“Do you have the numbers from Holden?”
He pulls a folded sheet from his pocket and passes it over.
I take it, scan it once, and the anger in me sharpens. Even without going line by line, it’s what I suspected. Underreported. Neat. Convenient.
I lift my phone. “Joshua tracked yesterday by hand. Proper count. Every ticket, every food sale, every piece of merch.”
My father’s eyes narrow. “Joshua who?”
“Local guy running the tickets at the rodeo,” I say. “He’s not on Holden’s payroll, and he has no reason to lie to me.”
My father takes the phone from my hand and scrolls, then looks down at Holden’s printout, and then back to my screen.He does it again, slower this time. His face doesn’t change much, but his jaw sets harder with each pass.
When he finally looks up, the air between us feels heavier.
“It’s short,” he says, voice flat.
“About a third,” I reply.
My father stares back toward the town hall, then back at me, and his jawline clenches. “That son of a bitch,” he says quietly. “He’s been skimming money from us.”
My father snatches the printout back, staring at it as if the numbers might rearrange themselves into something less damning. They don’t.
“Are you certain about this? Your contact is reliable?”
“Joshua has worked for the circuit for as long as we’ve been coming to this town. He has no reason to inflate or change anything. These are actual sales, Dad. Real transactions recorded as they happened. So why don’t they match what Holden’s reporting? Even if there was some margin for error, it shouldn’t be this wide.”
“Hell.” My father’s voice stays low, but there’s steel in it. “That bastard has been playing us. I trusted him and the committee’s systems, their processes.”
“Holden has full access to the financials,” I say. “Joshua confirmed it. If he adjusts the totals after the fact and skims the difference, it looks clean on paper. Nobody questions it because nobody thinks to.”
My father’s jaw flexes. Then he starts walking again, faster, boots striking the sidewalk in sharp, angry steps. I fall in beside him.
“This isn’t pocket change,” he mutters. “That gap’s too damn consistent.” He glances down at the sheet in his hand, then away, as if looking at it might make him angrier. “If it’s runningabout a third short and it’s been happening since day one, you multiply that across the full run, and we’re talkin’…” His mouth tightens. “A hell of a lot.”
“At least half a million,” I say.
He stops so abruptly that I nearly run into him. He turns to face me, anger in every line of him, cheeks flushed, fists clenched at his sides.
“All that money is ours,” he says, each word clipped. “I should’ve seen it. The excuses. The disappointing reports. The way he kept pushing that story about the town losing interest. He was setting expectations low so nobody went looking.”
“You couldn’t have known,” I tell him, because I mean it. Holden played it careful. He fed everyone just enough truth to make the lies believable.
My father shakes his head, sighing. He drags a hand across his mouth, breath harsh. “I got complacent. Trusted the wrong people. But not again,” he says quietly. “Not on my watch.”
We stand there for a moment, both of us processing. Then I nod toward a building up ahead. Sweetwater Creek Realty. June’s office.
“Come on. We need to bring the others up to speed.”
The morning light catches the windows of the real estate office as we approach. Through the glass, I spot movement inside. June, Carter, and Kai. My pack. My family.
Something warm spreads through my chest despite the anger still simmering beneath the surface.
We push through the door, and three heads turn toward us simultaneously. June is perched on the edge of her desk, looking effortlessly beautiful in a short skirt and a loose blouse that keeps slipping off one shoulder. Every time I see her, the pull gets stronger. The bond humming beneath my skin, demanding more. Carter is sprawled in the burgundy armchair, long legs stretched out in front of him, looking annoyingly comfortablefor a man about to compete in front of thousands. Kai is leaning against the wall near the window, arms crossed, radiating the kind of restless energy that usually precedes him doing something monumentally stupid.
“Morning, Mr. Benton,” Carter says, rising to shake my father’s hand. “Good to see you, this morning.”
“Carter. Kai.” My father has known these two for years now. Watched them grow from promising young riders into the stars of his circuit. Bailed them out of trouble more times than I care to count. “How are you boys holding up?”
