Chapter 27: New York Air
The Texas heat hit Beth like a physical wall as she descended the jet’s steps. It was a dry, invasive burn that seeped into her city clothes instantly. The air smelled of creosote, dust, and distant cattle.
The black SUV sat fifty yards away, engine off. A figure leaned against the driver’s side door, arms crossed.
Dove.
Even from a distance, the resemblance was a shock. Same dark waves tied in a messy knot, same posture of coiled readiness. But where Beth’s sharpness was polished steel, Dove’s was raw granite. She wore faded jeans, scuffed boots, and a plain black t-shirt that showed the definition in her arms. Her face was all angles and sun-toughened skin, her green eyes narrowed against the glare.
Damien came to a stop beside Beth, his presence like a sudden drop in barometric pressure. “Well,” he said softly, almost to himself. “There she is.”
“Remember,” Beth muttered without looking at him. “Let me talk.”
“I’m just scenery,” he replied, but his gaze was fixed, assessing, every inch the predator scanning new territory.
Beth started walking, the gravel crunching loudly in the vast, silent heat. Dove didn’t move. She watched them approach, her expression flat and unreadable. Only her eyes tracked, switching from Beth to Damien and back, missing nothing.
“Hey, D,” Beth said, stopping a few feet away.
“Bethy.” Dove’s voice was lower, huskier, layered with a slow Texas drawl that Beth had lost to boardrooms years ago. “You look like you walked out of a magazine shoot into a dust bowl. Didn’t suit you.”
“It never did.” Beth gestured loosely. “This is Damien.”
Dove’s eyes sliced over to him. She didn’t offer a hand. She just looked him up and down, a cold, clinical inspection. “So you’re the ex-husband.”
“Damien Rossi,” he said, offering a charming smile that had disarmed senators and syndicate lieutenants alike. “It’s good to finally meet you, Dove.”
The smile did nothing. Dove’s face remained stone. “Is it?” She pushed off the car and took a single step forward. She was shorter than him, but she seemed to take up more space. “See, I’ve met you before. Years ago. You were the reason my sister showed up here looking like her soul had been put through a woodchipper. She didn’t say a word about you for three months. Just sat on the porch and stared at the horizon. Any man who can make Beth Montgomery that quiet is a problem. So no, Mr. Rossi. It’s not good to meet you.”
The air went brittle. Damien’s smile faded, not into offense, but into a kind of grim acknowledgment. He gave a small, respectful nod. “Understood.”
“Get in,” Dove said, turning her back on him as if he’d ceased to exist. She yanked open the driver’s door. “Jackson’s waiting at the main house. We’ve got a situation that’s getting riper by the minute.”
The interior of the SUV smelled of leather, coffee, and gun oil. Beth took the passenger seat. Damien climbed into the back. Dove gunned the engine and spun the vehicle around in a arc of flying gravel, heading down a long, private road fenced with weathered mesquite.
For ten minutes, no one spoke. The landscape rolled past—scrubland giving way to proper pasture, then to meticulously maintained fencing and sturdy outbuildings. It wasn’t just a ranch. It was a fortress disguised as one. Beth saw the subtle differences: the strategic placement of equipment sheds, the elevated sight lines, the absence of casual workers.
“Jackson,” Beth said finally, her voice tight against the window. “He called Damien.”
“Yep.” Dove’s knuckles were white on the steering wheel.
“You knew about that?”
“Found out about twenty minutes before you landed. He told me.” Dove’s jaw worked. “We’re gonna have words.”
“He had a protocol,” Damien said from the back, his tone neutral. “He followed it.”
Dove’s eyes flicked to the rearview mirror, meeting his for a cold second. “Nobody asked you, scenery. That protocol wasn’t yours to make. It was a betrayal. Of her. Of this family. We handle our own.”
“Apparently, I was part of the ‘handling,’” Damien shot back, a flicker of steel in his voice.
“You were a tolerated contingency. Not a partner.”
Beth let the argument wash over her, staring at the familiar land. The betrayal stung, a sharp, personal hurt beneath the professional outrage. Jackson had been her friend since they were kids catching frogs in the creek. He’d been the one to teach her to shoot. He’d stood as her rock when their father died. And he’d spent years taking secret calls from the man who broke her.
The main house appeared—a long, low-slung ranch-style home built of limestone and cedar, sprawling under ancient live oaks. It looked welcoming. It was a lie.
Jackson Mac was waiting on the wide front porch. He stood at parade rest, his broad frame clad in dark cargos and a tight tan t-shirt, his close-cropped hair giving him a military bearing even in civvies. His face, usually an open book of easy confidence, was set in grim lines.
Dove parked and killed the engine. The silence was heavy.
Beth got out first, slamming the door. She walked up the steps, stopping directly in front of Jackson. He met her gaze, his own filled with a pained resolve.
“You want to say it to my face?” Beth asked, her voice low and deadly calm.
Jackson didn’t flinch. “I did what I thought was right to keep you safe. The arrangement started after the divorce. When you were… not yourself. It was a one-time failsafe, Beth. Not a friendship. I never spoke to him unless the threat met the criteria. This one did.”
“You decided the criteria. You decided to keep it from me.”
“Yes.” No excuse. Just the fact.
The anger rose, hot and bitter in her throat. She wanted to slap him. She wanted to scream. Instead, she took a slow breath. “We’ll discuss your continued employment later. Where’s the watcher now?”
“Gone. Extracted about four hours ago. Professional. Clean. Left no trace, but we have a direction. He was feeding intel to a cut-out in El Paso. The trail leads back to Vega’s organization.” Jackson’s eyes shifted past her, to where Damien now stood at the bottom of the steps. “He tell you about Vega’ recent acquisitions?”
Beth glanced back. Damien gave a slight nod. “He mentioned ambitions.”
“Ambitions, hell,” Jackson said. “Vega bought a majority stake in a corporate security firm last month. One with federal clearance and surveillance capabilities. He’s not just poking around. He’s building a key to the front door.”
A cold dread solidified in Beth’s gut. This wasn’t a casual intimidation play. This was a corporate raid, backed by criminal ambition. Her ledger wasn’t just blackmail material; it was a blueprint.
Dove came up the steps, brushing past them all to open the front door. “Standing on the porch won’t solve it. Inside. Now.”
The interior was cool, dark, and familiar. The great room had exposed beams, worn leather furniture, and a massive stone fireplace. A large, scarred oak table served as a desk, covered in maps, laptops, and satellite imagery.
Dove went straight to the table, placing her palms flat on the wood. “Here’s the new math. Vega’s probing. He wants the ledger because it’s leverage, but I think he wants the business more. The Montgomery reputation. Our network. He wants to be us, but with more teeth and less conscience.” She looked at Damien, her gaze unflinching. “You. Your connection to Beth is public record. Your… profession is an open secret in certain rooms. He sees her as a path to legitimizing his own operations, and you as either a rival to remove or a potential ally to corrupt. Her having you here, on her family land, changes his calculation. It makes this personal for him on a whole other level.”
Damien walked further into the room, his shoes silent on the rug. “Good. Let it be personal. It already was for me.”
“This isn’t your fight to dictate,” Dove snapped.
“It became mine the moment he put a man in the trees to watch her.” Damien’s voice dropped, all pretense of charm gone. “You run your territory. I respect that. But Vega encroached on something of mine. That makes it my fight. The only question is whether we fight him separately and lose, or together and burn his world to the ground.”
The room froze. The words hung in the air, a stark, brutal offer of alliance.
Beth looked from her sister’s furious, protective face to her ex-husband’s ruthless, determined one, and finally to Jackson, who stood waiting for her command, his loyalty a fractured but real thing.
Her family’s legacy was under siege. The careful wall between her past and present had crumbled. Every secret was in the open now, lying on that scarred table among the maps.
“Jackson,” Beth said. He straightened. “You’re on probation. You look me in the eye one more time, you tell me everything. No more protocols I don’t know about.”
“Understood.”
She turned to Dove. “We use every resource. Ours. And his.” She didn’t look at Damien as she said it. “Vega wants a war? He doesn’t get to fight it on his terms. We bring it to him. We show him exactly what happens when he mistakes a family business for a soft target.”
A slow, hard smile spread across Dove’s face. It didn’t reach her eyes. “Now you’re talking my language, Bethy.”
Outside, the wind picked up, whispering through the oaks. It sounded less like a sigh, and more like a blade being drawn.