiet, precise. Not angry.
Just... factual. The table goes still. Some wounds don't need volume to bleed.
"How many times has Cash paid off your dealers?
How many rehab centers have kicked you out?
" I set my fork down carefully. "If it wasn't for me managing this family's image, you'd be another homeless addict shooting up under a bridge somewhere.
Another pathetic statistic. But please, tell me more about Mercy's future prospects. "
Wyatt's face contorts, his mouth. "Your management?" He sneers at me. "Your management, Savannah? With your whore of a mouth wrapped around that degenerate's cock in that biker club? Is that the family image you’re managing?"
Holy shit, I'd forgotten about that leak. So many things happened since that day, it just… slipped my mind. I don’t go online to gossip. I don’t socialize anywhere. I don’t belong to any groups and I don’t covet and hoard hashtags like the professional influencers who view it as a job.
I post pictures, that’s it.
So I don’t really live in the same world as everyone else. Why should I? Even without the estate money, I have enough personal money for two lifetimes.
Legion was wrong about that. Thinking my money would run out in a year if we escaped and just gave into the urge to be ‘regular people’.
My money will never run out. I have stacks of it everywhere. In the safe, buried down in the bedrock. In the barn. Buried in various spots on the property. And that’s just my pocket money should anything happen with the legitimate stuff that’s in the bank.
Colt and I started doing this when we were young. Pretendin’ we were cowboys who robbed banks. It was a play thing. But then, as we got older, as the sums got real, we made a decision together that we’d stash half of what we got paid out in the trust each year.
Just in case.