Page 41 of Ms. Fortune
“You would do that to your own child?” And here I thought my mother was difficult to deal with.
“To my child, no. But she’s not only that. She’s the woman I handed the empire to I’d spent a lifetime building. She promised she would take care of it and help it grow long after I was gone. If she can’t appreciate what she was given, I have no problem making her fight for it or taking it away. It’s the nature of the business we’re in.”
I frowned. “Politics?” I knew that was a cutthroat career field, but this woman had made it sound like a medieval battle to the death.
“Charley and I are both lawyers. You have to have intimate knowledge of the law if you plan on breaking it or dancing along the line of what’s permitted and what’s not. I hope she never follows in my footsteps and goes into politics. I actually never wanted either of my kids to get into the family business. I always thought I would leave it to Declan or one of the other kids I’d helped along the way. But my daughter has always been determined to walk her own path.”
She was eerily calm, considering the path her daughter had chosen led to me nearly losing my life in several ways.
“I appreciate you intervening.” I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life looking over my shoulder. “I don’t need or want you to pay me off. Rebuilding my grandparents’ dream propertyfeels wrong. So does starting over somewhere else.” I couldn’t protect what I had. I didn’t deserve a second chance to destroy something special. “I’m not sure that I’ll ever see Risky the same way. I respect everything he’s done for me and how he’s protected me, but I feel like I don’t even know him.”
Karsen leaned forward in her seat, her gaze intense and unwavering. It was unnerving—the way she seemed to peer directly into my thoughts and feelings.
“That’s just not true. The man you met when you first encountered him was Declan Risk, a newly retiredfixer.The man you made is Risky, a bumbling handyman who just wants to experience what it’s like to live a quiet life in a beautiful place. Don’t mistake who he was for who he is now. He would have never come out of retirement and reached out to me if it wasn’t to protect someone he cared about. He excelled at his job back in the day, but he never enjoyed doing it. He had more moral integrity than most of my young recruits, and it only grew the longer he was in the trenches. He made it clear that once the debt he felt he owed me was cleared, he was walking away for good.”
Since she’d leaned forward, I moved backward, feeling the need to put some space between us out of a sense of self-preservation. For someone who looked and carried themselves in such a refined manner, this woman was terrifying. I’d been called cold and distant my whole life. I’d been referred to as frigid and inhumane. Sitting across from Karsen Booker, I understood what it was actually like to face someone who had ice water in their veins. I bet there was nothing this woman faced that rattled her. She didn’t even flinch when talking about putting her daughter in danger over a business dispute.
Risky’s former boss leaned back when she noticed she was making me nervous. I finally felt like I could breathe. She smiled at me, and I could see her fondness for Risky on her face.
“I want to help you rebuild for several reasons. One of those is that Declan always talked about this quaint little town and your grandparents’ property with fondness. He’s not someone who has many pleasant memories. I want to preserve the few he’s held on to. I owe him that much.”
“It won’t be the same if I rebuild it. Honestly, my grandparents were what made the lodge so special and memorable for so many. I think I was doomed to fail from the start. I was foolish to think I could capture that sort of magic when I’d never been as kind or welcoming as they had been.”
I enjoyed having people and noise around because it filled the void inside of me, left by being made to feel like my parents’ constant burden. My grandparents had thrived in sharing their love of Blue River and the mountain with others because they genuinely thought it was the best place on Earth. They’d worked hard to make sure everyone made the type of memories they shared with each other.
The beautiful older woman reached out and grabbed my hand. The leather of her glove was buttery soft and clearly expensive. She gave my icy fingers a light squeeze. “We don’t leave things for our loved ones because we want you to re-create what we’ve already done. We hand it over so you can make it bigger and better. We want you to turn what was once ours into something that is now yours. It’s enough that you’re taken care of and happy. Trust me. Remarkable things often rise from the ashes.”
She patted the back of my hand and rose gracefully to her feet. “Again, I apologize for my daughter’s behavior. Under different circumstances, I think you and she might’ve been friends.”
I thought that was highly unlikely but kept the opinion to myself.
The man with the scar on his face stepped next to the white-haired woman, throwing a protective arm around her shoulders as they moved through the crowd. It was obvious people recognized her, but was brave enough to approach her with that scary man hovering over her like a vicious guard dog.
I ordered another beer when a server appeared next to the table. My mother called three more times, but I sent them all to voicemail. I wasn’t in the mood to deal with her. I gave a cursory look at the hotels and motels to see if there was any availability, only to be greeted with sold-out blocks on every reservation calendar. I knew I could walk into one and possibly land a room because of a last-minute cancellation, but that felt like too much work. Instead, I decided to hitchhike up the mountain and go home—or what was left of it.
Hitchhiking in the mountains wasn’t as dangerous as it was in the city. Especially in the high season. There were often groups of kids, loaded down with equipment, trying to flag down a ride between the different mountains. It was common for other skiers and snowboarders and even the locals to pick up passengers and drop them off.
It was cold, and it started snowing again. I regretted not grabbing a hat and gloves before leaving with Banner. Not that any of my belongings had survived the fire. The basement apartment was annihilated, like the main part of the lodge was. The damage was extensive, and the building was unstable, making it off limits. I didn’t want to pick through the debris of my life anyway.
What’s done is done.
The only option I had was to start over. Whatever that looked like.
I ended up walking along the mountain pass for over an hour. My hand got too cold to keep my thumb extended. I shuffled through the falling snow with my hands shoved in my pocketsand my head down so my eyelashes didn’t freeze together. I couldn’t feel my toes, and my nose wouldn’t stop running. It was weird that, now that my body was frozen, I could tell that my heart had never been made of ice. I had been deluding myself by thinking it was safely tucked away in a glacier when it’d always been far too sensitive and exposed.
Just when I thought I was going to have to call my neighbor and beg for a ride, a shiny, new truck pulled alongside me, and the passenger window rolled down.
“Lucky, get in. You’re going to freeze to death.”
I lifted my head at the sound of Risky’s voice. His tone was stressed out and thick with concern. The truck was driving up the pass, away from town. I wondered if he had also had a run-in with his former boss.
I was too close to getting frostbite on my extremities to ignore him. It took a minute to get my icy digits to cooperate and open the door, and even longer for me to haul the rest of my body inside. I sighed when the warmth from the heater blasted against my chilled skin. Comfort outweighed my trepidation now that I knew how cold-blooded he could be. I held my hands in front of the vents and shot Risky a look out of the corner of my eye.
“Did you know I was walking home, or did you stumble upon me by accident?” I kept my tone bland, not interested in starting a fight in such a small, enclosed space. I didn’t want to end up back in the cold, even though I was the one who had put myself there in the first place.
“I’ve been looking for you for hours. Banner sent Dex a message saying you left her place after you guys had a fight. She was worried about you, but didn’t have my number. After the kid let me know what was going on, I drove all over the mountain and Blue River trying to find you.” Relief rang in his voice now that I was finally sitting next to him.
I lowered my face closer to the blowing air and sighed as it slowly began to thaw.
