Chapter 63: Habitual Hatred
The desert before dawn was a monochrome painting, all grays and deep blues bleeding into an endless flat expanse. Beth stood at the edge of the paved helipad, the wind whipping her dark hair across her face. She wore what Dove had recommended: dark, non-descript tactical gear, the fabric stiff and unfamiliar against her skin. A compact Glock rested in a holster at her side, its weight both foreign and disturbingly familiar.
Dove was a few feet away, speaking into a secure satellite phone, her voice low and clipped. “Confirm the east ridge is clear. I don’t want any local law enforcement picking up chatter about a Sunday morning picnic.”
The operation was in motion. Beth’s plan, stripped down to its brutal essentials: intercept Vega’s convoy on a lonely stretch of Route 90, isolate the lead vehicle carrying the payment ledger—a physical book the old-fashioned bastard insisted on—and extract it.The rest of the convoy? A problem for Damien’s people to handle.Discreetly.Permanently.
A heavy tread on the asphalt announced him. Damien approached, dressed similarly but looking like he was born in the gear.He carried a long rifle case with a casual lethality. His eyes scanned her, a quick, professional assessment that lingered a moment too long on her face.
“You look like you’re about to storm an embassy,” he said, his voice cutting through the whine of the idling helicopter blades spinning to life nearby.
“And you look like you’re starring in a direct-to-video action movie,” she fired back, not missing a beat. The old rhythm was there, a tense comfort. “Your guys are in position?”
“My guys are always in position.” He set the case down.“Pilot’s ready. We’ll be on the overwatch ridge before first light.You’re sure you want the vantage point? You could monitor from the ranch. Plush chair, satellite feed.”
“I need to see it,” she said, her voice leaving no room. She needed the context, the real-time flow, the unedited truth of what her decisions wrought. “It’s my play.”
He nodded, a shadow of something that might have been respect or worry crossing his face. “Then let’s go.”
They ducked under the spinning blades and climbed into the sleek, black helicopter.The interior was all business, stripped of luxury. The roar of the engine swallowed conversation as they lifted off, the ranch shrinking below them into a neat arrangement of lights in the vast, sleeping dark.
An hour later, they were belly-down on a rocky outcrop overlooking the highway, a thin scrim of dust and creosote bush providing meager cover.The sky was lightening to a soft peach in the east. Damien assembled the rifle with practiced, effortless motions, his focus absolute. Beth watched through high-powered binoculars, the cold desert floor seeping through her clothes.
“My mother asked about you,” he said suddenly, his eye still pressed to the rifle’s scope as he adjusted a dial. His voice was casual, almost lost in the vast, quiet emptiness.Beth’s hand tightened on the binoculars. She didn’t lower them.“Did she.”
“Yeah. Wanted to know if you were eating. If the ‘Texas air’ was agreeing with you.”
“She always was polite.”
“She wasn’t being polite.” He shifted slightly, the gravel crunching under his elbow. “She was worried. I told her you were planning a hostile takeover of a cartel ledger, not baking pies.She didn’t find it funny.”
A faint, unexpected smile touched Beth’s lips. Sophie Rossi, a woman who curated her rose garden with the same precision her husband once used to curate his territories. “Please assure her I’m eating just fine.”
“I will.” He was quiet for a long minute.The wind hissed over the rocks. “She also said… that if you were back in my life, even like this, I should try not to fuck it up this time.”
Beth finally lowered the binoculars, turning her head to look at his profile. His jaw was set, his gaze fixed on the empty road below.“Ten years of happy silence, Damien. Why now? Why is she asking?”
“Because she knows.” He finally looked at her, his green eyes stark in the dawn light.“She knows what I’m offering you. What I’ve always wanted to offer you.She saw it before, back when you wanted it. She sees it now, when you probably don’t.”
“The Donna.” Beth said the title like a stone dropped into a well, listening for the echo.“I wanted it so badly it ached. I thought it would make me real to them.To you. Like a stamp of approval.”
“It wouldn’t have,” he said, blunt.“You were always real.You were just ours. And we were too stupid to know what to do with that.” He turned back to the scope. “You’re not that girl anymore.I know that. The girl who wanted the title died in the divorce, Beth.I watched her die. I caused it.”
The admission hung in the cold air, raw and unadorned.There was no romanticizing it, no charming deflection. It was just a fact, laid on the desert rock between them.
“Then who are you offering it to?” she asked, her voice barely above the wind.
“To the woman she became.” He didn’t hesitate.“The one who built an empire with her own hands. The one who looks at a problem and sees the end of it. The one who isn’t afraid of the spiders or the silence or me.” He breathed out, a soft cloud in the chill. “The title isn’t a crown for a princess.It’s a tool for a ruler. You’re the only one I’ve ever met who could wield it without letting it wield her.”
Before she could respond—could process the staggering weight of his words—a crackle sounded in her earpiece. Dove’s voice, all business.“Eyes on. Three SUVs, black, approaching from the west.Two minutes to intercept point. Confirm positions.”
Damien’s whole body coiled, a predator locking onto a scent.“Confirmed.Green light.”
Beth raised the binoculars. There they were, three dark shapes moving fast along the ribbon of asphalt, kicking up a plume of dust. Her heart hammered, not with fear, but with a fierce, terrifying clarity. This was her design.Her will made manifest through violence and necessity.She keyed her mic. “All teams, stand by. Execute on my mark.”
She watched, her breath stilling, as the lead SUV hit the precise point where the desert rose on either side. “Now.”
Chaosisart instant.The first two SUVs blew tires simultaneously, swerving violently.Men spilled out, guns raised. Muzzle flashes sparked in the dim dawn. Damien’s rifle barked once, a sharp, percussive crack that echoed off the hills.A man near the lead vehicle dropped.
It was ugly, brutal, and efficient.It was over in less than three minutes. The third SUV, the target, was boxed in, its doors ripped open by Damien’s crew. A metal briefcase was hauled out.“Ledger secured,” came the call over the comms.
Beth watched, her muscles trembling with adrenaline.The cost was visible on the ground below. Smoke curled from a disabled vehicle.Bodies lay still. The young woman who’d wanted to be Donna would have been horrified.The woman she was now felt a grim, solid satisfaction.The problem was being solved.
She lowered the binoculars.Damien was already dismantling the rifle, his movements calm, detached.
“It’s done,” he said.
She looked from the scene below to him, the man who had just helped her orchestrate a desert slaughter, who had just offered her a kingdom born from the same darkness. The ghost of the girl she’d been was gone, erased by the rising sun and the scent of cordite.
“No,” Beth said, her voice clear and steady in the new morning. “It’s just beginning.”