Page 218 of Taken Away

"I wasn't ignoring you, Aubrey," he said, his voice a low, gravelly rumble in the quiet room. "I was working. Some of us have to keep the operations running while you’re busy drafting twenty-year roadmaps."

"Oh, so we're doing this now?" Aubrey stepped directly into his space, her chin tilted up. "You sat there in that boardroom and let Walter and Lockwood treat me like an interloper. I made an executive call to save our distribution footprint. If we don't scale up, Mercer drops us. It was a calculated risk."

Bennett let out a short, harsh breath, tossing the clipboard onto a nearby barrel. He stepped closer, towering over her.

"This isn't a bank in Philadelphia, Aubrey," he said, his voice dropping into a dangerously quiet register. "You're talking about bringing contract fruit onto this mountain. You're letting strangers supply the lifeblood of this winery to hit a target on a spreadsheet. Mabel would have burned this place to the ground before she let outside fruit dilute her juice."

"Mabel isn't here!" Aubrey fired back, every word of the fight with Anne still burning beneath her skin. "I am. And I'm trying to make sure this place survives. But nobody seems willing to let me do that."

She threw up her hands. "When I first got here, I thought Mercer was the problem. Now I know losing them could be."

"My mother thinks I'm letting Mabel control me from the grave. Walter thinks I'm destroying everything she built. And you..."

Her voice caught.

"I don't even know what you think anymore."

"Is that what you think?"

Bennett took another step, closing the distance until she could feel the heat radiating off him in the chilled room. The anger in his eyes gave way to something far more personal.

"I don't know whether you're building a future here..."

"...or trying to survive the year."

His gaze dropped briefly to her lips before returning to her eyes.

"But some of us actually live here. I live here. And I'm not going to watch you treat this land like it's disposable."

"I don't think it's disposable," Aubrey breathed, her voice losing its venom as he stepped closer. Her heart was hammering against her ribs, but it wasn't from anger anymore.

"Bennett, I⁠—"

Clink.

The sharp, metallic sound echoed from the deep shadows near the back fire exit.

Both of them went rigid.

A heavy iron door clicked shut, followed immediately by the sound of footsteps—fast, heavy, and frantic—scrambling across the concrete toward the exterior crushing pad.

Bennett's head snapped up, every muscle suddenly alert. "Who’s there?!" he shouted, his voice booming off the steel vats.

No answer. The footsteps instantly picked up into a dead sprint.

"Stay here," Bennett barked at Aubrey.

He didn't wait for a response. He took off into the dark, his heavy work boots slamming against the concrete as he rounded the towering fermentation tanks, the beam of his flashlight cutting wild, jagged lines through the shadows.

"Bennett!" Aubrey called out, but he was already gone.

She was left standing alone in the dim amber light, her breath catching in her throat. The cold of the barrel room seemed to wrap around her ankles. She gripped her keys, staring into the dark corridor where the footsteps had retreated. The realization hit her like a physical blow: Someone had been standing in the dark. Someone had been watching them.

A few minutes later, the heavy thud of boots announced Bennett’s return.

He walked back into the light, breathing hard, his jaw tight and his hands empty. He was running a frustrated hand through his dark hair, his flashlight beam pointing harmlessly at the floor.

"Nothing," he said, looking back over his shoulder toward the heavy exterior door, which was still faintly vibrating. "They knew exactly which blind spots to hit to dodge the gravel drive. They’re gone."