Page 84 of Claimed on the Ridge

He's smaller than I expected. Trim, groomed, wearing a coat that costs more than most people earn in a month. His shoes are wrong for this ground. His posture is the practiced stance of a man accustomed to boardrooms and charity galas.

Gary looks at the lodge. He looks at me on the porch with the rifle at my side and three brothers positioned around the property. His expression doesn't change.

That's the tell.

A man driving alone to a remote lodge to confront the woman responsible for gutting his empire should show something. Fear. Anger. Desperation.

Gary Simmons shows the same polished control he wears to dinner parties.

The mask is so complete it has replaced the face underneath.

The front door opens behind me.

Kendall steps into the doorway.

She's seen him.

The stillness that crosses her body is total, a freeze that starts in her shoulders and locks her feet to the threshold. For one breath she is the woman who arrived at this lodge with flinch patterns so deep they fired before she could stop them.

Then her spine straightens.

She squares her shoulders.

She stands in the doorway of my lodge and looks at the man who broke her ribs.

Gary speaks first. Smooth, measured, the practiced register of concern that has nothing to do with caring and everything to do with control.

"Kendall, I've been worried about you, Kendall Simmons. We’ve been looking for you” He uses her married name, Kendall Simmons. “I think we should talk about this. Whatever's happened, we can work it out."

The performance is flawless. The reasonable husband who drove all this way out of love. The concern that masks possession. The ‘we can work it out’spoken by the same mouth that kissed his wife's forehead at the airport gate the morning after breaking her ribs.

"My name is Kendall Mitchell," she says. Her voice doesn't waver. "Your associates started calling each other last night. You should check your voicemail on the drive back." She pauses. "Leave."

Gary looks through her.

The gesture is so practiced it has the quality of a reflex. His gaze slides over her as though she hasn't made a sound, past the threshold, and settles on me. He looks at me the way you look at furniture.

He steps onto the bottom step of the porch.

I come off the porch.

The rifle stays against the wall. I don't need it. What I need is my hands, and my hands are already closed.

The first hit takes Gary in the mouth. His head snaps back and the polished composure shatters like glass on stone. He staggers and catches himself on the porch rail with one hand.

The hand is soft, manicured, the hand of someone who has never absorbed the consequences of what his hands do to other people.

My fist crashes into his jaw.

The impact travels up through my knuckles and into my wrist. He goes down to one knee. Blood on his lip, bright against the groomed skin.

He tries to speak. The reasonable voice starts to form words, and I end them with my fist against his cheekbone. The impact is thick, wet, tissue compressing under force. He drops to the porch boards.

Out of the corner of my eye, I catch Bryan closing the distance, his rifle hanging low.

I follow Gary down.

Every piece of what this man did lives in my hands. The bruise on her ribs. The flinch that fires before she can stop it. The bag packed by the bed since day one. The wrist she covers when she's scared. Four years of courtesy and control, and a woman who sat through business dinners like furniture while she memorized every name and number Gary never thought to hide from someone he didn't consider a threat.