Chapter 19: Throne Room
The whiskey left a stale, metallic taste in her mouth, and dawn felt like a personal insult. Beth hadn’t slept. She’d watched the sky bleed from black to indigo to a sickly orange-gray, the ring a cold, hard lump in her jeans pocket. By the time the first true rays cut across the grasslands, she was already in the downstairs kitchen, brewing coffee strong enough to strip paint.
Dove found her there, leaning against the granite countertop, staring blankly at the industrial espresso machine as it hissed and spat.
“You look like hell warmed over,” Dove said, her voice still rough with sleep. She was already dressed in work-worn Carhartt pants and a faded t-shirt, her hair piled into a messy bun.
“Charm is your department, remember?” Beth shot back, but there was no heat in it. She poured a shot of the black sludge into a mug.
Dove grabbed a mug for herself, waiting silently. The sisters stood there, the only sounds the gurgle of the coffee maker and the distant lowing of a cow. It was a comfortable, old silence, woven from a shared childhood in these walls and a more recent, grim understanding of the family business.
“Rojas’s plane took off forty minutes ago,” Dove finally said, sipping her coffee. “Hector confirmed. He looked like he’d seen a ghost. A compliant ghost.”
“Good.” Beth focused on the heat of the mug in her hands. “Vega will know by noon. He’ll be pissed.”
“He was already pissed. Now he’s gonna be creative.” Dove studied her sister’s profile. “You’re staying.”
It wasn’t a question.
Beth didn’t answer immediately. She walked to the wall of glass overlooking the back terrace and the man-made lake beyond. Her reflection was a ghost in the dawn light—a stylish, haunted woman superimposed on the rugged land. “I told myself I was just coming to handle a problem. To do the thing only a Montgomery can do, so I could go back to my clean, ordered life in New York.”
“And how’s that working out for you?”
A dry, humorless laugh escaped Beth. “The board meeting I’m supposedly ‘teleconferencing’ for is in three hours. I have the briefing documents. I can’t seem to open the file. It feels like reading instructions for a spaceship while my house is on fire.”
“This is your house, Bethy.” Dove came to stand beside her. “Always has been. You just built a nicer, shinier one somewhere else to prove you could.”
The old nickname, unused for years, landed with a soft, surprising weight. Beth turned from the window. “I hate that you’re right.”
“I usually am.” Dove grinned, but it faded quickly. “Uncle Clyde’s taking the north fence line with the boys. Wants to check for signs of anyone casing the property. I’m headed down to the Gator Swamp after breakfast. Wanna come? Or you gotta go put on your armor and play CEO?”
The Gator Swamp. It wasn’t a real swamp, but a ten-acre tract of low, boggy ground where the creek widened and the willows grew thick. As kids, it was their fortress, their pirate cove, their secret kingdom. In the family’s other business, it served a different purpose. Remote, sound-dampening, and with very hungry, large reptiles as accidental security.
It was the place where things that needed to disappear, did.
Beth felt a pull in her chest, a deep, gravitational yearning that had nothing to do with nostalgia and everything to do with identity. The squeak of her designer boots on a boardroom floor versus the suck of thick mud. The dry taste of corporate jargon versus the wet, green smell of decay and life all tangled together.
“I’ll come,” she heard herself say. The decision felt less like a choice and more like a muscle memory.
An hour later, she’d traded her jeans for a pair of Dove’s old, faded ones that fit surprisingly well, and her boots for sturdy waders. She left the diamond ring in the pocket of her discarded pants. The weight on her thumb was her father’s band, and that was the only weight she needed out here.
They took the battered Gator utility vehicle, bouncing down a rugged trail carved through the scrub. Dove drove with a casual, one-handed ease, the morning air whipping strands of dark hair from her bun.
“You hear from Prince Charming?” Dove asked, eyes on the path.
Beth knew she meant Damien. “No. And don’t call him that.”
“What should I call him? The mistake that wears a five-thousand-dollar suit? The virus you can’t quarantine?”
“He’s a complication,” Beth said, her grip tightening on the roll bar as they jolted over a rut. “A potentially useful one, if his intel on Vega’s shipping routes is solid. That’s all.”
“Uh-huh.” Dove’s tone was pure dismissal. “And the fact that you still have his ring, that’s just strategic asset retention?”
Beth didn’t answer. The trees thickened, closing in around them, and the air grew cooler, damper. They emerged into the clearing that bordered the slow, tea-colored water. A small, rusted metal shed stood off to one side. Everything was quiet, still, waiting.
Uncle Earl was there, a man built like an old oak tree, his hands scarred and leathery. He gave Beth a slow, appraising nod. “Bethany. Dove said you might wander down.”
“Earl.” She returned the nod, the formalities of her other life feeling absurd here. “What’s the project?”
Earl jerked his thumb towards the shed. “Nothin’ today. Just maintenance. Checkin’ the boat, the pumps. Keepin’ it ready.” His pale blue eyes held hers. “You remember the procedure.”
She did. Every step. The binding, the weights, the entry point where the current would do the work, carrying things deep into the labyrinth of roots where even the gators wouldn’t bother. It wasn’t about violence; it was about geology, biology, efficiency. A cold, natural calculus.
“I remember,” she said, and her voice was steady, devoid of the polished affect she used in meetings.
She spent the next two hours with them, not as a boss, but as a participant. She helped Earl check the seals on the old aluminum boat. She untangled a length of heavy chain, her hands getting dirty, the smell of iron and stagnant water filling her nose. Dove tested the winch, the mechanical groan echoing in the silent woods.
There was no talk of Wall Street, of hostile takeovers, of damage control through press releases. The problems here were physical, immediate. A rusty hinge needed oil. A sensor on the perimeter fence was on the fritz. This was a different kind of control, one that left grit under your nails and an ache in your shoulders.
Standing at the water’s edge, looking out at the dark, placid surface, Beth felt a unsettling sense of calm. This was the family craft. Not just the land, but the management of silence, the stewardship of secrets. Dove was right. It was in her blood. The high-stakes chess of her corporate life was just a translation, a cleaner dialect of the same brutal language.
Her phone, the personal one, buzzed in her pocket. She ignored it. A moment later, Dove’s phone chirped.
Dove looked at the screen, her expression hardening. “Clyde. He found tire tracks. Fresh. On the old fire road on the north ridge. Not ours.”
Beth didn’t feel a spike of fear. She felt a cold, focused click inside her, like a well-oiled bolt sliding home. Vega was done with lawyers. He was casing. He was making his move.
She looked from the dark water to her sister’s grim face, then down at her own hands, rough now, smudged with grease and dirt. The polished mogul was gone. In her place was Bell Montgomery, the girl who grew up here, who understood that some threats couldn’t be negotiated away.
“Tell Clyde to leave the tracks,” Beth said, her voice quiet and final. “Don’t disturb them. Let them think we haven’t seen.”
“And then?” Dove asked, already knowing the answer.
Beth met her sister’s identical green eyes. “Then we get ready.”