“No.”
He had held her hand.
Dreamed about kissing her.
Imagined—
He bent over, sick.
Rose began sobbing.
“This can’t—”
A gunshot exploded.
Wood splintered beside Ethan’s head.
He threw Rose to the ground.
Another shot.
From the trees.
Ethan drew his revolver.
“Stay down!”
A rider emerged.
Silas.
His face looked almost unrecognizable.
“Give me the letter!”
Ethan rose slowly.
“You.”
Silas aimed his rifle.
“You ruined everything.”
Ethan laughed bitterly.
“Apparently you’ve been doing that for thirty years.”
Silas’s eyes flicked toward Rose.
“I never wanted this.”
Rose stood.
“You stole my land.”
“I protected it!”
“You treated me like a servant!”
“I kept you alive!”
“You were my father!”
Silas flinched.
Rose’s voice broke.
“And apparently his too.”
Silas stared.
Then—
he smiled.
Ethan noticed.
A strange smile.
Almost relief.
“Samuel really did it,” Silas whispered.
“What?”
“He believed me.”
Ethan’s heart stopped.
Silas lowered the rifle slightly.
“I told Samuel you were mine.”
Ethan stared.
“Why?”
“Because he had found the forged deed. I needed something powerful enough to keep him silent.”
Rose whispered, “You lied?”
Silas laughed.
“Of course I lied.”
Ethan lunged.
Silas raised the rifle.
A shot thundered.
Silas spun backward.
His rifle fell.
Victoria stood twenty yards away holding a revolver.
Smoke curled from the barrel.
Silas collapsed.
Victoria’s hands shook violently.
Behind her rode Sheriff Nolan and three deputies.
Victoria dropped the gun.
Rose ran to her.
Silas was alive.
The bullet had struck his shoulder.
Sheriff Nolan kicked away the rifle and rolled him onto his stomach.
As the deputies bound his hands, Silas looked at Ethan.
“You’ll never know.”
Ethan stepped closer.
“Know what?”
“Who your father was.”
Silas smiled through the pain.
“I made sure of that.”
Then Rose spoke.
“No.”
Everyone turned.
She was staring at Samuel’s letter.
“There are two pages.”
A second sheet had stuck behind the first.
Ethan took it.
His hands trembled.
Samuel had written:
“If Silas ever tells you he fathered Ethan, know that this too is a lie. Clara told me the truth before she died.”
Ethan closed his eyes.
Then read the final paragraph.
His biological father had been Jonathan Hale, a young doctor who died during a fever epidemic months before Ethan was born.
Samuel had known.
Samuel had raised Ethan anyway.
Not from obligation.
From love.
The last line broke something open inside him.
“Blood tells a man where he began, Ethan. Love tells him who his father was.”
Ethan sank onto the cabin steps.
For seven years he had carried anger toward Samuel Carter.
He had thought his father cold.
Proud.
Unforgiving.
Now he understood.
Samuel had spent his final year borrowing money, risking his ranch, and confronting Silas Whitmore because he was trying to repair an injustice done to Rose.
And he had protected Ethan from a lie designed to destroy him.
Rose sat beside him.
Their shoulders touched.
Neither moved away.
After a moment Ethan laughed through tears.
“We’re not related.”
Rose looked at him.
“No.”
“That was a terrible fifteen minutes.”
Despite everything, she laughed.
Victoria began laughing too.
Then crying.
Then all three were doing both.
Even Sheriff Nolan shook his head.
“Young people.”
Rose wiped her eyes.
Ethan looked at her.
There were a thousand things he wanted to say.
