“If you come to the table, we can avoid legal escalation.”
“I’m authorized to extend certain considerations, including relocation and a financial stipend, if Liam is returned safely and with no further trouble.”
He had the gall to say “no further trouble,” as if the past year had just been a brief mix-up at the post office.
When he finally ran out of script, I said, “You ever serve?”
It caught him off guard. “Excuse me?”
I nodded at his boots. “You’re standing like a man who’s been yelled at in formation.”
He looked down, almost smiled. “ROTC,” he said. “Didn’t stick.”
I shrugged. “That tracks.”
He took a breath. “Look, I know you have your own loyalties, but this is above your pay grade now. If you don’t comply, Ms. Peterson has the resources to make life very unpleasant for everyone on this property, including the Omega.”
He meant Liam. The way he said it was meant to sting, but it just pissed me off.
“My pay grade,” I said, “is whatever number it takes to keep my family safe.”
The word hung in the air: family.
He registered it. I could see the calculation in his jaw, the tightening at the corners of his mouth.
“We’re married,” I said. “As of yesterday. County clerk has the record. You want to escalate, you’ll need more than a sales pitch and a suit.”
He stood there, hands out of pockets now, tension in his knuckles.
“Here’s how it works,” I said, and kept my voice flat, like I was explaining how to set a pressure plate. “Next time someone comes up this drive uninvited, they’ll find out why you don’t send Betas to do Alpha work. You want to serve papers? Mailbox is at the end of the road. You want to negotiate? You go through the attorney of record.”
He stared at me. Then, like a man who’d lost the plot, he reached into his inner pocket and pulled out an envelope. Held it up between two fingers, as if the white of the paper had power.
“Consider this served,” he said, and dropped it onto the snow.
I didn’t look at it. I kept my eyes on his.
He took a half-step back. Not a retreat, but the start of one. “You don’t have to make this personal,” he said.
I smiled, and this time I let the cold show through. “It already is.”
I heard the approach before I saw it. Burke’s boots, loud and uneven, coming up the side yard with the kind of energy that says “I’m not going to throw the first punch, but if you want to dance, I’m ready.”
Macon was with him, a silent wall of muscle moving with a pace that said nothing could hurry him, not even a blizzard.
The man saw them coming. He looked back at the sedan, then at me, and for a second I could see the gears turning. This was not the scenario he’d been promised.
From the road, Rawley’s truck crested the hill, headlights on, engine loud in the morning air. It pulled up just behind the sedan, pinning it in place. The SUV from earlier sat further up, lights on now, engine revved.
For a moment, the world was nothing but the sound of engines and the cold.
The man in the suit said nothing else. He turned, gave the smallest nod to Burke and Macon, then walked back down the drive, boots making the same deliberate noise as before, but now with a new urgency.
He got into the sedan. It idled for a minute, then turned in the road and followed the SUV north, up past the county line.
I waited until the sound of their engines was gone, then let my shoulders relax for the first time in an hour.
Burke called across the yard, voice high and unrepentant: “You want me to frame that letter for you or just put it in the outhouse?”
