Page 90 of Knotted By my Pack

Cora doesn’t say anything. Just stares at the wreckage with this look I can’t scrub from my memory. Her green eyes are glassy, swollen, unfocused. She’s not seeing the bakery anymore. She’s watching everything she built go up in smoke.

I can’t stand there a second longer.

I turn and walk away, back to the truck. My hand shakes slightly when I unlock the door.

I get in and slam it shut behind me.

My phone’s already out before I hit the ignition.

He answers on the first ring.

“Is it done?”

“What the hell did you do?” I ask, quiet but sharp.

A pause. Then his voice, calm and unapologetic. “Lockwood mentioned one of the locals was particularly loud about halting the hotel project. Emotional, disruptive. I made sure she had something else to worry about.”

My stomach knots. “Jesus, Dad. Her entire storefront?—”

“She’s not dead,” he snaps. “And neither is her business. This is what happens when people pick fights they’re unequipped to win.”

I lean back, pressing my hand to the steering wheel.

“You knew which one she was?”

“I don’t know anything except she was a problem. Lockwood said a woman. That’s all. I don’t concern myself with bakery drama, Julian. I remove obstacles.”

He doesn’t know. He doesn’t know her name. Or that I touched her. That I’ve had her in ways I never should have. He doesn’t know she’s not just some loud-mouthed local.

And thank God for that.

Relief hits hard. Too hard.

Because that means this wasn’t personal. It wasn’t punishment for my mistakes or for the way I kept going back to her. It was just business. One move in a long, bloody game.

But when I remember the way she looked at me, the pain carved into her voice when she screamed, that relief rots into something bitter.

I stare at my hands, clean and useless in my lap.

And for the first time in a long time, I feel ashamed for being a Vance.

For letting her cry while I walked away.

And for being the reason she cried in the first place.

26

NOAH

She hisses the second her heel hits a shard of glass. I reach her in two strides, crouching down as blood blooms beneath her sandal.

“Cora, don’t move,” I say, my hand already reaching under her knees.

She starts to protest but winces again and leans into me, the sting shooting through her face. I slide one arm beneath her thighs, the other around her back, and lift her.

Her bakery smells like burnt sugar and soaked wood, but she smells like vanilla and fire, like someone who refuses to be knocked down even when the world keeps trying.

Elias falls in beside me, already grabbing paper towels and a kit from the supply shelf that somehow survived the mess.