Chapter 22: Life line
The ranch house at night was a different creature. The silence wasn’t empty; it was a dense, living thing pressed against the windows, broken by the creak of settling timber and the distant lowing of a calf. Beth sat in her father’s old leather chair in the study, the Kirkland merger documents glowing on her tablet. She’d read the same clause four times. The words were noise.
Dove’s plea hummed in the air, a vibration in the floorboards. I need you. We all do.
But there was another need, a quieter, more insistent one, coiled beneath her ribs. It had nothing to do with legacy or duty. It was simpler, and more damning. It was for a voice that had once been home, and was now a wound she couldn’t stop picking at.
The hypocrisy was a sour taste in her mouth. She’d built a kingdom on transparency after leaving him, on clean lines and exposed beams. She’d left Damien Rossi because his life was a hall of mirrors, every truth reflecting a dozen lies. And now? Now she was sitting in a house where the family business was secrecy itself, considering an inheritance written in blood and shadows. She was becoming everything she’d sworn to escape.
A week. She’d told him to wait. A week of radio silence, which for a man like Damien, was an eternity of helpless, furious speculation. He didn’t know about the ranch. He didn’t know about Vega’s hungry eyes or Dove’s desperate request. All he knew was that she had vanished from her perfectly curated world, and that she had been the one to hang up, to draw the line. She could picture him in his penthouse, the skyline of Manhattan at his back like a cage of lights, staring at a phone that refused to ring. It would be eating him alive. The not-knowing. The lack of control.
The thought should have brought cold satisfaction. It only made the coil inside her tighten.
Before she could veto the impulse, her fingers were moving. She picked up the satellite phone, a heavy, secure unit Dove used for off-grid comms. Untraceable. A ghost call.
She entered the number from memory. A number that hadn’t changed in ten years.
It rang once. Twice.
He picked up on the third ring. No greeting. Just a silence so charged she could feel it crackle across the continents.
“Hello, Damien,” she said, her voice calm, utterly neutral.
The silence stretched for another three seconds. Then, a breath. A low, rough sound that was more animal than man. “Bethany.” Her name was a swallowed curse. “Where the fuck are you?”
“Language,” she chided softly, leaning back in the leather chair, staring at the darkened window where her own ghostly reflection looked back. “Is that how you speak to all your women?”
“You are not all my women,” he snarled, the control in his voice fracturing. “You’re the one who disappears after telling me to sit and wait like a dog. For a week. A week, Beth. I have men scouring five time zones.”
“That sounds like a you problem.” She let a smile touch her voice, knowing it would infuriate him. “I said wait. I didn’t say fret.”
She heard a crash on his end, something glass meeting a wall. “Do not toy with me. Not about this. Are you safe? Are you hurt?”
The genuine thread of fear beneath the anger was a hook in her chest. She ignored it. “I’m perfectly safe. I’m somewhere you can’t reach. Somewhere you don’t know.”
Another weighted pause. When he spoke again, his voice had changed. The fury had been compressed into something colder, more dangerous. It was the voice he used with rivals before they met unfortunate ends. “There is nowhere I can’t reach. You know that. Tell me who you’re with. Tell me now.”
Jealousy. Thick and unmistakable. It was the reaction she’d unconsciously, shamefully, been looking for. Proof that the power wasn’t entirely his.
“Would it matter?” she whispered into the receiver, the game suddenly feeling less like a victory and more like a freefall. “If I was with someone? You lost the right to ask that question a long time ago.”
“It matters.” The words were ground out. “It matters more than anything in this godforsaken world. Beth, please.” The ‘please’ was ragged, torn from him. It was the vulnerability he showed no one else. It was her favorite weapon and her greatest weakness.
She closed her eyes. The image of him was vivid: the sharp line of his jaw clenched, those green eyes dark with a possessive terror, his hand white-knuckled around whatever phone he’d just spared from destruction. She could almost smell his cologne, feel the memory of his hands on her skin. Her fatal flaw, dressed in Armani and regret.
“I’m alone,” she said, and it was mostly true. “Thinking.”
“Thinking about what?” The urgency was back, a hunter closing in.
“About choices. About the difference between the life you build and the life you’re born into.” She opened her eyes, looking at the ledger on the desk, the rifle on the wall. “About whether a person can ever really outrun their blood.”
He was quiet, listening the way only he could—reading the spaces between the words. “Your family,” he said slowly, the realization dawning. “This is about your family. The one you never talk about. The one that doesn’t exist in any dossier I could ever buy.” A new note entered his voice, one of dawning, unnerved understanding. “Beth… what are you involved in?”
She let out a short, humorless laugh. “Look at us. The liar and the secret-keeper. We deserve each other.”
“Don’t say that,” he whispered, the pain raw. “Don’t ever say we deserve this. This distance. This silence. I gave you my word. I’m a new man.”
“There are no new men, Damien. Just old ones with better manners.” She traced a finger along the edge of the tablet, the merger documents now meaningless. “I called to hear your voice. Isn’t that pathetic?”
The admission hung in the static between them.
“It’s the only thing that’s made sense in seven days,” he replied, his own confession just as quiet. “Tell me where you are. Let me come to you. Let me help.”
For a dizzying second, she considered it. The fantasy of it: his strength at her back, his ruthless competence focused on her problems. Vega wouldn’t stand a chance. But then Dove’s words echoed. You’re the Montgomery. The one people have been waiting for. Bringing Damien into this wouldn’t be claiming her birthright; it would be handing it to him. Another empire for his collection.
“No,” she said, the word final. “This is my world. You don’t get a map to it.”
“Beth—”
“I’ll call you when I’m back in Manhattan,” she interrupted, her old armor snapping back into place. “Or I won’t. That’s my choice now. Get used to it.”
She ended the call.
The silence in the study rushed back, deeper now. Her hand was trembling. She set the heavy satellite phone down on the desk with a dull thud.
Outside, the Texas night was absolute. In New York, he would be staring at a dead phone in a room full of broken glass. She had what she wanted. Proof of his obsession, his pain. It felt like ash.
She had gone looking for a distraction from one impossible choice and found herself mired in another. The phone call hadn’t quieted the coil inside her. It had just pulled it tighter, a wire thrumming with a dangerous, undeniable truth.
She still loved him. And that, more than Vega’s threats or Dove’s expectations, was the thing that might finally break her.