Ultimately, it got her killed.
There was no accident, but we could never prove it. My father had pestered my mother for years to sign Knight Falls Ranch over to him. It had been our grandfather’s, but he’d handed it down once she got to age, and she had been running it successfully for years before she met our father, with Pops helping in the background.
They married, had me and my brothers, but then he started. Kept saying how it wasn’t right thatshewas the one in control, how it was her name on the letters and on the deeds. How it washermoney.
I remember vividly how angry he would get when she said no. It went on for years and eventually he wore her down, forced her to take out a will,just in case.But my mom was the smartest woman I knew. She lied.
She told him he would be sole beneficiary should the worst happen; that seemed to appease him for some time.
We all believed it too. My grandfather was pissed to the point that they didn’t talk for at least a year after she had signed those papers. We didn’t know she had lied or faked it.
My father settled in the years that followed after that. Little did we know he was justwaiting.
It happened on a quiet mountain pass road. There was ice, but we’re all experienced here when it comes to winter driving, and she was driving alone. We didn’t find out about the crash until the morning. According to reports, she hit a patch of ice, and her car careened offthe side of the road and down a steep incline, only coming to a stop when it crashed into a tree at fifty miles an hour. They say she died on impact.
At first, we believed the reports until it came to her last will and testament, and her lie was revealed.
She never left the ranch to my father.
She made sure it would go back to her own dad, regardless of his age. Sheknew.
My father had exploded; he destroyed half the house in his rage.
“That fucking bitch.” He’d yelled. “All that and for nothing! She left me nothing!”He’d gone after my grandfather, demanded he hand it over to him, but of course that didn’t work.
“You think I can’t get to you too, old man?”
I’d been standing on the other side of the door when he’d said those words, words that had chilled me straight to the bone. Anger and violence had never been my go-to. I didn’t fight unless I had to. I didn’t resort to violence, but I saw red in that moment. I had no control over it.
“Get to you just like I got to her. This place is mine.”
The door had slammed so hard into the back wall from the force of me ramming through it that several framed pictures mounted had fallen and shattered. In the next moment, a simple blink of an eye, I had my father pinned to the wall by his throat. His eyes bulged out of his head as his hands wrapped around my wrists to get me off, but I was fueled by more than just anger. It was revenge. Pent-up frustration of what we all had to suffer from him.
“Roman,” My grandfather had attempted to pull me off, but he couldn’t. I wanted to hurt this man like he’d hurt us for years, like he’d hurther.
“You killed her,”I’d growled, grief as strong as the anger wrapping around my heart. My grip loosened, and my father was able to rip free of my hold while my grandfather pulled me back and held on tight. He straightened his clothes and wiped a hand over his mouth before he smiled right at me. There was nothing but cold calculation and cruelty staring back at me.
“Prove it,” He smirked. “This place is going to be mine, boy.”
No amount of money could get the investigation reopened for my mother’s death; no one believed the story, not when my father put on a fucking good show of grieving her.
He tried fighting the will to get the ranch, but it was solid and there was nothing he could do. I should have known it wouldn’t be that simple, that even now when her body is nothing but bones in the ground, he’d never stop. And I’ve just made it easy for him to get to me.
When he married the widow from the ranch across the street, I thought it was his way of getting what he wanted. It was a ranch, sure not nearly as lucrative, but she gave it to him like he always wanted. Part of me knew it was to stay close, to always be able to watch.
He hasn’t been able to reach me or my brothers, not without getting caught. We have always been prepared, but Niamh…
Fuck.
I should never have pulled her into this. I should have let Silas take the ranch, we could have figured something out when it came to the day-to-day runningof this place. Worked out a better plan, a way around the clause.
“Hey,” Niamh’s voice brings me back to the present. She’s since moved away from the side of me and is crouching on the floor between my parted knees. Concern has her arched brows pulled low, eyes flicking between mine. I don’t know how long she has been there or how long I was locked in those memories.
Fuck, she’s so pretty.
Not in a delicate way either but like a storm that rolls down off the mountains, or the sharp thorns on a rose bush.
I didn’t want her; I didn’t want this, and I certainly shouldn’t still knowing what I do.
