Page 27

I move instinctively, shoes forgotten, jacket gone, diving...

The shock of the cold takes my breath, but I find her. My hands close around her wrist, and she startles, twisting toward me, lips forming my name.

“Everett—”

“I’ve got you,” I say, half breath, half promise.

I pull her in, get her arms around my neck, and kick hard toward the dock. The storm shoves against us, but she doesn’t fight me. She’s trembling, whispering something I can’t make out.

When we break the surface again near the ladder, I push her up first. I haul myself after her, and she collapses against my chest, sobbing.

The lake roars behind us, but she’s here, breathing, real, and I’m not letting her go.

“I thought I could go back,” she gasps. “But no one answered. I’m alone.”

My chest tightens painfully at her mournful expression. I tuck her wet hair behind her ear, thumb tracing the curve of her cheek. “You’re not alone. Not ever again.”

Ariel shakes her head. “You don’t understand. I can’t stay up here. I have to go back down there or he’ll destroy everything.” She points at the lake.

For a moment, I fear for her sanity, but the fear of hypothermia takes priority.

“Sweetheart, you’re soaked,” I murmur, gathering her stiff frame into my arms. “Let me get you home before you catch your death.”

She nods vacantly. “Home, yes.”

I take her hand and steer her toward the car. Grabbing a blanket from the trunk, I wrap it around her and settle her in the passenger seat before driving home in record time.

Half an hour later, we’re both dry and in clean clothes. I tug Ariel onto my lap as she goes to sit beside me on the couch.

“Tell me what happened,” I murmur, nuzzling my face in her damp hair. I swallow hard. “Were you trying to…” I trail off, unable to finish the thought.

Ariel shifts in my lap, turning to face me. “No, no!” she says fiercely. “I was trying to go home.”

“Home?” I repeat, slightly offended that she doesn’t consider this place her home. “In the lake?”

She bites her lip. “Your father will hurt the people I love, the place I love, if you don’t give him what he wants.”

I cup her face. She’s cold and burning at once. “I’m not letting him hurt you. Or anything you love.”

“He can,” she whispers, shaking her head like she’s trying to shake the memory out. “Last night, he offered me money to leave. Said he’d poison the lake if I stayed. That he’d make it rot and then pretend to save it.”

For a heartbeat, everything in me goes quiet. Then fury uncoils, clean and powerful. “He told you that,” I repeat, tasting the betrayal. “He said it out loud.”

She nods, rain-bright tears trapped in her lashes. “He said he pays people to dump. He buys silence and wrecks the people who try to clean it. He said the lake is just business.”

I grind my teeth until I fear my molars will crack. Red blooms behind my eyes—not just anger, but a raw betrayal that unspools into something darker. The man who taught me to read balance sheets and board minutes has been farming ruin and selling the cure, laundering devastation into dividends. Every handshake he ever taught me, every polished sentence about stewardship and legacy, now looks like a practiced lie.

I see it all at once in a dozen small scenes I shrugged off: the too-tidy cleanup crews I waved past at dawn, the way contractors’ trucks turned up in odd places at odd hours, how my father always loved the part of the job where the camera crews arrived. He didn’t build a company to save things; he built a machine that profited from what he could break and “fix” on his terms.

It’s a betrayal that lands not only on me but on the environment I thought we were protecting. On the kids who learned to cannonball off my dock. On those who trusted him to keep their shores clean. My anger is a hot, living thing. It hums under my skin and sharpens my focus until the plan forms in my mind, clear as crystal: exposure, consequence, dismantling whatever rotten scaffolding he built.

Later, I’ll break something I don’t have to replace. Now, I breathe and focus on the woman I love. The brave, selfless woman who thought she could run from me. As if there were anywhere she could go I wouldn’t find her.

I squeeze Ariel’s hand because I need something real and human to hold while the pieces rearrange in my head. “Thank you for telling me. I swear to you, I’ll break what he built. Tear it down with my bare hands, if I have to. As long as I’m drawing breath, he won’t harm the lake, or anything or anyone else.”

“I’m sorry,” she whispers. “I know he’s your father…”

“That’s the thing,” I say as she trails off. “I don’t think he was, not in all the ways that matter. He was my boss. He taught me how to speak at dedication ceremonies, how to smile for cameras, how to sign a check without letting the tremor show. He taught me how to run a boardroom and how to believe that appearances were the same thing as morals. But he never hugged me or told me he loved me. He was generous in public and cold in private. I performed the role he wanted because”—I pause and swallow hard—“I wanted his approval. God, what a fucking idiot!”