Chapter 1
Bishop
◆
The man strapped to my dining table begins begging before I finish pouring my whiskey, which is disappointing for several reasons, the first being that I have not asked him a single question yet and the second being that cowardice makes an already unpleasant evening stretch longer than necessary. I prefer betrayal with backbone. If a man decides to steal from me, sell information to my enemies, or mistake my restraint for softness, the least he can do is look me in the eye when the consequences arrive.
Unfortunately, Daryl Boone has never possessed anything resembling courage.
He thrashes against the leather restraints securing his wrists and ankles to the scarred oak table, rattling the heavy buckles without gaining more than half an inch. Sweat darkens the collar of his pale-blue shirt. Blood from his split lip streaks his chin, and the sour stink of fear has already overpowered the expensive cologne he wore to dinner. He dressed for a business meeting because Merritt told him that was what this would be. Technically, Merritt did not lie. We are discussing business. Daryl simply failed to ask whether he would leave after negotiations concluded.
“Bishop, listen to me,” he says, his voice cracking around my name. “This is a misunderstanding.”
I carry my glass to the head of the table and settle into the chair my father once occupied, letting the old wood creak beneath my weight. The dining room is large enough to seat twenty, though I have never invited more than six people into it at once. Orren Slade liked filling the room with men who laughed too loudly at his jokes and watched his hands for permission to breathe. I kept the table after I killed him, not from sentiment but because solid oak is difficult to find, and this particular piece has proven useful.
Across the room, Merritt Shaw leans against the stone fireplace with his arms folded over his chest. His sandy-brown hair is more gray than it was a year ago, though I refuse to accept responsibility for that. At thirty-eight, he looks like a weathered ranch foreman who has spent his life bargaining with drought and stubborn cattle. The pistol beneath his jacket and the bodies buried across three counties suggest otherwise.
Between us, Daryl tries another violent pull against the restraints.
The table does not move.
“You skimmed eight hundred thousand dollars from my Odessa route,” I say, taking a slow drink. The whiskey burns pleasantly, unlike Daryl, who will probably burn noisily if tonight proceeds as planned. “You sold two shipment schedules to the Navarro crew. Because of you, three of my drivers were ambushed, one truck disappeared, and a boy named Mateo Alvarez died with his lungs full of blood beside a highway marker.”
“I didn’t know anyone would get killed.”
“You sold the locations of armed shipments to men who use machetes for conflict resolution. What did you imagine they planned to do, Daryl? Deliver sternly worded complaints?”
Merritt makes a sound that might be a cough, though the corner of his mouth twitches. Daryl stares at me as if humor offends him under the circumstances, which seems unreasonable. I have given him the best entertainment he is likely to receive before death.
“They threatened my family,” he says. “Navarro’s men knew where my wife worked. They had pictures of my daughter outside her school. I didn’t have a choice.”
Everyone believes desperation transforms betrayal into innocence. Men steal because their children need medicine, sell secrets because someone threatened their wives, and put bullets in loyal people because fear makes murder feel temporarily reasonable. The excuses change; the dead remain dead.
I set my glass beside a neat row of instruments arranged on the black runner. A narrow boning knife. Pliers. A skinning blade with a polished antler handle. Two iron nails. A small propane torch. The heavy butcher’s cleaver rests at the end, its broad edge reflecting the chandelier’s dim light. Daryl’s gaze catches on it and refuses to move.
“You had choices,” I tell him. “You could have come to Merritt. You could have come to me. You could have put your family in one of our safe houses and allowed us to erase the threat. Instead, you protected them by sacrificing men whose families trusted me to bring them home.”
“I was scared.”
“So was Mateo when they opened his stomach on the side of the road.”
The words settle between us, heavy enough to silence his next plea. I know exactly how Mateo died because I watched the recovered traffic footage. The recording had no sound, but pain possesses a language that does not require it. He dragged himself six feet across the pavement while two men searched the truck, then pressed both hands against what should have remained inside his body. He lived for eleven minutes. Long enough to understand nobody was coming.
His mother received my condolences and enough money to keep his children housed until adulthood. Neither brought her son back.
My people work for a criminal empire, not a charity. They understand the risks, follow orders, and accept that an honest death is rarely included in the benefits package. In return, I demand loyalty and give them protection. The arrangement is ruthless, but it is never dishonest.
Daryl broke it.
“What happens to my family?” he whispers.
“Nothing.”
His gaze jerks from the cleaver to my face. “You mean that?”
“I do not punish children for their fathers’ failures. Your wife will be told you ran with the money. She’ll receive documents for new identities and enough cash to leave Texas if she has the sense to use it. Navarro’s men watching them were removed two hours ago.”
Relief floods his face so quickly it almost resembles gratitude. He closes his eyes, and a broken sob escapes him. Perhaps he thinks protecting his family might purchase mercy. Perhaps he imagines I will release him because he has finally confessed, allowing him to become some pathetic ghost haunting a quiet town under another name.
I let him believe it for several seconds.
Then I pick up the boning knife.
His eyes open at the whisper of steel against wood. “You said—”
“I said your family would live. You are not your family.”
The first cut is shallow, drawn carefully across the back of his right hand. Daryl screams as if I have removed a limb, confirming that the night will be tedious. I angle the blade and extend the line over his knuckles, watching blood well between the tendons. The hand interests me because it signed the payment instructions that moved my money into shell accounts. It also sent the shipment schedules to Navarro. People pretend technology creates distance between intention and damage, but every betrayal still begins with hands.
Daryl’s pleading becomes incoherent. I allow it to wash through the room while I work, separating confession from noise. Between screams, he gives me account numbers, contact names, a warehouse address, and the location of a disposable phone buried in his backyard. Merritt records everything without shifting from the fireplace. We have already uncovered most of it, but frightened men reveal hidden corners when they see their own blood. Daryl gives us one valuable name: a county transport inspector who has been selling route clearances to Navarro for six months.
“Write that one down twice,” I tell Merritt.
“I was planning to circle it.”
“Use blue ink. It makes the betrayal look official.”
Daryl makes a wet choking sound. Merritt lowers the phone long enough to study me. “Should I also underline it?”
“Don’t be dramatic.”
The corner of his mouth twitches again.
By the time Daryl has exhausted his secrets, the storm moving over Slade Ranch begins striking the windows with rain. Wind claws across the roof and bends the live oaks surrounding the house, their branches scratching the stone like fingernails. The ranch covers nearly twelve thousand acres of hard Texas country—rolling grasslands, cedar breaks, limestone ridges, and ravines deep enough to hide anything a man wishes forgotten. I inherited half from Orren, seized the rest from competitors, and turned the property into the center of an empire that reaches from legitimate cattle operations to weapons routes, private gambling rooms, underground fights, and several businesses respectable people use while pretending not to know who owns them.
Most men build walls around power.
I built distance.
The nearest public road lies four miles beyond the southern gate, while security cameras, buried sensors, armed patrols, and one exceptionally ill-tempered grizzly cover the ground between. A man would have to possess skill, patience, and a profound lack of survival instinct to breach the ranch unnoticed.
Daryl possesses none of those things. He entered through the front door.
His head rolls weakly against the table. “I told you everything.”
“You did.”
“Please.”
I place the knife down and reach for my whiskey, finding the ice nearly melted. “What exactly are you asking me to do?”
“Let me go.”
The sincerity of it almost impresses me. “You caused one of my men to die in pieces, and you believe answering questions erases the debt?”
“I’ll disappear. You’ll never see me again.”
“That is the first sensible thing you’ve said tonight.”
Hope flickers in his eyes until I rise and take the cleaver.
It is not ornamental. The weight is balanced for my hand, the grip darkened by years of use, and the edge maintained with more care than most men give their wedding vows. I inherited the first version from the ranch slaughterhouse, but that blade snapped against a traitor’s hip bone eight years ago. This replacement was forged for me by a man who asked no questions after seeing the broken one.
Daryl’s breathing accelerates. “Bishop, please. I’m sorry. I swear to God, I’m sorry.”
“God has never shown much interest in my dining room.”
I move to his right side, where the leather strap holds his arm flat. The first strike lands above the wrist with a thick crack against bone. His scream tears through the room, high and animal, while blood spatters my shirt and dots the whiskey glass. The blade bites halfway through. I wrench it free, adjust the angle, and bring it down again.
The hand separates.
Daryl convulses against the restraints as blood pours across the oak. Merritt steps forward with a tourniquet, but I lift one finger, stopping him. We are not preserving Daryl for another conversation. The lesson has already been delivered; prolonging the process would satisfy nothing except vanity, and I have never mistaken waste for cruelty.
I place the cleaver against the side of his throat.
His sobbing weakens. “Tell my daughter I loved her.”
“No. She deserves to remember you without knowing how your love failed.”
I drive the edge down.
The body jerks once before going still. Blood spreads beneath his cheek and spills over the table in slow, dark streams, dripping onto the limestone floor my father selected because he believed pale stone made the room look grand. He was right. It also shows every stain.
For several seconds, only rain and Daryl’s departing pulse disturb the silence.
Merritt checks his watch. “Eleven minutes.”
“You timed me?”
“You complained the last interrogation ran long.”
“That was because Hensley lied for forty minutes.”
“He had a remarkable commitment to fiction.”
“He should have written novels.”
Merritt approaches the table, avoiding the blood with the ease of long practice. “Should I call the cleaners?”
“After Hollan removes what he needs. Send the hand to Navarro.”
“With a note?”
“Of course. We are not savages.”
“What should it say?”
I consider several possibilities, then wipe the cleaver on Daryl’s shirt. “Keep your hands off what belongs to me.”
Merritt types the message into his phone. He has worked beside me for fourteen years, first as the young ranch hand who knew where Orren buried his secrets and later as the only man I trusted to help dismantle what my father built. Trust does not come naturally to me. It is a blade offered hilt-first, always capable of turning in the hand. Merritt has had thousands of opportunities to cut me and has not taken one.
That does not mean I forget he could.
I carry my glass toward the French doors overlooking the western pasture. Lightning exposes the landscape in white fragments: the flooded yard, the black fence, and the massive shape moving beyond it. Bramble rises onto his hind legs near the porch, nearly eight feet of scarred muscle and wet fur, before dropping down again. I rescued him six years ago from men who kept exotic animals for private fights. He had killed two dogs, mauled a handler, and bitten through the bars of a transport cage before I bought the entire operation and fed its owner to his own enterprise.
Since then, Bramble has decided the ranch belongs to him.
I merely manage it.
He huffs at the glass, fogging a broad circle. One rounded ear bears the notch left by a fighting dog, and a pale scar splits the fur across his muzzle. Most people respond to Bramble with panic. I find him considerably easier to understand than men. He does not lie, flatter, or disguise hunger as loyalty.
“Your dinner is late,” I tell him through the glass.
His dark eyes shift toward the dining table.
“No.”
Bramble places one paw against the door.
“The answer remains no. Hollan needs the body first.”
Merritt glances between us. “You understand the bear can’t hear you through reinforced glass.”
“He understands tone.”
“He weighs nine hundred pounds. He doesn’t respect tone.”
“He respects mine.”
As if determined to undermine me, Bramble drags his claws down the glass with a screech that makes Merritt wince. I stare at the bear. He stares back. The contest lasts until lightning strikes somewhere beyond the northern pasture and Bramble turns his head toward the thunder.
I take the victory.
Merritt clears his throat. The sound lacks its usual dry amusement, and when I look at him, he is no longer studying the bear. He holds his phone tightly, the lines around his gray eyes sharpened by something more serious than Daryl’s betrayal.
“What?” I ask.
“We have another problem.”
“Navarro?”
“No. This came through one of the brokers in El Paso. The source is clean enough that I checked it twice before bringing it to you.”
He crosses the room and places the phone beside my whiskey. A photograph fills the screen: my face caught by a telephoto lens as I leave a private airfield three weeks ago. Beneath it sits a number large enough to purchase a small country, followed by a list of conditions.
Target: Bishop Slade.
Location: Slade Ranch or confirmed secondary residence.
Proof required: head, right hand, bear-claw pendant.
The last item holds my attention.
My fingers close around the silver pendant beneath my shirt, a piece no photographer has captured and no outsider should know exists. The claw-shaped metal belonged to my mother. I wear it against my skin, hidden beneath buttons and violence, because it is the only possession of hers Orren failed to burn.
Daryl could not have known about it.
Neither could Navarro.
“How many brokers received this?” I ask.
“At least seven. The contract went live forty-eight hours ago, but it was buried behind an invitation wall. Whoever funded it wants elite talent, not street crews.”
The reward is obscene even by my standards. High enough to tempt assassins who normally refuse domestic contracts and mercenaries with no interest in Texas politics. The buyer demands proof of death, but the pendant turns a business transaction into something intimate. Whoever issued the contract knows my private habits, my movements, and a piece of my childhood I have spent two decades burying.
“Who accepted it?”
Merritt’s expression hardens. “We don’t know.”
A slow, unfamiliar pleasure uncurls beneath my ribs.
Someone believes they know me well enough to arrange my death. They have studied my routines, reached into the grave for my mother’s memory, and offered a fortune to whichever killer is arrogant enough to enter my territory. It should anger me. Instead, anticipation settles through my blood, cold and sharp.
For years, men have feared me too much to be interesting.
Now someone is coming.
I turn toward the storm, watching lightning fracture the sky above the black line of the hills. Bramble paces beyond the glass, restless beneath the thunder, while Daryl’s blood continues dripping behind me with the patient rhythm of a clock.
“Double the outer patrols,” Merritt says. “Lock down the southern road. I’ll bring in another security team before dawn.”
“No.”
His jaw tightens. “Bishop.”
“If this killer is good enough to accept that contract, more guards will only give them additional bodies to hide behind.”
“You’re assuming they’ll come alone.”
“I’m hoping they do.”
“This is not entertainment.”
I lift my whiskey and finish it, tasting smoke, oak, and the faint metallic scent filling the room. “Everything is entertainment if you survive it.”
Merritt mutters something unflattering beneath his breath, but he knows better than to waste time arguing after my mind is made. He retrieves his phone and heads toward the door to arrange Daryl’s removal. Before leaving, he pauses with one hand on the iron handle.
“The buyer knew about Elowen’s pendant,” he says quietly. “That doesn’t concern you?”
“It concerns me enough that I want whoever comes through the gate alive.”
“And if they refuse?”
I look past my reflection in the rain-streaked glass, beyond the yard and fences, into thousands of acres of darkness waiting for a stranger foolish enough to believe the ranch makes me vulnerable.
“Then Bramble gets an early breakfast.”
The bear strikes the glass again, his claws scraping over the place where my reflection’s heart should be, and somewhere beyond the storm, an assassin is preparing to kill me.
For the first time in months, I smile.
