Chapter 44
FORTY-FOUR
Blackwood Estate Winery
Thursday Evening
The afternoon sun was sinking behind the mountains by the time Aubrey stepped away from the window, her mother's words still echoing in her ears.
She left you this place with strings attached. She tied you to it.
She pressed two fingers to the bridge of her nose, trying to blink away the exhaustion. That was when she saw him.
Down below, a tall silhouette broke away from the main building, cutting a path through the dimming light toward the heavy double doors of the barrel room.
Bennett. He walked with that slow, unhurried mountain stride that usually grounded her, but right now, it made her blood boil.
He hadn't said a word to her since the expansion meeting. He’d let the silence hang between them.
Aubrey didn't think. She grabbed her keys off the desk and marched out of the office. She was done thinking about it. She'd watched Bennett disappear into the barrel room. Now she was going to finish the conversation.
The air inside the winery's lower levels was always cooler, but as Aubrey pushed open the heavy side door to the barrel room, an unexpected chill swept over her, raising the hairs on her arms.
The main lights were off, leaving only the low-voltage, amber safety bulbs to cast long, distorted shadows across the concrete floor.
Her heels clicked sharply against the ground. The sound was too loud. It bounced off the corrugated steel ceiling and echoed back to her.
Aubrey slowed her pace, suddenly hyper-aware of how isolated she was. The staff had gone home hours ago. The last of the tourists had long since left.
She took a breath to call out for Bennett, but before the sound could leave her throat, a strange sensation prickled at the back of her neck.
The distinct, undeniable feeling of eyes on her.
Aubrey froze.
The shadows behind a row of empty oak casks seemed to deepen. The air felt thick, as if someone were breathing it in right alongside her.
She whirled around, her heart jumping into her throat. "Bennett?" she called out.
No answer.
The silence that followed was absolute, stretching out until it hummed in her ears. There was nothing but the steady, rhythmic drip-drip of condensation somewhere in the back drainage lines. She scanned the dark corridor, her eyes straining against the amber gloom.
"Bennett, if that's you, it's not funny," she said, her voice shaking enough to infuriate her.
Nothing.
Aubrey swallowed hard, gripping her keys tightly between her knuckles. You’re losing your mind, she told herself, forcing her feet to move again. Your mother got under your skin, and now you’re jumping at shadows.
She turned a corner, navigating past the massive, twenty-foot fermentation vats, heading toward the back alcove where the reserve barrels were aged.
Finally, a sliver of real light cut through the darkness.
Bennett was there. He had a clipboard in one hand and a flashlight in the other, checking the bungholes of the French oak barrels.
The amber light caught the sharp angle of his jaw, the hard line of his shoulders beneath his canvas jacket.
He looked entirely a part of this place—rooted, solid, and completely unbothered.
The contrast to her own frayed nerves made her snap.
"You have a lot of nerve ignoring me all day," Aubrey said, stepping into the light of his flashlight.
Bennett didn't flinch. He slowly lowered the clipboard, his dark eyes meeting hers. He didn't look surprised to see her, but the expression on his face was tight, guarded.
"I wasn't ignoring you, Aubrey," he said, his voice a low, gravelly rumble in the quiet room. "I was working. Some of us have to keep the operations running while you’re busy drafting twenty-year roadmaps."
"Oh, so we're doing this now?" Aubrey stepped directly into his space, her chin tilted up.
"You sat there in that boardroom and let Walter and Lockwood treat me like an interloper.
I made an executive call to save our distribution footprint.
If we don't scale up, Mercer drops us. It was a calculated risk. "
Bennett let out a short, harsh breath, tossing the clipboard onto a nearby barrel. He stepped closer, towering over her.
"This isn't a bank in Philadelphia, Aubrey," he said, his voice dropping into a dangerously quiet register.
"You're talking about bringing contract fruit onto this mountain.
You're letting strangers supply the lifeblood of this winery to hit a target on a spreadsheet.
Mabel would have burned this place to the ground before she let outside fruit dilute her juice. "
"Mabel isn't here!" Aubrey fired back, every word of the fight with Anne still burning beneath her skin. "I am. And I'm trying to make sure this place survives. But nobody seems willing to let me do that."
She threw up her hands. "When I first got here, I thought Mercer was the problem. Now I know losing them could be."
"My mother thinks I'm letting Mabel control me from the grave. Walter thinks I'm destroying everything she built. And you..."
Her voice caught.
"I don't even know what you think anymore."
"Is that what you think?"
Bennett took another step, closing the distance until she could feel the heat radiating off him in the chilled room. The anger in his eyes gave way to something far more personal.
"I don't know whether you're building a future here..."
"...or trying to survive the year."
His gaze dropped briefly to her lips before returning to her eyes.
"But some of us actually live here. I live here. And I'm not going to watch you treat this land like it's disposable."
"I don't think it's disposable," Aubrey breathed, her voice losing its venom as he stepped closer. Her heart was hammering against her ribs, but it wasn't from anger anymore.
"Bennett, I—"
Clink.
The sharp, metallic sound echoed from the deep shadows near the back fire exit.
Both of them went rigid.
A heavy iron door clicked shut, followed immediately by the sound of footsteps—fast, heavy, and frantic—scrambling across the concrete toward the exterior crushing pad.
Bennett's head snapped up, every muscle suddenly alert. "Who’s there?!" he shouted, his voice booming off the steel vats.
No answer. The footsteps instantly picked up into a dead sprint.
"Stay here," Bennett barked at Aubrey.
He didn't wait for a response. He took off into the dark, his heavy work boots slamming against the concrete as he rounded the towering fermentation tanks, the beam of his flashlight cutting wild, jagged lines through the shadows.
"Bennett!" Aubrey called out, but he was already gone.
She was left standing alone in the dim amber light, her breath catching in her throat.
The cold of the barrel room seemed to wrap around her ankles.
She gripped her keys, staring into the dark corridor where the footsteps had retreated.
The realization hit her like a physical blow: Someone had been standing in the dark. Someone had been watching them.
A few minutes later, the heavy thud of boots announced Bennett’s return.
He walked back into the light, breathing hard, his jaw tight and his hands empty. He was running a frustrated hand through his dark hair, his flashlight beam pointing harmlessly at the floor.
"Nothing," he said, looking back over his shoulder toward the heavy exterior door, which was still faintly vibrating. "They knew exactly which blind spots to hit to dodge the gravel drive. They’re gone."
He wasn't angry anymore; he looked genuinely rattled. He turned his eyes to Aubrey, the defensive friction of their argument completely replaced by a cold, protective dread.
"They didn't come in through the main entrance, Aubrey," Bennett said, his voice tight. "They had a key to the side lock, or they knew exactly how to bypass the broken latch on the fire door.”
"Whoever that was..." His gaze locked on hers. "They came here for a reason."
A beat passed.
"And they were watching us."