Not ashamed.
Frightened.
There was a difference.
“What do you want?” he asked.
Sienna almost smiled at how quickly power had changed the question.
An hour earlier, he had demanded her signature.
Now he was asking for terms.
“I want you off this property,” she said.
Vivien straightened.
“You cannot throw your mother out.”
“I am not throwing my mother out,” Sienna said. “I am asking trespassers to leave a business property after one of them threatened me.”
Douglas looked smaller then.
Not gentle.
Not sorry.
Just smaller.
Garrett glanced toward the road.
Maybe he was thinking about the people he owed.
Maybe he was thinking about the recording.
Maybe he was thinking about how a deed folder felt when it became useless paper in his hands.
He threw it onto the gravel.
Loose pages slid out.
The original deed copy landed faceup in the dust.
Sienna did not bend to pick it up.
That version of her life could lie there for a minute.
