“Of course.”
She drops into the booth beside me, holds her phone at arm’s length, and we both smile. “Thank you so much! You’re even prettier in person. Like, actually unreal.”
She squeezes my arm, gushes something about my hair, and bounces off to rejoin her friends at the counter.
Violet watches her go and then looks at me. “You hate that,” she says quietly.
I don’t deny it.
Because she’s right. The girl was lovely. Genuinely sweet. And I’m glad she liked the dress. But every selfie, every “you’re so pretty in person,” every interaction that starts with recognition and ends with a camera, it pushes me further from the person I’m trying to become.
I want someone to stop me in a coffee shop one day and say, “I saw your photograph of the mountains. It made me feel something.”
That’s why I’m here. Not running from something. Running toward it.
I pick up my phone. Open the sunset photo again, and I post it. No filter. No caption. No brand tag. No selfie. Just the view from the other side of the camera.
Violet reaches across the table and squeezes my hand. “Proud of you,” she says.
I squeeze back.
And I look out the window at the street where a man in a black cowboy hat made the whole town go quiet just by walking to his truck.
Something about this place feels like the beginning of a story I haven’t read yet. And I want to turn the page.
CHAPTER TWO
HUNTER
Song- Afraid Of The Dark,Motionless in White.
I check the time on my watch and huff. My son Wyatt will be home from school any minute. I took him this morning and managed to head into town. I try to stay out of there usually. But my son wants cookies after he finishes school, so I had to go and get them.
I live and breathe for that boy. Everything I do is for him. To give him a legacy. To keep him safe from assholes like this dead one on the floor.
Taking one last drag from my cigarette, I flick it onto the body we’ve just dumped into the freshly dug hole in what I like to call Sterling Ranch’s graveyard.
“What are you gonna do about this Greek problem?” Ace, my youngest and most reckless brother, asks as he kicks dirt into the grave.
“I’m calling a meeting with Nikos after I speak to Enzo,” I tell him.
The Greek mafia wants our attention, but sending their men snooping around my land ain’t the way to get it.
As this little prick found out with a bullet through his skull.
Yeah, we’re mafia. But first, we’re cowboys. Born and bred. It’s in our blood. This ranch has been in our family for generations.
You don’t trespass on a cowboy’s land.
Not when my son lives here. Not when my father’s last words were to protect not just our land, but my three brothers, too.
He told us, "When you kill a rattlesnake with a stick, make sure you also burn the stick." We take that to heart and have been taking care of this land, no matter what, for generations.
But a few years ago, my father got the Sterling family tangled up with the Mafia. Enzo Testa’s organization, no less. The most powerful organization in the world. It was a mutually beneficial deal, which meant we protected our Ranch and got the power and money that came with the mafia. I was at my father's side when he cut the deal. He trained me to see it live out.
We hunt for Enzo. We bury bodies. We move product. And it makes us enough money that the ranch never has to carry the weight alone.
But it comes with sacrifices.