Chapter 119: Swallow Your Guilt
The office was a study in controlled sunlight and sharper angles. Beth sat behind the vast, reclaimed cypress desk, wearing a cream-colored silk blouse and tailored trousers. She looked like a Vogue spread on benevolent land stewardship. The only hint of the previous day was a faint, lemon-scented cleaner lingering in the air, masking the last trace of explosives.
Damien stood by the far window, partially concealed by a potted fiddle-leaf fig. He was a shadow in a charcoal suit, watching the long driveway. Marco leaned against the doorframe leading to the hall, polishing an apple on his sleeve with a casual rhythm that didn’t match the alertness in his eyes.
“He’s here,” Damien said, his voice low. “Two SUVs. Four men getting out.”
“Right on time,” Beth said, not looking up from the antique ledger she was pretending to examine. “Dove?”
Her sister’s voice came through a nearly invisible earpiece. “Jack’s got the perimeter. Every man with Vega is tagged, visually and thermally. I’m in the gallery above the foyer. You’ve got the choir behind you, sis.”
Beth closed the ledger. “Let’s be hospitable.”
Enrique Vega was ushered in by a stone-faced ranch hand. He was a man who used expensive tailoring to suggest a physique he didn’t have, his hair dyed a suspiciously uniform black. Two bulky enforcers flanked him, their eyes scanning the room, lingering on Damien and Marco. A third man, leaner, with the calm of a professional shooter, stayed a half-step behind.
“Mr. Vega,” Beth said, rising with a polished smile. “Welcome to Montgomery Ranch. Can I offer you some sweet tea? Or coffee? The cookies are fresh.” She gestured to a porcelain plate on the corner of her desk, stacked with delicate, golden-brown almond crisps.
Vega’s smile was a condescending stretch. “No need for the formalities, Ms. Montgomery. We both know why I’m here.”
“Do we?” Beth tilted her head, the picture of polite confusion. “I assumed it was to apologize for the unsolicited landscaping you attempted on my front lawn yesterday. A drone, was it? Such modern nonsense.”
One of Vega’s men shifted his weight. Vega’s smile tightened. “A demonstration of reach. A reminder that some walls are easier to scale than others. Now, about those mineral rights—”
“Let’s stop pretending this is about shale and natural gas, Enrique.” Beth’s tone cooled by ten degrees. She picked up a cookie, took a small, deliberate bite. “May I call you Enrique? This is about Alejandro. Your nephew. And the rather substantial debt my uncles owed him for smoothing over that shipping lane dispute off the Galveston coast.”
Vega went very still. The shooter behind him narrowed his eyes.
“Unfortunately for you,” Beth continued, brushing a crumb from her lip, “Alejandro already cashed that favor in. Three years ago. He needed a problem to disappear—a talkative associate who was considering a deal with the FBI. My uncles handled it. The ledger was settled.” She tapped the book on her desk. “I have the receipt. So you see, you have no leverage here. You’re trying to collect on a debt that’s already been paid, with interest.”
Vega’s face flushed. “You think a page in a book means anything? I am not my nephew. I don’t want a favor. I want your family’s client lists. Your methods. Your ledgers.” He spat the last word. “The Montgomerys have been the secret keepers for half the powerful people in the South for two generations. That is the inheritance I’m here to claim.”
He took a step forward, arrogance overriding caution. “And you will give it to me. A trophy playing at being a rancher. A divorced socialite. You are not your father. You are certainly not your uncles.”
Beth’s smile returned, but it didn’t touch her eyes. “Try one of these cookies, Enrique. Really. My housekeeper makes them with honey from our own hives.”
Frustrated, wanting to assert dominance in the petty way of small men, Vega snatched a cookie from the plate. He took a large, dismissive bite, chewing as he spoke. “Enough games. You will hand over every record, every digital file, or the next package that arrives won’t hit your lawn. It will hit your stables. Or that pretty guest house I saw on the drive in.”
He swallowed.
Beth watched his throat work. Then she set her own half-eaten cookie down. “So here’s what’s going to happen,” she said, her voice dropping into a conversational, almost friendly register. “Your tongue and lips are currently swelling. Numbness setting in? It’s a localized reaction. Tarantula hairs—from the Brazilian Salmon Pink variety, quite potent—ground into the sugar dusting on your cookie. Nasty stuff. Causes intense edema. Makes speaking... difficult.”
Vega’s hand flew to his mouth. A muffled, wet sound escaped him. His eyes bulged.
His lead enforcer, a giant with a shaved head, went for his gun. His draw was fast, but his finger fumbled on the trigger. He looked down at his own hand, confused.
“Ah,” Beth sighed. “How sweet. But you’re also feeling pretty numb, aren’t you? In the fingers? The toes? It loosens the trigger finger right up. That was in the sweet tea your men drank in the kitchen while you were being escorted in. A different neurotoxin, same principle.”
The silence in the office was deafening, broken only by Vega’s increasingly ragged, wheezing breaths. The color was draining from his face, his lips puffing up like grotesque purple slugs.
Beth stood, rounding the desk. She stopped a few feet from Vega, who was now clutching his throat. His other two men stood frozen, their weapons half-drawn, bodies not responding correctly.
“You thought I was naive,” she said, her voice quiet and final. “A dead daddy’s girl. A trophy wife turned rancher who inherited land she couldn’t possibly understand.” She leaned in slightly. “I’m glad you liked the almond cookies. I would have made chocolate chip, but almond hides the taste of cyanide better.”
Vega’s legs buckled. He hit the Persian rug with a heavy thud, his body beginning to convulse, back arching in silent, agonizing spasms.
“As for the rest of you,” Beth said, looking at the paralyzed men, their faces masks of horror. “Enjoy your paralyzed front-row seat.”
She didn’t watch the seizure. She turned her back on the dying man, her gaze finding Damien’s through the leaves of the plant. His expression was unreadable, a storm held behind calm green.
Marco pushed off the doorframe, his apple finished. He tossed the core into a wastebasket. “Clean-up?”
“The usual crew,” Beth said, walking back to her chair as if she’d just concluded a tedious conference call. “Swamp’s been fed recently, but Tank’s cousins are always hungry. Make it tidy.”
Dove’s voice was a whisper in her ear. “Surgical. No mess in the office. Jack’s moving the vans.”
Beth sat down, reopening the ledger. The faint, rhythmic thumping of Vega’s heels against the floor finally ceased.
Damien crossed the room. He didn’t look at the bodies. He looked only at her. He saw the absolute stillness in her hands, the steady rise and fall of her shoulders. He saw the woman who’d fed raw meat to a prehistoric beast, who’d just executed four men with pastry and sweet tea without breaking a sweat.
He reached her, placed a hand on the back of her neck, his thumb stroking the taut cord of muscle there. She leaned into the touch, just slightly, a minute relaxation.
“Mia regina,” he murmured. My queen.
She closed her eyes for a single second, then opened them, looking up at him. The icy control was still there, but at the very edges, a faint trace of exhaustion showed. “Don’t,” she said softly. “Not yet.”
He understood. The cost of this, even for her, was real. It lived in the quiet moments after.
Marco and two other men from the ranch, dressed in heavy-duty vinyl coveralls, moved into the room with quiet efficiency. They began their work.
“Come on,” Damien said, his hand moving to hers, pulling her gently up. “Let’s go check on the horses. The real ones.”
She let him lead her out, leaving the gleaming office, the scent of jasmine, and the profound, settling silence behind.