Page 224 of Ironwood Ranch Cowboys

Hours blur afterward.

Deputies move through the ranch taking photos and statements. Staff members gather in frightened little clusters near the barns. Rumors spread through Ironwood like gasoline finding flame.

Jake refuses to speak without a lawyer.

Benji mostly stares at the floor.

Silas makes calls in clipped, lethal sentences from the study.

Duke refuses to let me out of his sight for more than thirty seconds at a time.

And Cody brings me evidence.

It’s nearly midnight when he finds me sitting alone in the office staring blankly at my laptop screen without actually seeing it.

The room smells like cold coffee and stress.

A very corporate perfume.

Cody closes the door behind him. “You should sleep.”

I laugh softly. “That ship sailed approximately three catastrophes ago.”

His mouth tightens.

Then he sets a flash drive on the desk beside me. “I found more.”

Immediately my pulse spikes. “More what?”

“The backup archives from Jake’s deleted server folders.”

I sit up straighter. Fatigue evaporates on contact with obsession.

Cody drags the second chair beside mine and sits close enough our knees almost touch. Then he plugs the drive in.

Folders populate across the screen. Emails. Financial routing chains. Investor communications. Shell company agreements.

My stomach twists tighter with every click. “Oh, wow.”

Cody says nothing.

Just watches the screen with that terrifying stillness he gets when emotions are being held together entirely by spreadsheets and spite.

The emails paint the whole picture now and it all links to one person.

Vivian.

Not directly. Never directly. That’s the thing about powerful people. They almost never touch the knife themselves.

Cody leans back slowly, rubbing a hand over his mouth. “Jake still could’ve been using her name.”

I turn toward him fully. “No. This is her.”

Cody’s jaw flexes once. “She raised us.”

“I know.”

His expression hardens.