Page 2 of Kane's Kingdom

Something shifts beneath my ribs. Grief, maybe. Relief tangled through it like wire. I pick up the gavel.

"This club answers to me now, and I'll be known by my own name. Kane."

Then I bring the gavel down for the first time.

BELLA

THREE WEEKS LATER

The rock comesthrough my front window at five forty-three in the morning.

For one stupid second, I stand behind the counter with a tray of unbaked biscuits in my hands and watch the window fold inward rather than shatter, a glittering sheet bowing toward the floor before it gives up and crashes across the nearest two tables. The rock skids under a chair.

Marisol comes out of the kitchen with a cast-iron skillet raised over her head.

"Tell me that was a bird."

"It would have been a pretty big bird to make that kind of mess, don't you think?"

She lowers the skillet and stares at the broken window. Dawn leaks through the empty frame, gray and damp off the river. The screen door bangs once in the wind.

It's the third incident in two weeks.

First, somebody cut the power line to the walk-in and left me with four hundred dollars' worth of spoiled food. Then FranklinProduce called yesterday to say they wouldn't be delivering anymore, offering no reason or discussion, only an apology from a man who's supplied the Landing since before I owned it.

And now this.

Marisol mutters something in Spanish that sounds somewhere between upset and anger.

"Call Sam," she says.

"He'll do nothing but take a report."

"He has a gun. Maybe one day he'll remember what it's for."

I set the tray down. The rock has a piece of paper tied around it, which is new. I step around the counter, glass crunching under my shoes.

"Don't touch it," Marisol says.

"It's a rock, not a bomb."

I stop when she gives me a look. “Fine." I pull my phone from my back pocket instead. "I'll call Sam."

Sheriff Miller arrives twenty-three minutes later, almost impressive by Ransom standards. By then, Marisol's swept a path to the counter and three regulars have offered to board the window.

That's Rourke's Landing. People show up.

They've shown up since I opened the Landing after my father died, back when I had six tables and a secondhand oven with attitude. Most knew my father, Red before the drinking hollowed him out, and knew me before I learned to answer pity with a sharp smile.

Sam straightens with the note pinched between two fingers.

"What's it say?" I ask.

His mouth flattens and he turns it toward me.

WOULD BE A SHAME IF SOMETHING HAPPENED TO THE REST.

Sam folds the note and puts it in an evidence bag. "You see anyone outside?"