An Understated Dominance novel · Chapter 16 of 24

Chapter 16: The Old Man at the Door

By the time the black car stopped in the yard, Colter was out of bed and into his jeans.

I pulled on his flannel shirt and my own boots and followed him to the porch.

The sky had cleared, hard and pink at the edges, and every branch hung with snow.

Gilbert Merrow stepped out of the back seat into a drift up to his ankle.

He didn't seem to notice.

The snowplow driver tipped his cap and drove away.

"How did you find this place?" Colter said.

"It's been on your truck's tracker for three years."

"You put a tracker on my truck."

"I put a tracker on everything you own."

Gilbert came up the path slowly with the cane.

He stopped at the bottom of the porch steps and looked up at us, his son and the woman in his son's flannel.

"Ms. Forsberg," he said. "Good morning."

"Is it?"

"It's very cold. May I come in?"

"No," said Colter.

Gilbert inclined his head.

"Then I'll say it here."

"You have until the first of the year to decide."

"I have decided."

"I know what you've decided," Gilbert said. "I'd like you to reconsider with all the facts."

He reached into his overcoat and took out a cream envelope.

The paper was old and soft at the corners.

The handwriting on the front was small and slanted.

Colter went white.

"That's Mom's," he said.

"Your mother left it with my lawyer, to be delivered when you came home."

"She wrote it in her last month."

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