“Or she’ll rally the whole damn town.”
“Then we outlast them all,” I reply. “Like always.”
The suite they’ve put me in at the Coldwood Inn smells like cinnamon and dust. It’s clean enough, but the wallpaper peels in one corner, and the water pressure in the shower is barely a whisper. I’ve stayed in worse, but I’ve also built better with one hand tied and a busted crane.
The place sits across the ridge from the lodge, which means I can see the Wynn property from the window. At night, the silhouette of the old building looks almost like a memory I can’t place—too many stories in its bones, too much history in its frame. And I can’t decide if that’s irritating or impressive.
There’s a knock on the door around seven. Room service. A young elf girl with a tray of roast venison, roasted parsnips, and a glass of the house wine. She sets it down with a nervous smile, her braid twitching with whatever little magic she’s tied into it.
“Anything else, sir?”
“No.”
She scampers out before the word finishes echoing.
I eat in silence, chewing mechanically, mind not on the food. I scroll through the site assessments, land survey reports, profit projections. Everything lines up. The build is smart. The timing is tight but manageable. The return will be obscene. There’s no good reason to hesitate.
Except there is. Not logical. Not in the numbers. But the way Clara’s voice sticks to my ribs like smoke. There’s a problem in that. Not an obstacle. Not a threat. Just a thorn. Sharp. Unexpected. Persistent.
She’s going to make this messy.
I take out my phone and pull up her file. Schoolteacher. Local. Unmarried. No kids. No siblings. Parents passed in an avalanche twelve years ago. The lodge is the only thing she has left from her family. Emotional leverage. Unreliable but potent.
Thomas sends a message. Drafted the new buyout offer. Want it sent tomorrow?
I stare at the screen. My finger hovers. Then I lock the phone and toss it on the bed.
Let her rage. Let her shout and flail and stomp her boots and shake her fists at the inevitable. She’s got fire, sure. But fire burns out when it runs out of oxygen. And I’ve spent a lifetime making sure I control the air.
I strip off the suit, fold it, set it aside, and sit on the bed in nothing but my undershirt and slacks. My tusks ache. Old pain. Weather-based. The kind of reminder you can’t medicate, only endure. I rub the scars on my ribs where the clan mark used to be and wonder, not for the first time, what it would’ve been like to still belong somewhere.
Then I close my eyes, push the thought away, and picture Clara Wynn’s face when she realizes she’s already lost.
CHAPTER 3
CLARA
The bell above Dee’s café door sings a high, offended chime when I push through it too hard, a puff of icy air chasing in behind me like a second opinion I didn’t ask for. My boots are soaked up to the ankles, snow packed into the worn seams, and I can still feel the sting of wind on my cheeks from the walk down from the hall. I don’t stop moving, don’t greet the two retirees nursing bottomless mugs of coffee near the window, and I definitely don’t make eye contact with the orc couple sitting in the back corner who look like they’re trying very hard not to pretend they just saw me on the evening’s most ridiculous local drama.
“Coffee,” I bark, already shoving off my coat.
Dee doesn’t even blink. She just slides a full mug across the counter without breaking her rhythm with the milk steamer and raises one arched brow like she’s waiting for me to perform the second act of my breakdown.
“You throw the mayor off the ridge or just verbally disembowel him?” she asks, blowing a kiss of foam onto a latte.
“I didn’t kill anyone. Unfortunately,” I mutter into the rim of the mug, taking a gulp that sears the roof of my mouth. “But I did tell a billionaire orc he could follow me to hell.”
Dee whistles low. “And it’s only Tuesday.”
I collapse onto one of the stools at the counter and drop my head into my hands, letting the warmth from the mug seep into my fingers. My bones feel brittle, like someone’s taken a hammer to all the places that held me together this long and finally cracked through. I don’t cry. I won’t give this town the pleasure of another public outburst.
“He really bought the land?” I ask, voice muffled through my fingers. “Like, actually owns it?”
Dee sighs and leans on the counter, elbows out, chin in one palm. “Looks like it. Thomas Calhoun handled the paperwork. You know, that greasy little bastard who used to date Maris Bloom? The one with the teeth too white for a human?”
“Yeah. Gran hated him.”
“Everyone hated him. He’s a snake in a tailored tie.”
