Page 19 of The Proposal Planner (Ever After #2)

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

MASON

The barn is silent, but it's not peaceful. It's aftermath. The scorched smell of burnt wires still lingers, clinging to everything like a warning I ignored.

I retreat to the loft, but even here, nothing feels right. The neat workspace, the curated calm, it all rings false now. A monument to control that slipped through my fingers.

I drop into my chair, the one built for long hours and quiet focus. Today it feels like a cage.

Maddy's voice plays in my head, tight, cracking when the fog machine failed. That one slip shattered the walls between us. Watching her flounder flipped a switch. I couldn't stay out of it.

I didn't think. I stepped in. Spun a story to salvage her pitch. Told a lie like the ones that used to earn me corner offices and closed deals.

Only this time, it wasn't for gain. It was for her.

She didn't ask me to fix it. And judging by the look on her face, she wouldn't have wanted me to.

But I did it anyway.

Not because it was smart. Not because I wanted credit.

Because part of me can't watch her fall.

I've kept my distance these last four days. Stayed out of her orbit. Let her freeze me out with stiff nods and clipped words. And I deserved it.

But the moment she wavered, everything in me locked on. The same instinct that steadied her ladder. That guided her hands on the drone. That keeps pulling me toward her, even when every logical part of me says don't.

My palms drag over my face. Her scent clings to the air up here, cinnamon, citrus, purpose. It's in my lungs. Under my skin.

I crossed the line.

And maybe I didn't do it to fix the proposal.

Maybe I did it to prove I can still be the man who protects what matters. Someone good. Someone worthy of her.

I want two things that can't coexist, and the conflict is pulling me apart. Part of me wants the life I left behind, the structure, the simplicity, the emotional distance that protected me from everything real. But the other part wants her.

Her world is chaotic and dazzling and full of feeling and being near it is like tasting flavor after a lifetime of bland survival. It overwhelms me, confuses me, but I can't stop reaching for more.

The man I used to be, the one who dismantled things with precision and detachment, is still in there, whispering caution. But when I'm with her, when I'm helping her bring impossible visions to life, I feel like I'm building a future worth staying for.

The low crunch of tires on gravel outside pulls me from my self-recrimination.

My heart begins a slow, heavy drumbeat that echoes in my ears.

She's back. Maddy. And I need to apologize for .

.. for what? For helping? For being the man she despises?

For wanting so desperately to be someone worthy of the light in her eyes?

I move to the window, my chest tight with anticipation. But it's not Maddy's sensible sedan that glides to a stop below. It's a black town car. The brittle, awkward silence of the past few days is gone, replaced by a tension almost more dangerous.

Sleek and predatory, a vehicle that belongs in the paved canyons of Manhattan, not on a rustic barn drive in River Bend.

It moves with an unnerving smoothness that speaks of serious money and even more serious intentions.

My blood turns to ice water in my veins.

I know that car. I know what it signifies. It is a hearse for dreams.

A man in a crisp suit emerges, a leather portfolio clutched in his hand, held with the certainty of someone delivering a blow. He heads straight for the barn door, every step deliberate, measured, assured. The confidence of someone who knows he's bringing bad news.

He doesn't knock. Of course he doesn't. Men like this never ask permission.

"Delivery for Mason Kincaid," he calls into the open space.

He says my name. My legs start moving, but it feels disconnected, like I'm piloting myself from a distance. Everything around me sharpens. The sounds fade. The colors feel too bright.

At the door, I face him. He's young. Blank. His expression gives nothing away. I've seen a hundred men like him, clean suits, colder hearts. I used to be one of them. That thought hits harder than I expect.

I sign the tablet without a word. It's quick and clinical.

Then he looks around. Maddy's space is a mess of half-built displays, colorful fabric, and Maddy's emergency glitter bin. He smirks.

Not kindly.

Like he's studying a thing small and amusing. Like this place is a curiosity, not a creation.

It makes me sick.

I want to tear off his perfect tie and shove him back out the door. I don't want his condescending gaze anywhere near her work.

This place matters.

And he'll never understand why.

As he turns to leave, I catch the sender's details on the tablet screen. Cain, Morlis & Sweet LLP.

Richard Kingston's law firm. The best. The most expensive. The most ruthless.

My hands shake as I carry the portfolio back to the loft.

It feels heavier than paper should, weighted by the crushing gravity of my past. I set it on my desk, the presence of it radiating menace, an artifact from a life I thought I'd severed.

My mind reels through a dozen nightmarish scenarios, each worse than the last. This isn't a negotiation.

This isn't a discussion. This is a declaration of war.

With a breath that does nothing to slow my racing heart, I open the clasp. Inside are the three horsemen of my personal apocalypse, a summons, a complaint, and a motion for a preliminary injunction.

I sink into my chair and begin to read. The world outside dissolves.

The hum of the afternoon, the scent of Maddy's roses, it all fades to nothing.

My universe narrows to the dense, meticulously-crafted paragraphs that spell out my destruction in language I know intimately because I helped perfect it.

It is a malicious work of art. The complaint alleges that the seed money Henry used for the Morrison Center was indirectly tied to a Kingston family trust. It's a lie, of course.

A tenuous, paper-thin fabrication that any competent first-year law student could dismantle with enough time and resources.

But Richard knows we have neither. He knows that in this brand of warfare, truth is irrelevant. The process is the punishment.

The real poison lies in the motion for the preliminary injunction.

Citing a dozen obscure land-use covenants and archaic restrictions tied to the properties we've acquired, it seeks to freeze all assets and halt all activities of the James Morrison Preservation Center, effective immediately.

It's designed to scare off investors, halt construction, bleed us dry in a war of attrition that could last years, until the Morrison Center is nothing but a bankrupt dream and a cautionary tale.

It is the Anvil strategy. I named it myself years ago, drop a weight so heavy, so overwhelming on your opponent that they can't possibly lift it off.

Not a quick kill, but a slow crushing. Find their weakest structural point and apply relentless pressure until everything collapses under the weight.

I perfected it during the Silver Creek case, used it to systematically destroy a community's ability to fight back by burying them in legal costs and procedural delays until they had no choice but to surrender.

Simple, brutal, designed to pulverize whatever it drops upon.

My strategy. My creation, turned against me.

The irony tastes like bile in my throat.

My phone rings, the sound slicing through the suffocating silence. My former colleague's name flashes on the screen. The vulture circles the kill. I let it ring three times, rebuilding the walls around my heart, before answering with a voice that betrays nothing of the inferno raging inside.

"Mason," she says, her voice measured, calm and almost sympathetic, the tone of someone delivering a terminal diagnosis. "Did you receive Richard's portfolio?"

"It's a bold move, even for him." My eyes continue scanning the injunction, professional admiration warring with personal horror.

"The claim doesn't need merit, and you know it," she replies, smooth confidence flowing through the line like poison. "It needs teeth sharp enough to draw blood. Richard doesn't want to destroy you. He wants his most valuable asset to come home where it belongs."

And there it is. The offer wrapped in velvet chains. Richard knows I would rather cut off my own arm than see Henry's dream destroyed. He's counting on my love for my friend to be the chain that drags me back to hell.

The choice is clear. Fight this and drag Henry into a legal swamp that will bankrupt him and obliterate the Morrison Center or surrender.

Abandon this new life, this chance at redemption that has felt as foreign and necessary as learning to breathe again.

Put the collar back on, return to New York, resume my place as Richard's shark in whatever new empire he's constructed.

In exchange, all this legal unpleasantness vanishes.

He'll even make a sizable, anonymous donation to the preservation fund as a gesture of "goodwill. "

I pace the loft, now a caged animal trapped between two forms of destruction.

My gaze falls on the architectural plans for the Center, my penance, my hope, and then on the injunction, my past, my shame.

This isn't a choice between victory and defeat.

It's a choice between which part of my world I'm willing to set on fire.

I think of Henry, his unwavering belief in me, the brother I chose.

I think of this town, this community that has begun to feel like home despite my best efforts to remain untethered.

And I think of Maddy. I think of the disgust in her eyes when she learned about Silver Creek, a look I know will become permanent if I go back to being that man.

I think of the brilliant, creative light in her eyes, a light I know I will extinguish if I let Richard destroy her friends, her town, and her life.

There is no loophole. No clever counter-strategy.

The lawyer in me sees two outcomes, both leading to ruin.

The man I am trying to become, the one Maddy has somehow unearthed from beneath years of cynical armor, knows this burden is mine alone.

This is my sin. The penance must be mine.

And the amends that matters is the one that protects them. All of them.