Page 92 of The Last Dance You Saved
Puzo didn’t move, didn’t react, but I heard a hint of anger in his voice. “As you said, it’s been over eighty years. No court would give the Hatleys anything if they came sniffing.”
“Maybe. Maybe not. So why would you be nervous, then? How big of a piece would they be entitled to? Half? A quarter? The way your business has been hemmed in with the FBI watching you, even ten percent might hurt.”
Only the way he slowly straightened the boutonniere in his pocket proved I’d rattled him. “Carolyn couldn’t claim her inheritance unless she came back and married the man my grandfather had picked for her, and she would’ve had to bring the stolen diamonds with her.”
Italian families have long memories and the patience to exact retribution at just the right time.
“Did you know who I was when I first came to work for you?”
He gave me a look that said the question was stupid. “We do background checks on all our employees.”
I’d stepped right into a nearly century-old vendetta at work and hadn’t even known it. What else didn’t I know? How could I protect the people I loved without all the information? “I bet some of those background checks aren’t entirely legal. I bet they cross privacy lines all over the place. I bet you told Nero Lancaster to dig up all the dirty laundry he could on me when I first graced your doorstep. What were you hoping for? That the jewels would suddenly reappear, and you could somehow right an old family wrong?”
“Was I hoping to get the hundred thousand dollars owed to us, with eighty years of interest? Sure.” Puzo glanced around the ranch. “But then I decided I’d rather have this instead.”
He was trying to distract me by bringing up the ranch and the community he’d worked his way into inch by inch.
“Except, the Hurly family owed your family the money back then, not mine,” I said, a calm settling in over me. “And you’d never be able to legally ask for it in a court of law.”
“You’re the one who insists it was Hurly who owed us the money, not me.”
“If you’ve got proof it was Alasdair Harrington, cough it up, but you don’t. I bet there isn’t a single marker signed by a Harrington, but I bet you have quite a few signed by a Hurly. You never said yesterday exactly how much Adam owes you now.” Puzo tried to move around me, but I cut off his escape. “What was the agreement you made with Adam? Bankrupt the ranch so it would allow you to buy it on the cheap? Every dollar he cut off the top of the purchase price by running it into the ground would be a dollar off his debt?”
When he shifted ever so slightly in discomfort, I knew I’d nailed it. Puzo wanted the ranch for whatever twisted reason he could come up with, maybe simply revenge on me and mine, and Adam wanted to burn it to the ground. Adam hated this place because it represented a century of Hurly family failures.
Some of those missing pieces had clicked into place with this conversation, but not all.
I smiled at Lorenzo—a dark smile full of promise—as I said, “Too bad you’ll never get your hands on the ranch now. I’ve got more than enough money to keep it going from now until we’re both dead and buried. Whatever it loses, I’ll cover. Neither you nor Adam will ever get another slice of what belongs to my family. Italians aren’t the only ones with long memories and a thirst for vengeance.”
Adam’s great-grandfather had lost the land in a poker match, and Adam had tried to grab it back, but he’d lost that gamble just like his great-granddaddy had. Puzo was right. Addiction ran in the family. Addiction and obsession.
Puzo glanced out at his family spilling through the tent, his profile stoic. When he finally twisted his head back to look me in the eye, the glimpse of exhaustion I caught was surprising. “I didn’t need to motivate or help Adam with his plans. I just had to wait patiently enough for him to run the ranch into the ground so I could buy it on the cheap. Now that it isn’t going to happen, Adam and I do have some outstanding business to take care of, and unlike my grandfather, I do have a contract in hand and a way to claim it in court.”
“Adam’s debt isn’t mine or my family’s,” I seethed.
“Are you sure about that?” he said and then strolled away toward the crowd gathered around the cake table.
I took a moment to control the rage flowing through me at Puzo and Adam and decades of feuding family nastiness. Maybe my family hadn’t earned the ranch in the most upright way, but we’d worked the land and grown it into what it was today. We’d put money into the community when we’d been flush. We’d done our best to pay some of it forward. Hell, the foundation my company ran gave millions each year.
But not to Rivers, the devil inside me taunted.
I’d distanced myself from the town as much as I had my family and the ranch. But I could change that. I could make some of it right again.
With the music stopped, my daughter, her friend, and Sadie had moved to watch the bride and groom as they sweetly fed each other cake. I glanced around, ensuring my detail was in place, and found Parker across the tent, his eyes glued on the three women.
I joined him, asking, “Everything’s been quiet here?”
“Yep. But I think you might want to lock up your women before anyone gets the wrong idea.” His voice was dark and broody as his gaze shot warnings to some of the guests who were sending appreciative looks at my daughter and the siren I’d fallen head over heels for.
After shooting some of my own bolts in those men’s directions, I asked, “Where’s your dad?”
“Hacking away at his computer. He thinks he might be able to find Adam when no one else can. He did say he’s crossed some paths that show Puzo is searching for Adam too.”
I shouldn’t care what happened to Adam, especially if he’d killed Spence, and yet Lauren’s plea from this morning still lingered in my soul. Her sad statement that they were the last of the Hurly family, just like Fallon was the last of the Harringtons, had hit somewhere deep inside me. Even before I’d left the ranch, I hadn’t cared about our name the way my father had. Maybe it had been the way he’d pounded into me that Spence would be the one to carry on all the Harrington traditions that had forced me to choose my mother’s name as much as it had been a child’s defiant devotion to the one parent who’d loved him. Whatever the reason, I’d never considered before today what the weight of carrying both Dad’s nameandhis expectations had been like for my brother—a weight that had been passed down to my daughter.
Fallon turned her head in our direction, and when she saw me, her face lit up. It was both a cut and a balm to my soul that she was actually smiling at me. She rarely looked at me with such joy anymore. The need to be right there next to both her and Sadie had my feet moving, but I stopped before I got too far, turning back to Parker. “When do you have to go back?”
“I report for duty on Friday.”
