Page 60 of Tessa and Nash

That stops him cold.

I straighten in my chair. “If you expose him now, the council halts the project, yes. But someone else will come along in five years with deeper pockets and cleaner paperwork. And we’ll still be reacting instead of shaping the outcome.”

He opens his mouth, then closes it.

“You wanted leverage,” I continue. “Not noise. This gives us leverage.”

“How,” he demands, “does pretending to marry a McCoy give us anything but humiliation?”

“Because,” I say calmly, “I’m the only person in Buckhorn who knows his engagement is a lie, and I’m standing beside him while the town believes it’s real.”

The room goes very still.

“That means,” I go on, “every plan he makes has to withstand my scrutiny. Every boundary. Every document. He can’t afford to sidestep me without it looking like he’s hiding something.”

“And when the lie collapses?” he asks.

“If,” I correct. “If it collapses, it collapses on our terms.”

He drags a hand down his face, pacing again, slower now. “You’re asking me to sit on a loaded gun.”

“I’m asking you to let me hold it,” I reply.

He stops pacing.

“And you think this could give us more than stopping one project?” he asks quietly.

“Yes,” I say. “I think it could give us leverage that lasts. We’d have shared oversight, formal acknowledgment, and terms that can’t be quietly erased or ‘forgotten’ again.”

His jaw tightens. Not in anger now, but in calculation.

“This is dangerous,” he says.

“Yes.”

“And if you misstep⁠—”

“Then I take the fall,” I say. “Not the family.”

Another long pause.

Then he exhales, sharp and controlled.

“Alright,” he says. “You proceed.”

Relief loosens a tightness in my chest, and I ruthlessly ignore the other feeling underneath it. The one that has nothing to do with strategy and everything to do with a man who smiles too easily and panics under pressure.

“But you tell me everything,” he adds. “No more surprises.”

“You’ll have full reports,” I say.

He nods once. “Be careful.”

“I always am.”

“McCoys don’t play small.”

Neither do Longs, I think.