Page 1 of Leather & Lies

Prologue

JACKSON

The smokein O’Malley’s back room hangs thick enough to blur the edges of reality. As Rick Foster pushes another IOU across the felt table, his hands tremble. His reputation with horses used to mean something. Now he’s just another drunk betting his family’s future on the turn of a card.

Just like my father. Just like every other abusive piece of shit who’d rather chase the next hand than face what they’re destroying. The familiar stench of cheap whiskey and desperation hits like a fist to the gut. For a moment, I’m twelve again, learning which cards meant I’d eat dinner, and which meant I’d bleed instead.

I let him think I’m focused on my cards while I observe his tells. The way his left thumb taps when he’s bluffing. How he takes exactly three breaths before a big bet. The same patterns I learned watching my old man lose our grocery money hand after hand. The same skills that let me climb from nothing to owning half the valley.

With a gust of winter wind, the door slams open and my hand’s already on the gun under the table before I see her.

She’s barely an adult, dark circles under her eyes making her look both impossibly young and ancient with grief. Ice crystalsglitter in her hastily-tied braid, like she ran here through the storm. Already cataloging everything about her, I note a hospital bracelet circles one delicate wrist. Her coat’s too thin for January in Montana, but she doesn’t seem to feel the cold, like physical discomfort can’t touch her through the weight of what she’s carrying.

Something in my chest shifts as she scans the room, and I have to physically stop myself from standing, from crossing the space between us. The fluorescent lights catch gold sparks in her hazel eyes, and suddenly nothing else matters—not the game, not the properties sitting in the pot, not the empire I’ve spent a decade building. Just her. The realization makes me want to put my fist through a wall.

She moves through the stale air, each step confident despite her obvious exhaustion. No fear in her, even facing down a room full of men who kill for entertainment. Just quiet grace.

“Daddy.” Her voice carries the particular tone of someone who’s had to grow up too fast, who’s done this dance too many times. She swallows hard and squares her shoulders against what’s coming. “Mom’s asking for you.”

Foster waves her off without looking up, shame and bourbon making him mean. “Not now, Shiloh. I’m about to win it all back.”

“This is it.” The words slip out small, young. Her fingers clench like she’s physically holding herself together. “The doctors say—” Her voice cracks, exposing the raw edge beneath her strength. “This is goodbye. Please.”

The raw desperation in her plea cuts through the smoky air. I know that kind of pain. That kind of need. But where I let it make me cruel, she bears hers with calm dignity.

Foster’s tells are screaming now—the sweat on his upper lip, the tremor in his hands as he pushes everything he has left into the pot.

She stares at the cards, at her father’s crumpled face, at everything she’s about to lose. When her eyes meet mine across the felt, there’s no accusation. Just a bone-deep understanding that makes my blood burn. The kind that comes from watching someone you love destroy themselves. And you.

I stand slowly, savoring how she tilts her head back to hold my gaze, refusing to be intimidated by my height. “The house always wins, little hellcat. And I’m the house.”

She blinks long and slow. Vulnerability flashes in her eyes, then dies, buried under weariness.

“Come on, Daddy.” She helps Foster to his feet, her shoulders bracing his weight as he stumbles. Something dark and possessive twists in my gut as she steadies him—this young woman holding up the man who should be protecting her. Foster sways against her, reaching for the flask in his pocket and leaving her to navigate through the crowded room.

Not a single man at the table moves to help—not me, not Lucas Caldwell, not Matthew Walsh. Not a single fucking one.

When she reaches the threshold, she pauses. One moment of white-knuckled weakness. The wind carries her scent back to me—grief and steel and something uniquely hers that makes my hands clench with the need to claim.

She disappears into the storm and doesn’t look back. Why would she? The need to hunt her down burns through my blood like wildfire. I don’t just want her body—I want her surrender. Her defiance. Every breath she takes.

I gather my winnings with hands that aren’t quite steady, disgusted by my reaction to her. But even as I try to focus on the game, all I can think about is how she’ll look when she finally yields to me. How her defiance will taste when I break it. How perfect she’ll be once I own every fierce inch of her.

She’s under my skin now, in my blood. The monster in me has caught her scent, and monsters don’t release their prey.

She just doesn’t know it yet.

1

Shiloh

Six years later

“Easy.”My voice carries the same quiet confidence that’s gentled a hundred dangerous horses before this one. “Your rage doesn’t fool me. I see the fear underneath.”

The black stallion flicks his ears toward me, but his body remains tightly coiled, like a rattler about to strike. Most trainers would see a lost cause in the way he paws the ground, how the whites of his eyes flash as he tracks my movement. They’d note his reputation for sending three handlers to the hospital and class him as unstable, aggressive, even unredeemable.

But I read the truth in the tremor of his hindquarters. This isn’t aggression—it’s fear masquerading as violence. And broken things turned dangerous? That’s a language I speak fluently.

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