Chapter 5 - The Box Beneath the Floor
Ronan’s brother had been dead for eleven years.
His name was Lucian Blackwood.
Juliet learned that in the library, where Ronan poured two glasses of whiskey and then gave Juliet tea when she reminded him she had nearly died of hypothermia less than a day earlier.
“Lucian was twenty-one when your parents died,” Ronan said. “I was seventeen.”
Juliet sat across from him.
“Why would he betray them?”
“Money. Pride. Fear. I never got a complete answer.”
“Did he admit it?”
“Years later.”
Ronan stared into the fire.
“He told me he gave Grant their travel route. He claimed he thought Grant only wanted to stop them and negotiate.”
Juliet’s fingers tightened around the mug.
“Did you believe him?”
“No.”
“Did your father?”
“My father never learned the truth. Lucian confessed to me after our father died.”
Juliet looked at Ronan.
“What happened to Lucian?”
“Hunting accident.”
The way he said it made her skin prickle.
“You don’t think it was an accident.”
“No.”
“Grant?”
“Probably.”
Juliet laughed bitterly.
“How many accidents does one man get?”
Ronan did not answer.
That afternoon, they searched Blackwood’s old records.
Ronan had inherited a house full of locked rooms and a family tradition of writing everything down. Ledgers. Land maps. medical reports. Letters.
Most had been digitized.
Some had not.
At four o’clock, Ronan found an entry in his father’s handwritten journal.
December 14.
Mara believes G.J. has falsified White Pine mineral leases. E.D. bringing original deed and blood registry Christmas Eve. Hide copies in north guest room if meeting fails.
Juliet read the line three times.
“North guest room?”
Ronan looked upward.
The north guest room was on the third floor.
Dust covered most of the furniture.
They searched drawers, closet panels, and fireplace stones.
Nothing.
Juliet stood in the center of the room, frustrated.
“Your father wrote ‘hide copies.’ Where would he hide them?”
Ronan looked around.
“My father believed safes were invitations.”
“That sounds exhausting.”
“He was exhausting.”
Juliet stepped toward the window.
The floorboard beneath her foot creaked.
Ronan looked down.
They both froze.
Juliet moved aside.
Ronan knelt, pressed along the edge, then removed a thin knife from his pocket.
“Do billionaires always carry knives?”
“Only mysterious dead ones.”
Juliet stared.
Ronan’s mouth twitched.
“You started it.”
He pried up the floorboard.
Beneath it sat a metal box.
Juliet stopped breathing.
Ronan lifted it out.
The latch was rusted but unlocked.
Inside were oilskin envelopes.
A deed.
Bank records.
A blood-registry certificate.
And a red scarf.
Juliet made a sound she did not recognize.
She reached for it with shaking hands.
Memory hit instantly.
Her mother standing in a kitchen.
Snow beyond the window.
Dark hair tied loosely.
The red scarf wrapped around her neck as she leaned down and kissed Juliet’s forehead.
Be brave, little pine.
Juliet sank to the floor.
Ronan sat beside her.
He did not touch her.
He simply remained.
Juliet pressed the scarf to her face.
It smelled only of cedar and old cloth now.
But for one impossible second, she remembered perfume.
Orange blossom.
Soap.
Home.
“I thought I invented her voice,” Juliet whispered.
Ronan looked at her.
“What did she say?”
“Be brave, little pine.”
His expression broke slightly.
“She called you that constantly.”
Juliet laughed through tears.
“You remember?”
“You used to bite me.”
She looked at him.
“What?”
“You were six. I took your wooden horse because you wouldn’t stop hitting my knee with it.”
“You stole from a child?”
“You were dangerous.”
Juliet laughed harder.
The grief remained.
But suddenly it held warmth too.
A life existed before Crescent Ridge.
A family.
People who had known her.
Ronan opened the first envelope.
Inside was the original White Pine territory deed.
Twenty-two thousand acres.
Legal ownership vested in the Dawson line.
Temporary guardianship to neighboring Alpha in case of death until surviving heir reached twenty-five or manifested Alpha status, whichever came first.
Juliet stared at the clause.
“How old am I?” Ronan asked.
She looked at him.
“Twenty-six.”
His eyebrows rose.
She understood.
“Grant’s guardianship expired last year.”
“Yes.”
“And he never told me.”
“No.”
Her pulse pounded.
Ronan removed another document.
A blood-registry certificate bearing Mara Dawson’s seal.
Juliet’s birth was listed beneath her parents’ names.
Classification pending first mature shift.
Succession status: primary heir.
Below that, a notation in Mara’s handwriting.
Silver-mark manifestation expected. Protect from forced bond.
Juliet touched the silver pine shape at her collarbone.
“What is this?”
Ronan’s expression tightened.
“I don’t know everything.”
“Tell me what you do know.”
“The Dawson line carried a rare Alpha trait. It appears only every few generations. A wolf with the silver mark can establish pack bonds without inheriting them through a male Alpha.”
Juliet stared.
“So?”
“So a marked daughter could lead in her own right.”
The room went silent.
Juliet thought about Grant.
About sixteen years of wolfsbane.
About Bradley.
About the three-year secret relationship Grant had tolerated until Bradley suddenly announced Stella.
A horrible possibility emerged.
“Protect from forced bond,” she whispered.
Ronan’s eyes met hers.
Juliet felt sick.
“If Bradley had marked me…”
“Your succession rights could have been absorbed into his line under old regional law.”
Juliet stood so quickly the scarf slipped from her lap.
“No.”
Ronan stood too.
“Juliet—”
“He said we were waiting because his father wanted the announcement done properly.”
Ronan’s face darkened.
“He told me not to accept a mate mark until Christmas.”
“Why?”
“He said he wanted it to be special.”
Ronan said nothing.
Juliet laughed bitterly.
“Special.”
She walked toward the window.
“They weren’t just hiding me. They were waiting until they could own what belonged to me.”
“Maybe Bradley didn’t know the full plan.”
“You keep giving him that possibility.”
“I’m giving you the possibility of accurate blame.”
Juliet looked at him.
“You really do hate easy answers.”
“Yes.”
The last envelope contained financial records.
Grant had transferred White Pine timber revenue into Crescent Ridge accounts for fifteen years.
Millions.
But one ledger page included something stranger.
Payments to a private clinic.
Monthly.
Marked J.D. treatment.
Juliet stared.
“That’s me.”
Ronan nodded.
Then he turned the page.
There were also payments marked L.B.
Lucian Blackwood.
The same clinic.
The same years before his death.
Juliet looked at Ronan.
“Your brother was being treated there?”
Ronan’s face became stone.
“I never knew.”
Juliet traced the payment dates.
One final payment had been made three days before Lucian’s hunting accident.
A large one.
$250,000.
Ronan took a photograph of the page.
“Who owned the clinic?” Juliet asked.
He checked the old corporate registry on his phone.
His expression changed.
“Mercer Medical Holdings.”
Juliet stared.
“Stella Mercer?”
“Her family.”
The room seemed to tilt.
Stella’s father.
The wealthy neighboring Beta whose alliance Bradley claimed Crescent Ridge needed.
The clinic that had supplied Juliet’s wolfsbane.
The clinic that had treated Lucian before his death.
Juliet’s phone—one Ronan had given her that morning—buzzed.
Unknown number.
She opened the message.
A photograph appeared.
Bradley asleep in a chair.
Behind him, on a desk, lay a folder labeled DAWSON TRANSFER.
Then another message.
YOU NEED TO SEE WHAT’S INSIDE BEFORE GRANT DESTROYS IT.
Juliet typed one question.
WHO IS THIS?
The reply came immediately.
STELLA.
Ronan moved beside her.
Juliet showed him the screen.
A new message appeared.
I WAS SUPPOSED TO MARRY BRADLEY AND HELP THEM TAKE YOUR LAND.
Another.
I DIDN’T KNOW THEY WERE TRYING TO KILL YOU.
Then one final message.
I DO NOW.
May you like
MEET ME TONIGHT.
ALONE.
