Page 7 of Colton’s Mate

And then after he died, Caleb started spending most of his time here when he wasn’t lording it over everyone at the bar, expecting her to cook and clean for him same as she’d done for Tex, except also slapping her around and telling her what a useless bitch she was.

She’d slept with Caleb a few times because she was scared what he would do if she said no. Luckily, she wasn’t hot enough or exciting enough for him in bed, so he started bringing in other girls and banging them practically in front of her.

This was supposed to make her tormented with jealousy. Little did he know she was so happy to not be with him she would have been willing to make popcorn and be his getting-it-on cheering section if it meant he’d keep leaving her alone.

But Caleb was gone, and now the place was all hers. Her kitchen. Her TV. Her comfy couch that she could stretch out on and take up all the space if she wanted, like Tex used to do.

Her coffee table with a mess of fashion magazines spread all over it. And a manila file folder, with a tab that read in bold black ink, My Bar.

She picked it up and opened it. Even though the first pictures in the file were of the burned-out building, taken for the insurance claim, she still got a little thrill looking at the heading. My Bar.

She and Tex had used their inheritance from Tex’s dad to buy it, and they’d run it together, using it as a headquarters for the Talons before Caleb ran out all the decent members and turned the rest into criminals.

She flipped past the burned-out ‘after’ photos and stopped on the ‘before.’ Her and Tex, standing in front of the bar on opening day, grinning like fools.

She touched his face gently in the photo.

He was a good brother. Yeah, a little overbearing, like crows were. A little overprotective. A lot too sexist. But he had a good heart, and he really loved her. She still missed him.

It wasn’t until she was going through Caleb’s papers to try to figure out how much damage he’d done to the bar’s finances that she realized how good a brother Tex had really been.

Because Caleb had never taken the bar legally. She’d found Tex’s whole file in his room: the deeds to the house and to the bar, the paperwork from when they bought the business, the business license, the insurance policies, the bank accounts.

All the papers she’d only looked at long enough to sign where Tex told her, because that’s how it worked in their family. She thought she was signing because a third of the inheritance money was hers. She never knew Tex put her name on everything, full partners with rights of survivorship.

She had to look that up on the internet. It meant that if anything happened to Tex, it was all hers, free and clear. No inheritance red tape, no taxes, no nothing.

That’s why Caleb had stuck to her like a burr. Everything was hers now—including the large amount of probably dirty money Caleb had stashed in the business accounts, so it couldn’t be traced to him. He’d had to keep an eye on her to make sure she didn’t look at the accounts and get her hands on the money.

She didn’t know where he got it, but after what he put her through, she was damn well keeping it.

Callie could still feel the exhilaration that had risen up inside her in that moment, when she realized she was finally free.

She could never get her brother back, but she could get back everything else Caleb had tried to steal.

And this time, no dominating jerk-face penis-wielding male was going to take it away from her. Nobody was going to tell her what to do and how to do it, like just because she could grow boobs, she couldn’t use her brain.

She could build the bar back the way she wanted it. She could run it as she saw fit. She could redecorate the house. She really could put land mines in her fucking driveway if she wanted to.

She could burn everything Caleb had ever owned in a huge ginormous bonfire.

It was like her own private little independence day.

She picked up the latest letter from the insurance company, re-reading the best words in the world.

Claim status: approved.

They were going to pay for her to rebuild.

For the first time, she was in charge of her own damn life.

Outside the house, a large crow sat on the branch of a tree at the edge of the forest. From its perch, it could see through the top of the open window to the woman sitting on the couch.

Land-runner. Fur creature. The crows should never have taken her into their clan. It was a disgrace.

At least they had never planted a crow-child in her. That would be an abomination.

Bad enough they’d been so careless as to leave things in her keeping that were sacred to the crows. But the crows would have them back. And if the fur creature had defiled them, she would pay.