Chapter 113: Questions Pyramids
The water ran hot, steaming up the glass enclosure of the shower, a private world of white noise and warmth. Downstairs, the silence was different. It was the quiet of work continuing, of blood being scrubbed from floorboards, of order being restored.
Marco found Dove not in the house, but out by the east stable, a place that smelled of leather, sweet hay, and clean animal sweat. She was forking a new bale into a storage stall, muscles in her shoulders and back rolling under her sweat-damp t-shirt with a practical, easy strength. She didn’t pause as he approached, just gave a slight, acknowledging tilt of her head.
“Sent the boys home with their tails between their legs,” Marco said, leaning against the stall door. “Beth’s message was… vividly received.”
“Good.” Dove drove the pitchfork deep, twisted, and hauled out another clump. “Jackson’s hosing down the patio. Champagne stains like a bitch.” A faint, hard smile touched her lips. “Beth always had flair.”
Marco watched her work for a moment. The resemblance to Beth was startling—the same sharp green eyes, the same stubborn set of the jaw—but where Beth was a razor in a silk sheath, Dove was a well-worn hunting knife, solid and unadorned. “So this is the day job,” he said, gesturing around.
“One of ‘em.” She finished with the bale, plunging the pitchfork into the ground and wiping her hands on her jeans. “The one that pays the IRS. Keeps the lights on. The other one… well. You know the other one.”
“I’m getting the picture.” He followed her as she walked out into the sun, pulling a battered notebook from her back pocket and scanning a list. “Question, though. Now that Beth’s officially the boss of all… this,” he waved a hand at the sprawling ranch, “does she get a cowboy hat? It feels like there should be a hat. Maybe with a little diamond in the band. Very tasteful, very scary.”
Dove laughed, a real, rich sound that seemed to startle a few sparrows from the rafters. “Nah, she won’t get a hat.” She reached up, plucked a worn, sweat-stained black Stetson from a hook just inside the stable door, and snugged it down on her own head. It fit perfectly. “But if she did. It’ll be from him. Probably custom. Love looks different out here, Marco. Less words, more… hats.”
Marco filed that away, a small, crucial piece of understanding about the woman his best friend had somehow won back. “And what about you? You were running the whole show. Now you’re… what? Head of agriculture and equine affairs?”
Dove started walking toward the main feed shed, checking off items on her list. “I’m foreman. I’m Beth’s right hand. I’m the one who makes sure this machine,” she gestured at the barns, the distant tractors, the hands moving in the far pasture, “keeps humming so she can focus on the bigger, messier machines. Our parents… they were geniuses. Strategic, connected, ruthless. They were also sick fucks, in their own way.” She said it with a chilling matter-of-factness. “They planned everything. Even our names.”
She stopped at a water spigot, cranked it on, and cupped her hands under the flow to drink. Straightening, she looked at him, water droplets clinging to her chin. “Have you ever thought about what the meaning of your name is, Marco?”
He blinked. “My nonna said it meant ‘warlike.’ She thought it was funny.”
“It is. Roughly.” Dove nodded, turning off the water. “My parents had a thing. Generations of Montgomerys have. You name the child for its temperament. For the role you see.” She leaned back against the sun-warmed wood of the shed. “Dove. Peace. Hope. I was always meant for the surface. The calm. The one who makes the scary stuff look normal. I love the legal business, the animals, the land. I’m good at it. I’ll never leave my sister’s side, not in the ways that count. But the dark? That’s her native tongue.”
The air seemed to still. Somewhere, a horse whickered. Marco’s usual glibness deserted him. “And Bethany?”
A complex emotion crossed Dove’s face—pride, sorrow, a fierce, painful love. “Bethany. Hebrew. ‘House of God.’ Some interpretations say ‘house of obedience.’” She let out a short, sharp breath. “Our father took one look at her, this tiny, furious baby with eyes like glacier ice, and he knew. He told me when I was ten. He said, ‘Your sister, malen'kaya ptitsa, is not a songbird. She is the architect. She will build the house, and everyone, everything, will find its place within her walls.’ He knew she would lead. He knew she would command obedience. He just didn’t care what it cost her to learn how.”
The weight of it settled between them, heavier than the hay bales, more permanent than the marble in the main house. It explained the sheer, unassailable authority Beth carried, the way the darkness didn’t stain her but flowed through her like a foundational element.
“Jesus,” Marco murmured, finally.
“Yeah.” Dove pushed off the wall, her moment of vulnerability gone, tucked away like a cleaned weapon. “So, ‘warlike.’ You’ll fit right in. Just don’t track city shit into my stables.”
From the upstairs window of the master suite, a faint curl of steam escaped into the Texas air. Inside, the water had shut off. Down below, the ranch went on, a living, breathing entity under Dove’s watchful eye and Jackson’s silent guard. The two halves of the world—the gleaming, violent empire and the sun-baked, secret-keeping ranch—were not just coexisting. They were, thread by painful thread, becoming the same fabric.
Marco looked from the stable to the grand house, then back to Dove, who was already on the move, shouting an order to a hand about a fence post. He understood now, viscerally, what Damien had walked back into. This wasn’t a refuge. It was a fortress built by a woman who’d been born to rule. And his best friend was willingly, gratefully, living inside her walls.