7. Charlie
1560 Words
It started with the looks.
Not obvious ones. Not the kind that screamed something's wrong. Just glances that cut away too quickly. Conversations that softened when I approached. Staff who smiled a second too late, like they'd been caught mid-thought. It was eerie, like a horror novel.
A little after breakfast, I asked a woman refilling the coffee whether the road crews had made any progress.
She hesitated. Then, she looked past me.
I turned.
Alexandre stood near the hearth, speaking quietly with another staff member. He didn't look at us, but something subtle shifted in the room all the same. Like gravity itself had redirected.
"No updates yet," the woman said finally, eyes flicking back to me. "But Monsieur Alexandre will inform guests when there is news."
Will inform guests.
I stared at her. "I didn't ask for an announcement." My voice came out sharper than I'd intended. "I asked a question."
Her smile tightened. "Of course."
It happened again an hour later. And again after that.
Simple things. Where the phone signal was the strongest. Whether the spa would reopen. If there were alternative exits from the lodge.
Every answer was deferred. Softened. Redirected.
Somehow, it filtered through him.
By midday, irritation coiled tight inside me. I found Alexandre in one of the smaller lounges, standing near the windows like he was keeping watch over something in the storm. Snow battered the world, thick enough that whatever was past it didn't exist.
"You've deputized the entire staff," I said without warning.
He turned, expression unreadable. "Excuse me?"
"They keep asking you before answering me. I can't explain it but they are."
"That's because they work for me."
"That doesn't mean I stop existing."
Something flickered in his eyes. Recognition maybe, or restraint.
"You're frustrated," he noted.
"I'm furious." I placed my hands on my hips and glared at him. "And I do not appreciate being managed."
He tilted his head. "You're not."
"That's not how it feels."
He studied me for a long moment, then gestured to the seating area. "Sit."
"I didn't say I-"
"Please, Charlie."
I sat. Mostly because I wanted to argue at eye level at he was too damn tall to do that. He infuriated me. Clawed beneath my skin to live inside me.
"The storm has destabilized parts of the upper forest," he said. "We've had minor structural strain. Power fluctuations. Limited staff movement since move of them live in town and can't get up here."
"So you decided we didn't need to know," I accused.
"I decided that no one needed to worry."
His words hit harder than they should have.
"I'm a lawyer," I said sharply. "Contract law. Risk management. Businesses hire me to worry for them."
He grinned. "That explains a great deal."
"Does it?" I leaned forward, staring him down. "Because from where I'm sitting, it looks like you saw a woman in distress and decided that made her incapable."
"That is not what I think."
"Then why does everyone treat me like I'm fragile? Like I need permission to breathe?"
Silence stretched between us, thick as the snow outside. His dark eyes met mine as his tongue traced his upper lip.
Finally, he said, "Because if something happens to you on my mountain, it's my responsibility."
"There it is," I snapped. "Ownership."
"Stewardship," he counterd. Alexandre leaned back, arms crossing. I just noticed how his sleeves were rolled up to his elbows, his top few buttons undone. "Generous, some might say."
"I didn't ask for either."
"No," he agreed. "You didn't."
The admission caught me off guard. He didn't argue. Didn't soften it. Just let the truth sit between us.
My bullshit meter was pretty good on a bad day, and I had nothing but time to sit and think and watch. He wasn't lying to me. He wasn't telling me the whole truth, but nothing was an outright lie. My lawyer brain screamed at me to escape. To find a way out. But the primal part of myself told me to stay.
"I don't like this," I admitted. "Being watched. Being...contained."
"Neither do I."
I scoffed. "You could have fooled me."
He leaned forward. I became acutely aware of him. His heat. His presence. That indefinable something that made my pulse misbehave.
"You push because you're afraid of losing control. I push because I won't let you be hurt again." He said it like it was simple.
"They sound dangerously similar."
"They're not."
"That's what my ex said," I shot back. My voice was more poisonous than I wanted to admit.
It struck at him. Something changed his expression, subtly. His expression darkened.
"Your ex hurt you," he said.
"That's not-"
"He did," he said, voice flat. "And you're bracing for it to happen again."
I stood abruptly. "You do not get to psychoanalyze me."
"No," he agreed. "But I get to make decisions that keep the guests safe."
"And what keeps me safe, oh wise one?"
"Staying inside."
"You can't stop me."
"I can," he said calmly. "And I will."
The words slammed into me. My heart quickened, my palms grew sweaty. All of a sudden I felt too hot.
"Because of the weather," he said quietly. "Nothing else."
I laughed. It was sharp. Disbelieving. "You expect me to trust that? To trust you?"
"I expect you to survive the night."
I stared at him, my chest now tight, heat crawling up my neck. "That's exactly how it starts. Concern first. Then rules. Then I wake up one day and realize that I've been quietly edited out of my own f*****g life."
"That won't happen here."
"You don't know that."
"I do," he said, in a firm tone.
He believed it.
His belief—his certainty—it was worse than arrogance. It was magnetic. Dangerous. Consuming.
I left before I said something I couldn't take back.
When I returned to my room later, the fire was lit again. Curtains drawn. The quiet seemed heavier than before.
A small package sat on the desk. I stopped. It wasn't wrapped elaborately. Just brown paper, twine, a simple bag.
Inside, was a scarf. A dark green wool that was thick enough to matter out here.
And beneath it was a book, not new. Well-loved. There was writing on the borders, notes that had been scribbled along the pages.
Jurisdiction of the Mountain.
My throat tightened.
There was no card. No explanation.
Just...thoughtfulness.
I knew it was from Alexandre. No one else really spoke to me here. It was lonely and it was irritating. But he had listened.
I sat on the bed for a while, staring at it.
I didn't mean to read it.
I told myself I was just curious. That I wanted to see why someone would leave a legal text in my room like an offering to a diety. But the moment I opened Jurisdiction of the Mountain, I felt something. Something settling like a piece sliding into place I hadn't known was loose.
The book was old. Loved. The spine cracked easily beneath my fingers, paged softened from use. The notes crowded the margins in a neat hand. Not an academic scrawl. But like someone was trying to make sense of it.
The opening chapter wasn't what I'd expected.
It wasn't about statutes of precedent. It was about place.
All law begins with territory. Before ink, before courts, before language—there was land, and the need to survive upon it.
I swallowed.
Outside, the wind howled, rattling the windows as if to push some kind of urgency.
I kept reading.
The book argued that modern law pretends neutrality, but every rule was born of fear. Fear of chaos, fear of scarcity, fear of the other. Mountains, it claimed, had always been governed differently. Isolation bred customs. Customs became rules. Rules became law. Not because they were written, but because they were enforced out of necessity.
By the land itself.
I turned a page and found a line underlined in pen.
Jurisdiction is not granted. It is taken, claimed, and defended.
My pulse skidded.
I could almost hear Alexandre's voice in the words. His calm certainty. That unyielding sense of responsibility. I decide what happens on this mountain.
I'd bristled at it then. And now. And yet-
Another note, tucked into the margin.
Consent matters only if survival is optional.
I snapped the book shut, my breath coming faster than it should have.
That was dangerous thinking. I'd built my entire career dismantling arguments like this. Exposing how "necessity" was used to justify control. How power cloaked itself in protection.
And yet, the book wasn't crude. It didn't glorify dominance. It spoke of balance. Of stewardship. Of leaders bound more tightly than those they led. Of laws that demanded sacrifice from those who enforced them first.
I opened it again, slower this time.
This wasn't Hunter's version of control. Not the self-serving, brittle, conditional kind.
This was something older. Heavier.
I didn't know when I curled deeper into the armchair, scarf drawn tight around my neck. I didn't notice how the storm outside faded into background noise as the mountain's logic seeped into my bones.
By the time I looked up, the fire had burned low.
And I realised, with unease, that I wasn't just reading about the mountain's jurisdiction.
I was inside it.
- Writer
