The arena breathed like a living thing—exhaling dust and sweat, inhaling the collective held breath of three thousand souls packed into metal bleachers that groaned under the weight of anticipation. Heat shimmered off the dirt like memories rising from a grave, and the smell hit Ryder Callahan square in the chest: leather and rosin, fear-sweat and hope, the metallic tang of blood not yet spilled but promised.
Christ almighty. He rolled his shoulders, feeling the Armani suit jacket he'd worn to this morning's board meeting still hanging in his truck like a ghost of who he'd been six hours ago. Manhattan felt like another lifetime now—all glass towers and merger documents, conference calls that moved millions with the flick of a signature. But this? This red Tennessee dirt under the blazing lights? This was where ghosts came home to roost.
The crowd's roar crashed over him in waves, a sound that could drown a man if he wasn't careful. Ryder had learned to swim in it twenty years ago, before he'd traded his chaps for a corner office and his boots for Italian leather. Before he'd built an empire that could buy this whole damn county twice over and still have change left for Sunday collection.
"Riders up!" Jimmy Kowalski's voice cut through the chaos like a blade through silk. The chute boss had been calling shots since before Ryder was old enough to spell 'concussion,' and his weathered face held the kind of authority that came from watching boys become men or corpses in eight-second increments.
Ryder pulled his gloves on slow, each finger a ritual his hands remembered even after two decades of typing on keyboards instead of gripping bull rope. The leather was butter-soft, broken in by countless rides that felt like ancient history now. Around him, the other riders went through their own sacred preparations—some praying, some pacing, some staring at their phones like the outside world might disappear if they looked away too long.
He wasn't like them anymore, hadn't been for a long time. They were still hungry, still had something to prove to themselves or their daddies or the girls in the front row. Ryder had already proven everything money could buy. What he was chasing now lived deeper, in the place where a nineteen-year-old boy had watched his father die in this very dirt.
"Callahan!" Jimmy's voice again, sharp with the kind of respect reserved for riders who'd earned their scars. "You drew Tornado in chute four."
A hush fell over the group like a curtain dropping. Tornado. The name hung in the air like a curse word in church, heavy with the weight of what it meant. Ryder felt something cold and familiar settle in his belly—not fear, exactly, but recognition. The universe had a sense of humor, putting him on the back of the same bloodline that had killed his old man. Different bull, same DNA, same murder in those black eyes.
"Well, hell," Wren Bishop drawled from somewhere to his left, and Ryder turned to find his oldest friend grinning that devil-may-care grin that had gotten them both in and out of more trouble than God had business forgiving. "Looks like somebody's got a date with destiny tonight."
Wren looked exactly like he had at seventeen—same shaggy hair, same green eyes full of mischief and just enough wisdom to be dangerous. Time had been kinder to him than it had any right to be, considering the man treated his body like a rental car he wasn't planning to return. He was still Wren, still the bullfighter who'd throw himself between a charging bull and certain death without thinking twice about it.
Still the only person alive who knew exactly who Ryder had been before he became who he was now.
"Destiny," Ryder repeated, testing the word on his tongue like expensive whiskey. "That what they're calling it these days?"
"I call it stupid, but then again, nobody asked me." Wren's grin widened. "You sure about this, brother? That boardroom of yours miss you yet?"
The question hit like a fist to the solar plexus, unexpected and perfectly aimed. Ryder's jaw tightened. Twenty years of friendship, and Wren still knew exactly where to twist the knife to make it count.
"Board can kiss my ass," Ryder said, and meant it. "I got other things to worry about right now."
Like the fact that his phone had been buzzing all evening with calls from his CFO, his head of security, and three different board members who thought a hostile takeover attempt was more important than whatever foolishness had dragged their CEO back to the mountains of Tennessee. Like the fact that CaskTech's stock had dropped two points in after-hours trading because someone had leaked photos of him in chaps and spurs instead of his usual thousand-dollar suits.
Like the fact that in about ten minutes, he was going to climb on the back of two thousand pounds of pure hatred and try to stay alive long enough to hear the buzzer.
The irony wasn't lost on him. He'd spent twenty years building something that couldn't be broken, couldn't be shaken, couldn't be killed. An empire built on algorithms and innovation, on predicting human behavior and controlling variables. But here, in eight seconds of chaos, all that control meant exactly nothing. Here, he was just another rider with just enough sense to be terrified and too much pride to walk away.
"Ryder Callahan, ladies and gentlemen!" The announcer's voice boomed across the arena, syrup-thick with that particular brand of enthusiasm reserved for hometown heroes and potential casualties. "Twenty-year veteran of the circuit, back home in Tennessee where his legendary father Jeb Callahan made rodeo history!"
The crowd erupted, and Ryder felt their energy wash over him like baptismal water. They didn't know about the boardrooms or the billions, didn't care about quarterly projections or market volatility. To them, he was still that kid who'd learned to ride on his daddy's shoulders, still the son of a legend trying to carve out his own piece of immortality in the dirt.
If they only knew.