Ellen's Arc

Chapter 35 of 45

Ellen rode into the hotel yard at dusk. She swung down off the lathered horse and pressed her hand to the wall. Her women watched from the third-floor windows. She had kept them alive. But she had thrown away the ledger to do it, and the ledger was the price she paid Vincent Marconi for this home. Without it, she owned nothing. Vincent could take the hotel back whenever he chose. She needed to reach him first and tell him herself, before his men rode in and found her defenseless. He was already there. Vincent stood in the lobby, hat still on, waiting like he owned the floor. Because he did. His men had let him through the road while she rode the long way. He looked at her empty hands. "The book," Vincent said. "Where." "Gone." She would not lie to him. Not this time. "A god came for it. I threw it to him to save the women. It's out of your reach now, and mine." Vincent's jaw tightened. He said nothing for a long moment. "That book was the whole deal, Ella. You hold it, you keep the walls. No book, no walls." He turned his ring on his finger. "You just gave away the only thing that made you useful to me." "I gave it away so six women would live. Take the walls if you have to." She lifted her chin. "But you'll have to put us on the road yourself. Watch us walk out." Boots scraped in the doorway. A man in gray armor stepped in, rifle low, flat black visor turned toward her. Din Djarin. He had followed her trail from the well, just as he'd promised with that one long stare across the salt. "Ella," the bounty hunter said. "Crew of six. You're worth credits." He did not look at Vincent. "Step out." Vincent moved between them. "She's mine to deal with." "She's a puck." Din Djarin's voice went flat. "Doesn't matter whose ground." Ellen watched two men decide her fate over her head. Then she saw it. Vincent needed a reason to keep her, and the hunter had just given her one. "He wants me for money," she told Vincent. "You want the ledger. I'm the only one who knows the god's name and where he took it. Kill me or sell me, and that trail dies with me." Vincent studied her the way he read every stranger. Then he drew his pistol and put it on the bounty hunter. "Off my ground," he said. "She's still working my debt." Din Djarin measured the odds. One gun in the lobby, more on the road. He backed out slow. "I'll wait," he said, and was gone into the dark. Vincent holstered his gun. "You keep the walls," he told Ellen. "For now. You owe me a god's name." The hotel was still hers. But the hunter waited outside, and her debt had a new shape.