The air in Arthur Devereaux’s study was thick with the ghosts of bad decisions, smelling of old leather, expensive whiskey, and a suffocating, generational arrogance.
Callie’s heart hammered a frantic rhythm against her ribs, a wild bird trapped in a cage of her own making.
She angled her phone on the bookshelf, propped between a leather-bound edition of The Prince and a silver sailing trophy.
The screen was dark, but the microphone was live, streaming every clipped breath, every rustle of her jacket, to the secure server Nash had set up.
One chance. That was all she had.
A tremor ran through her fingers, but she fisted them at her sides, channeling the fear into a cold, hard point of resolve.
This was for Hannah. For every person this town had chewed up and spit out in the name of the Devereauxs.
The heavy oak door swung open, and Tristan Devereaux walked in. He looked just as he had at the gala—impeccably dressed in a suit that cost more than her car, his blond hair perfectly coiffed.
He stopped short when he saw her, a flicker of surprise crossing his handsome, reptilian features before it settled into a familiar sneer.
“Lost, little bird?” he drawled, closing the door behind him with a soft, ominous click. “The servants’ entrance is in the back.”
“I’m not lost, Tristan,” Callie said, her voice steadier than she felt. “And I’m done using the back door.”
He laughed, a dry, dismissive sound as he moved toward the mahogany desk. He poured himself a two-finger measure of amber liquid from a crystal decanter.
“Brave words. Did your junkyard dog put you up to this? What do you want? Money? Is that what this is about?”
“This is about Hannah,” she said, letting the name hang in the still, oppressive air.
Tristan’s hand paused, the glass halfway to his lips. He lowered it slowly, his blue eyes turning to chips of ice. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Don’t you?” Callie took two steps forward, into the pale yellow light of the desk lamp.
She reached into her pocket and pulled out the photograph. It was old, creased from years of being hidden, but the image was damningly clear.
A younger Tristan, laughing, one arm slung around a man known to be a high-level smuggler, standing on the Devereaux docks in front of a half-loaded shipping container.
And in the corner, almost out of frame, a blurry but unmistakable figure—Hannah, looking terrified.
She slid it across the polished surface of the desk. “This was in her room. Tucked into the back of a picture frame. She kept it all these years.”
Tristan stared at the photograph, the color draining from his face. The confident smirk vanished, replaced by the pinched, panicked look of a cornered animal.
“Where did you get this?” he hissed, his voice losing its smooth, practiced cadence.
“That doesn’t matter. What matters is that she was there. She saw it all, didn’t she? The smuggling, the payoffs. Everything.” Callie pressed on, her voice a low, relentless accusation.
“She was going to talk. That’s why you met her by the old pier that night. She was going to blow the lid off your whole rotten family.”
“Shut up,” he snarled, snatching the photo and crumpling it in his fist. “You don’t know anything.”
“I know you killed her.”
The words hit him like a physical blow. He staggered back a step, his breath coming in ragged gasps.
For a moment, a wild, genuine fear flashed in his eyes, the terror of a boy who had never faced a consequence in his life. Then, it curdled into something uglier.
Rage.
“She was a stupid girl!” he finally exploded, the confession ripping out of him, raw and venomous. He slammed his fist, and the crumpled photo, down on the desk.
The whiskey glass jumped, sloshing liquor onto the wood.
“She wouldn’t listen! I offered her money, a new life, anything she wanted to just disappear and keep her mouth shut. But she had to be a hero. She threatened to go to the Sheriff—to your pathetic, lovesick lapdog, Ben.”
Callie’s blood ran cold, but she held his gaze, her entire being focused on the live microphone on the shelf. Keep talking, you bastard. Keep talking.
“She said she was going to expose everything,” Tristan spat, pacing behind the desk like a caged predator.
“The shipping routes, the payoffs to the council, everything my father built! She didn’t understand. It’s not a crime, it’s… business. It’s how this town works. We own it! And she was going to ruin it all over some misplaced sense of morality.”
He laughed then, a high, unhinged sound that echoed in the silent room.
“I just wanted to scare her. To shake some sense into her. But she wouldn’t shut up! Screaming about justice, about what was right. She lunged for my phone, tried to call for help.”
He raked his hands through his perfect hair, disheveling it.
“It was an accident. I pushed her, she fell. She hit her head on a piling. It was a fit of rage, that’s all. I didn’t mean for her to die, but she made me do it! She gave me no choice!”
He stopped, breathing heavily, his chest rising and falling. The confession hung between them, thick and poisonous.
He looked at Callie, his eyes wide, the reality of what he’d just admitted dawning on him. He saw the cold, unforgiving judgment in her face and the trap closed around him.
“You,” he whispered, his voice dropping to a deadly calm. “You recorded that, didn’t you?”
He started around the desk, his movements no longer clumsy with panic but sleek with murderous intent. “You clever little bitch.”
Callie backed away, her hand fumbling for the doorknob. Her bravado evaporated, replaced by a primal, screaming fear. The lock. He’d locked the door.
He lunged, and his hand clamped down on her arm, his grip like iron. He was stronger than he looked, fueled by pure adrenaline and desperation.
He slammed her back against the bookshelf, the hard spines of the books digging into her back. The phone clattered to the floor.
“I’ll kill you, too,” he snarled, his face inches from hers, his breath hot and sour with whiskey. “No one will ever know. They’ll find you in a ditch somewhere, just like her.”
His other hand went to her throat. Panic seized her, white-hot and absolute. She kicked, clawed, but he was a dead weight of fury. Her vision started to prickle with black spots.
Then, the world exploded.
The solid oak door didn’t just open; it splintered, flying inward off its hinges with a deafening crack. Nash filled the doorway, his face a mask of primal fury.
He didn’t shout, didn’t hesitate. He moved like a storm, crossing the room in two long strides and ripping Tristan off Callie with a roar of pure rage.
Callie crumpled to the floor, gasping for air, her throat raw and bruised. She looked up just as Nash’s fist connected with Tristan’s jaw.
The sound was a wet, sickening crack. Tristan went down, but scrambled back up, his eyes wild.
He grabbed the silver sailing trophy from the bookshelf and swung it.
Nash blocked it with his forearm, grunting in pain, but used the momentum to drive Tristan back against the desk, sending papers and the decanter crashing to the floor.
It was brutal. Not a clean fight, but a desperate, ugly brawl. They crashed into a leather armchair, sending it toppling over.
A lamp shattered. Through the chaos, Callie saw only Nash—his body a shield, his every move a desperate, violent promise to protect her.
Just as Tristan shoved Nash away and scrambled for a letter opener on the floor, another figure appeared in the shattered doorway.
“Sheriff’s Department! On the floor, now!”
Ben’s voice cut through the violence like a razor. He stood framed in the doorway, gun drawn, held steady in a two-handed grip.
His face was pale, stripped of everything but grim, absolute authority. For a split second, his eyes met Callie’s, and she saw a universe of regret in them, before they snapped back to the scene.
Tristan froze, the letter opener halfway in his grasp. Nash stood over him, chest heaving, his knuckles bloody and a dark bruise already forming on his arm where the trophy had hit him.
“I said, on the floor, Devereaux!” Ben commanded, taking a step into the ruined study.
For a heartbeat, it seemed Tristan might comply. Then, with a final, desperate sob of fury, he lunged, not at Nash, but toward the desk drawer where Callie knew his father kept a pistol.
Ben didn’t fire. He moved with a speed that was terrifyingly efficient, closing the distance and bringing the butt of his gun down hard on the back of Tristan’s neck.
Tristan collapsed like a puppet with its strings cut, hitting the antique rug with a heavy, final thud.
Silence descended, thick and ringing.
The only sounds were the ragged gasps of three people breathing. The room was a wreckage of privilege and violence.
Spilled whiskey soaked into the carpet, shards of glass glittered like fallen stars, and Tristan Devereaux lay unconscious at their feet.
Nash immediately turned to Callie, his fury melting away, replaced by a desperate concern that made her ache.
He knelt in front of her, his hands hovering over her, afraid to touch. “Callie? Are you okay? Did he hurt you?”
She could only nod, her hand going to her throat, the phantom pressure of Tristan’s fingers still there.
Ben stood over them, gun now lowered but not holstered, the living embodiment of the law that had finally, belatedly, arrived. His gaze was fixed on Callie, on Nash’s protective posture in front of her.
The truth of the night, of all the years before it, lay exposed in the ruins of that room.
The fight was over, but the reckoning had just begun.