Chapter 115: Bar Fly Confessional
The silence after the call with Senator Finch lingered in the office, thick and charged. Beth had handled him with a cool, detached precision that even Damien found breathtaking—a series of gentle reminders wrapped in velvet threats, a negotiation that ended with Finch promising a more favorable infrastructure bill and a discreet bank reference number. It was business. Her first official transaction.
For hours after, they worked. Logistics, numbers, security protocols. The sun arced across the sky. By the time the Texas evening bled into a deep indigo, the tension in Beth’s shoulders was a live wire. Marco had cracked his neck so many times it sounded like popcorn. Damien just watched her, recognizing the brittle focus that preceded a shatter.
“Enough,” Dove’s voice cut through from the doorway. She hadn’t knocked. She leaned against the frame, changed out of her work clothes into soft jeans and a worn-thin t-shirt. “You’ve all been staring at screens and murder-maps for ten hours. You’re done. Basement. Now. I’m not asking.”
Beth started to protest, but Dove fixed her with a look that hadn’t changed since they were kids. “Don’t make me get the water hose, Bethany. Move.”
A ghost of a smile touched Beth’s lips. She saved the file, closed the laptop. “She’ll do it.”
“Damn right I will.”
The basement wasn’t what most people would expect. It wasn’t damp or lined with rusting tools. It was a vast, low-ceilinged space paneled in warm cedar, lit by soft, recessed lighting and a few industrial lamps. It smelled of leather, good whiskey, and old wood smoke. One whole wall was a professional-grade bar, bottles glittering like jewels. The center of the room was a massive, sunken conversation pit—deep couches and oversized floor pillows in dark fabrics, arranged in a loose circle. It was where Samuel Montgomery had entertained his most trusted allies. Where Elena had taught her daughters to read a man’s intentions in the twitch of his fingers. Now, it was just theirs.
Dove was already curled into Jackson’s lap on one of the couches, his arms loose around her waist. Marco had claimed a giant pouf, long legs stretched out. Damien headed straight for the bar, but Beth waved him off. “My turn,” she said, her voice softer now, the CEO edge sanded away.
She moved behind the bar with a practiced ease, the ice clinking in the shaker a quiet percussion. She made old-fashioneds for Damien and Jackson, something clear and cold with a twist for Dove, a neat bourbon for Marco. For herself, just soda water with lime. She carried the drinks over on a tray, distributing them before sinking into the cushions beside Damien, kicking off her heels and tucking her feet beneath her.
For a while, they just sat in the quiet, the ice melting, the weight of the day slowly leaching into the forgiving dark.
“Your old man had taste,” Marco said finally, raising his glass to the room. “Better digs than Damien’s godfather’s panic room in Staten Island. That place smelled like stale cigars and regret.”
Damien chuckled, the sound rich and warm in the dim light. “Uncle Paolo believed ambiance was a tactical disadvantage.”
“Your families are something else,” Dove said, taking a sip. “All the yelling. The hand gestures. The food as a weapon.”
“It’s not a weapon, it’s a love language,” Marco corrected, grinning. “You show up, you eat. You’re sad, you eat. You whack a guy, you eat. It’s very efficient.”
“Sounds familiar, actually,” Beth mused, leaning her head back against the couch. Her bun was loosening, a few dark strands escaping to frame her face. “Just swap out the pasta for brisket or pierogi. Dad’s side, you could negotiate anything with a six-pack and a promise to watch the game. Mom’s relatives… colder. Cynical. They preferred rum and poker. But both sides agreed on two things: arguing was a sport, and drinking was the halftime show.”
Damien slung an arm over her shoulders, pulling her closer. “So, basically Italian.”
A laugh escaped Beth, genuine and surprised. “Yeah. I guess they were.”
The mood lifted, grew lighter. They traded stories. Marco told a ridiculous tale about Damien at sixteen, trying to impress a girl by stealing his father’s Lamborghini and promptly getting it stuck in a narrow Neapolitan alley. Damien countered with the time Marco mistook a diplomat’s wife for a high-end escort at a charity gala. Jackson offered a few choice stories about young, reckless Dove trying to break a wild stallion no one could ride, refusing help until she was thrown into a creek.
Then Dove’s eyes, glittering with mischief, landed on Beth. “Remember your… phase? After Dad died?”
Beth groaned. “Don’t.”
“What phase?” Damien asked, instantly intrigued.
“Her ‘I-am-a-force-of-nature-and-pain-is-for-other-people’ phase,” Dove said, smiling fondly. “She was thirteen. A stormcloud in cowboy boots. So angry she practically vibrated.”
“I wasn’t that bad,” Beth muttered into her glass.
“Weren’t you?” Dove’s smile turned sharp. “Country girl on the inside, all that Montgomery fury with nowhere to go. You’d pick fights with boys twice your size out behind the equipment shed.”
“They started it.”
“They’d say one wrong thing about Mom, or about me, and it was like you short-circuited.” Dove looked at Damien and Marco. “She had this dress for the 8th grade ‘homecoming’ thing. Short, black, kinda fancy. Our aunt sent it. Beth hated it, but she wore it.”
A cold knot formed in Beth’s stomach. She remembered the dress. The feeling of the fabric against her skin, all wrong.
Dove leaned forward, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial drawl. “I have a photo somewhere. Beth, in this little dress, standing by the old pickup. She’s smiling this wild, terrifying smile. And her knuckles are busted wide open. Blood all down the front of the dress. Nose bleeding, too. Pretty sure she broke Jimmy Hargrove’s orbital bone that night.”
The basement went quiet. Damien’s arm tightened around her.
Beth set her glass down on the low table with a precise click. The memory was visceral—the hot, coppery taste of blood in her mouth, the crunch of cartilage under her fist, the glorious, freeing burn of violence. The way the dress, a symbol of a normal life she couldn’t have, had been ruined. Sanctified.
“He said Mom was a spy who slept with her targets to kill them,” Beth said, her voice flat, detached. “He wasn’t entirely wrong about the job description. But he said it like it was dirty. Like she was dirty.” She looked at her own hands, now clean, manicured, capable of signing death warrants on a tablet. “So I explained it to him. Up close. With my fists. Seemed more convincing than words.”
She felt Damien’s gaze on her profile, intense, searching. He didn’t see a victim. He saw an origin story.
Marco let out a low, appreciative breath. “Thirteen? Jesus, Beth. You were a born enforcer.”
“I was a child with a temper,” she corrected, but the old fire flickered in her gut, a dark and familiar warmth. She caught Dove’s eye across the pit. Her sister’s expression wasn’t mocking. It was recognition. An acknowledgment of the wild, shared thing that lived in their blood.
Dove raised her glass in a silent toast. To the girl in the bloody dress. To the woman she became.
The conversation drifted again, softer now, into plans for the vineyard, for the wedding that still felt like a distant dream amidst the chaos. But the atmosphere had shifted. The masks were off, the armor unlocked. Here, in the basement that had seen generations of Montgomerys plan and confess and simply be, they were just five people, shaped by violence and bound by a loyalty deeper than law.
Later, as they climbed the stairs to the main house, sleep-heavy and relaxed, Damien held Beth back on the landing. He didn’t speak. He just framed her face with his hands, his thumbs stroking the arches of her cheekbones. He looked at her—at the fierce intelligence, the buried pain, the unwavering will.
“That girl,” he murmured, his voice rough. “The one in the photo. She’s still in there, isn’t she?”
Beth held his gaze, green meeting green in the shadowed hall. She thought of the bolo tie, the hairpin, the cold logistics on her screen. She thought of bloody knuckles on black satin.
“She’s the foundation,” Beth said quietly. And for the first time all day, it didn’t feel like a confession of guilt. It felt like a fact.