Read Chapter 24: The Debt Collected

The ledger was heavier than it looked, dense with years of poison, and Iona clutched it to her chest as Gregor shoved her through the office window. Glass rained onto the alley below. Somewhere behind them, a door splintered open and a voice shouted, a sound thick with the Lowland accent of Donal's hired men.

"Go," Gregor hissed, already swinging his legs over the sill. "The roofs. I'll draw them off."

Iona grabbed his sleeve. "No. We go together or not at all."

His grin was wolfish in the dark. "Stubborn as a MacTavish. I like that. But I like living more." He dropped to the ground and pulled her down after him, and they ran.

The alley stank of fish and coal smoke. Edinburgh's night pressed in around them, tall tenements leaning close as if to listen. Gregor knew these streets the way Iona knew her father's fields, and he took corners without slowing, boots sliding on wet cobble. The voices behind them grew louder, then multiplied—someone had flanked them.

"Left," Gregor gasped, and they cut through a narrow close where washing lines slapped their faces. Iona tasted linen and rain. The ledger was slick in her hands, its leather binding warm from her grip.

They emerged into a broader street, lamplight pooling in yellow circles. Two men blocked the far end, cudgels already drawn. Gregor swore and reversed course, but a third figure stepped from a doorway directly in their path. Iona recognized him—the same brute who had sat outside Donal's office when they first arrived, a man with a face like a kicked-in door.

"Mr. Gregor," the man said, voice almost pleasant. "Mr. Donal thought you might come skulking. He sends his regards."

Gregor pushed Iona behind him. "Run, lass. Whatever happens, don't let them take the book."

The man lunged. Gregor met him, fists and fury, and Iona saw the other two closing fast. She had one chance, maybe less. The ledger—everything she needed, everything Donal feared—pressed against her ribs.

She ran.

Not down the street, where they'd catch her in open air. Back into the close, the one with the washing lines, where she'd seen a drainpipe. Memories of climbing the cliffs at Braemore as a child, fingers finding holds in stone, carried her now as she leaped for the pipe and hauled herself upward. Below, Gregor's fight turned ugly—the wet sound of a fist meeting bone, Gregor's grunt, a laugh that wasn't his.

Iona made the rooftop and flattened herself against the slates. From here she could see the street: Gregor on his knees, blood bright on his mouth, two men hauling him upright while the third searched his coat.

"No book," the big one said. "Where's the girl?"

Gregor spat. The big one backhanded him, a blow that snapped his head sideways. "Doesn't matter. He'll keep you as collateral. She'll come back for you or she won't—either way, the ledger goes nowhere. Mr. Donal has a lawyer who collects debts."

The ledger. Iona's hands trembled against its cover. Gregor had known the cost when he agreed to this. He'd told her, in that dark office, that some things were worth dying for. His father's murder. His own ruined name. His half-brother's sins.

But she was the one holding the proof, and Gregor was the one paying.

She stayed on the roof until the men dragged him away, until the street fell silent, until the cold seeped through her clothes and into her bones. Then she climbed down, the ledger still pressed to her heart, and walked until she found a stable at the edge of town that would sell her a horse for coin and a story.

---

Lachlan had ridden until his horse was lathered, until Braemore was a bad memory and his father's voice a worse one. The accusation had come at breakfast, when Fraser Campbell had looked up from his post with a satisfaction Lachlan had never seen in him. "It's done," he'd said. "The southern parcel—I've sold it to MacAllister. He paid double what it's worth. The man has more money than sense."

Lachlan's cup had stopped halfway to his mouth. "You sold—Father, that land was half the treaty. It was the whole damn reason for the marriage, the compact, everything we—"

"It was a waste." Fraser had waved a hand, dismissing the last year, the marriage, the blood already spilled. "The MacTavishes gave us nothing but trouble. The girl was a poor match, a poor farmer's daughter with ideas above her station. MacAllister paid cash. I took it. We're done."

Done. The treaty was done. The marriage was done. Iona—Iona had been thrown over for cash, and Lachlan had done his part in the throwing.

He'd ridden out before breakfast was finished, before his father could say another word. Now his horse stumbled on a loose stone, and Lachlan pulled up, breathing hard, the Highland road stretching before him, the sky low and bruised with coming rain.

He'd been wrong. The thought burned worse than the cold. He'd let Callum's letter poison him, let his father's greed and his own pride blind him to what Iona had been trying to say. She'd come to him with something in her eyes—something urgent, something true—and he'd turned her away without a hearing.

And Gregor. He remembered Gregor's face the night of the duel, the fury and the pain. Whatever Gregor had written, whatever lies he'd spun, Iona had walked into it willingly. She'd been afraid, but she'd come anyway.

Lachlan touched the pistol at his belt, checked the powder was dry. He didn't know where she was. He didn't know if she was alive. But he knew one thing with absolute certainty, the same certainty that had pulled him from his bed before dawn and set him on this road.

He had to find her. He had to tell her he was wrong.

The first drops of rain hit his face, and he kicked his horse onward, toward Edinburgh, toward answers, toward her.

---

Iona stopped at the outskirts of the city as dawn broke, the ledger wrapped in oilcloth beneath her arm. Gregor's face kept rising behind her eyes—his grin, his foolish courage, the way he'd pushed her to safety without a moment's hesitation. Donal had him now. Donal, who killed his own father. Donal, who had Gregor's fate plotted out like a debt to be collected.

She had the ledger. She had the proof. But Gregor was gone, and she was alone, and somewhere in the gray light ahead lay her father's house, where she was not welcome, and the cave at Braemore, where her own future was buried.

She drew a breath and kept walking.