THE SINS OF THE MANSION: She Forced My Daughter to Eat with the Dog, But the $18,450 Trash Can Secret Destroyed Her Entire Life!

Vance whipped around, raising his revolver toward the mouth of the root cellar, but Gabriel was already descending like an avalanche.

Gabriel dropped through the opening feet-first, his boots slamming into Vance’s chest with bone-crushing force. The impact sent the corrupt detective hurtling back into the dirt wall of the cellar, knocking the wind and the revolver clean out of his hands.

Gabriel didn't pull the trigger. Death was too quick for a man who had threatened his child.

Gabriel closed the distance in half a heartbeat, slamming a brutal right cross into Vance’s jaw. The sound of breaking bone echoed in the small underground space. Vance groaned, attempting to draw a backup knife from his belt, but Gabriel grabbed his arm, drove his knee straight into Vance’s solar plexus, and slammed the detective face-down into the cold, damp earth.

Gabriel pinned Vance’s neck beneath the heavy steel toe of his combat boot.

"Gabriel... please..." Vance choked, gasping for air as dirt filled his mouth. "They had my family... Marlene’s people... they threatened my son..."

"You swore an oath to protect the innocent," Gabriel whispered, the cold fury in his voice making the temperature in the cellar feel like sub-zero. "Instead, you tried to drag a six-year-old girl back into the dark. You are lower than the dirt you're lying on."

Gabriel reached down, grabbed Vance’s wrists, and bound them behind his back using the detective’s own heavy-duty steel handcuffs, ratcheting them until the metal bit into bone. He stripped Vance of his weapons, his phone, and his badge, tossing them into the corner.

Gabriel turned his back on the broken traitor and knelt in front of Sophie.

The terrifying rage evaporated from Gabriel's face instantly, replaced by the profound, limitless tenderness of a father. He opened his arms.

"Buttercup," he whispered softly.

Sophie let out a broken, shuddering sob and threw herself into his chest. Her small arms wrapped around his neck with desperate, iron strength. Gabriel pulled her tight against his heart, burying his face in her hair, ignoring the stinging blood on his cheek.

"I’m sorry, Sophie. I’m so sorry," Gabriel murmured, his voice cracking with raw emotion. "Daddy’s here. I’ve got you. Nobody is ever going to touch you again."

Sophie snuggled deeper into his neck, her tiny hand reaching into the pocket of her oversized coat.

She pulled out a small, heavy cylinder of titanium—no larger than a fountain pen. It was the physical storage drive Elena had hidden within the Whispering Gallery.

"Mommy told me never to give this to anyone except you, Daddy," Sophie whispered through her sniffling. "She said this was the key that would buy our freedom forever."

Gabriel looked at the titanium drive in his daughter's tiny palm. The key to the Blackwood empire. The forty-million-dollar secret that had killed Elena and almost destroyed them all.