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He had been able to broker a deal with a giant factory farm to cover Levi’s land with soybeans. Levi had made some money on it, just enough, but it had tied up his land and prevented him from building anything new. And when he discovered that Brian was pocketing a massive amount of what had been on offer from the company...
Well. Brian had informed him it was Levi’s own fault.
He hadn’t read the fine print.
You’re like your daddy, Levi. You’re never going to be an entrepreneur. You have to work for people like me, who know things.
Those words still lived beneath Levi’s skin. In his blood.
And fuck that. In the years since the soybean deal had ended, he had built himself a thriving operation. Against all odds, frankly, because, again, it was difficult to succeed here, but he’d found his niche.
And he was proud of it. He was damned proud of it. Of everything he’d accomplished, everything he’d done.
He got on Jasper’s back, and he rode. Down the road, and up into one of the high pastures, just riding. Trying to do something to defuse the rage that was boiling in his body.
He had succeeded.
In spite of what teachers had said he’d do. In spite of what Brian Sullivan had said.
It had been hard and he’d worked harder and he’d made it.
Camilla had once given him a magnet for the fridge that said, “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”
He’d laughed it off like it was silly, and not something he needed, but it had become something that he had actually held on to. Deeply.
He had been vulnerable, and in a difficult space, and so Brian Sullivan had been able to take advantage of him. Additionally, he had been able to make Levi feel inferior. And Levi had accepted that back then. Because he’d felt inferior.
He didn’t anymore.
He’d brought the ranch out of that time and into strength. He’d raised his siblings and launched them into the world.
And Quinn Sullivan didn’t have the power to make him feel inferior.
He rode his horse hard and took in the view, the rolling mountains with sharp-tipped pines reaching up toward the sky. The intense blue of it all, the green.
The Four Corners crew didn’t have more of a right to this place just because their ancestors had come and managed to get themselves a huge plot of land.
He had a right to be here. This was his. His blood was in this dirt.
His parents were buried here. It was his.
And he would fight for that. And he would fight for this community.
And Quinn Sullivan and her high-and-mighty ways were not going to sway him.
And they weren’t going to make him feel inferior, either.
Because he was different now, secure now.
He would never go back to how he’d been.
FIA CAME OUT of the kitchen onto the front porch, where Rory and Quinn were right in the grass, pinning clothes up onto the clothesline, and kicking chickens out from under their feet.
“The county called,” she said.
“And?” Rory asked.
Quinn only leaned in, trepidation freezing her words so she couldn’t think, let alone speak.
