She ordered me and my little girl out of “her house” on Christmas night, never realizing that her son owned the deed and was about to give her 30 days to leave.

The heavy oak-and-steel gates of the Citadel didn’t just open—they blasted outward with explosive hydraulic force.

Through the cloud of snow and pulverized frost, Ethan emerged like an avenging sovereign. He fired three pinpoint rounds that shattered the knee joints of the two mercenaries flanking Vane. As they collapsed, screaming in agony, the Royal Guard snipers on the high parapets opened fire with flawless precision, picking off every syndicate fighter along the bridge within a matter of eight seconds.

Vane spun in terror, raising his sidearm to Patricia’s temple. “Stay back! One more step and she dies!”

“Go ahead,” Ethan said, walking forward with his rifle lowered, his pace steady, unnervingly calm.

Patricia’s eyes bulged with pure, unadulterated horror. “Ethan! He’s going to shoot me! Tell him you surrender! Give him the money! I’m your mother! Ethan!”

“You sold my country,

Patricia,” Ethan said, stopping just six feet from the barrel of Vane’s gun. “You sold my daughter’s safety. You sold the honor of my father’s name. You told Clara on Christmas night that she was nobody, that she was a parasite who deserved nothing.”

Ethan looked directly into Vane’s terrified eyes. “Do you think a man who built his life from nothing cares about the life of a traitor?”

Vane hesitated. For half a second, the syndicate commander’s hand wavered—convinced Ethan truly did not care.

That split second was all Ethan needed.

With a blindingly fast strike, Ethan lunged forward, sweeping Vane’s gun arm upward as a shot discharged harmlessly into the gray sky. In the same motion, Ethan drove his elbow into Vane’s jaw with crushing force, sending the syndicate commander crashing into the stone parapet.

Before Vane could recover, Ethan swept his legs out, pinning him to the snow with a knee across his throat, his sidearm pressed dead-center against Vane’s forehead.

Chap 38

Commander Vane lay in the snow, coughing blood, his hands zip-tied behind his back by two burly Royal Guards. The remaining mercenaries were disarmed and marched toward the Citadel’s subterranean holding cells under heavy escort.

Silence returned to the mountain pass, broken only by the bitter howling of the alpine wind and the pathetic, ragged sobs of Patricia Vance.

She was crawling on her hands and knees in the red-stained snow, shivering violently in her ruined designer clothes. Her face was bruised, her expensive diamond necklace snapped and lost somewhere in the sleet, her false eyelashes plastered to her swollen, tear-stained cheeks.

She looked up, seeing Ethan towering over her. Behind him, the heavy iron gates stood open, revealing me walking down the courtyard stairs, wrapped in a thick wool royal cape, holding Lily safely in my arms.

“Ethan…” Patricia gasped, her teeth chattering so violently she could barely form the words. She reached out with a trembling, frostbitten hand, trying to touch the hem of his trousers. “My baby… my son… you saved me. I knew you would. I knew you couldn’t bear to see your own mother die. Help me up… please, it’s so cold… get me inside the palace…”

Ethan looked down at the hand reaching for him. He took one step back, letting her fingers grasp nothing but frozen gravel.

“Do not touch me,” Ethan said, his voice flat,

devoid of anger, devoid of love, devoid of everything.

Patricia froze, blinking up at him in sheer disbelief. “Ethan? What are you saying? I’m your mother! That criminal kidnapped me! He forced me to sign those papers! He made me do it!”

“The Swiss Federal Police recovered your encrypted voice memos an hour ago, Patricia,” I said, stepping forward until I stood beside Ethan. Lily looked down from my hip, her wide eyes watching the miserable, broken woman on the ground without a single trace of fear. “You contacted the Caspian Syndicate three weeks ago. You offered to sell the sovereign treasury long before Victor even filed his petition.”

Patricia’s face contorted from pathetic victimhood back into that familiar, ugly, venomous sneer I had endured for seven long years.

“You!” Patricia snarled at me, spitting blood onto the snow. “You scheming, penniless gutter-slut! You turned my own son against me! I took you into my home! I gave you shelter! And you poisoned his mind! Ethan, look at her! She’s nothing! Her family is dirt! How can you stand there and let her look down on me?!”

“My wife is the Queen of Valois,” Ethan said, his voice ringing across the courtyard with the weight of an iron bell. “Her father was an honorable soldier who died in service. Her mother worked two jobs to raise her with dignity. Clara never lied, she never stole, and she never once treated a single human being with cruelty. You, Patricia… you are the only dirt here.”