CHAPTER 10
Daniel turned his head sharply, his eyes bloodshot and wild as he spotted me standing alongside the armed federal agents.
"Caroline...?" Daniel stammered, his gun hand wavering as tactical laser sights painted red dots across his chest. "How did you find this place?!"
"It's over, Daniel," Agent Reed commanded loudly, his weapon trained directly on Daniel's center mass. "Drop the weapon! The entire estate is surrounded!"
"I built everything for us, Caroline!" Daniel shouted hysterically, tears streaming down his face as he gestured wildly with the gun. "I did it for the family! We were nothing without that money!"
"You didn't do it for us," I said, taking a slow, steady step into the room, keeping my eyes fixed entirely on him. "You did it for your own sick ambition. You robbed me of my child, and you destroyed your own soul."
Sophie looked past Daniel's gun, her eyes locking onto mine with an overwhelming expression of recognition, confusion, and sudden, profound trust.
"Mom...?" Sophie whispered softly, the word hanging in the air between us like a fragile thread of hope.
In that brief second of distraction, Agent Reed drove forward, tackling Daniel to the floor and slamming the firearm out of his grip.
Federal agents swarmed the room, pinning Daniel and his security guards to the hardwood floor in heavy steel handcuffs as Lorraine was led upstairs in chains by SWAT officers.
I ignored the chaos, stepping past the federal agents and dropping to my knees right in front of Sophie.
She looked at me, her eyes brimming with tears as she pulled the silver crescent moon pendant out from beneath her shirt.
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"You... you kept the other half," Sophie sobbed, reaching out her hand to touch the matching pendant hanging around my neck.
"I looked for you every single day for seventeen years, my beautiful girl," I wept, pulling her into a fierce, protective embrace that held seventeen years of love, pain, and ultimate victory.
