SHE THOUGHT NO ONE SAW HER PUSH HER PREGNANT DAUGHTER-IN-LAW OFF THE CLIFF—UNTIL THE COLD DEAD HAND ON HER SHOULDER SPOKE!

The roads up toward Blackwood Ridge were nearly impassable. The blizzard screamed off the Continental Divide, blinding gusts throwing walls of white snow against the windshield of Daniel’s reinforced Ford F-350 as it climbed the winding mountain switchbacks.

Julian sat in the front passenger seat, holding an automatic shotgun across his knees, his jaw set in grim determination. Emily sat in the rear, Daniella strapped securely into the tactical car seat between heavy ceramic armor plates Daniel had bolted into the frame.

"You shouldn't have brought them, Daniel," Julian yelled over the roar of the engine as the tires fought for traction on the black ice. "If she has a squad up there—"

"I don't leave my family behind in an compromised house where Cole’s reinforcements could arrive at any minute," Daniel shouted back, his hands wrestling the steering wheel as the truck drifted around a sheer, thousand-foot drop. "The only place safe from Victoria Sterling is six feet beneath the frozen dirt. Tonight, this ends."

Through the blinding snow, the jagged outline of Blackwood Lodge emerged like a dark, decaying fortress atop the highest ridge.

It was the Sterling family’s private alpine retreat—the very place where, two months earlier, Victoria had hosted the winter gala, smiled at Emily, laced her champagne with a sedative, and led her out into the freezing night toward the cliff's edge.

The lodge was completely dark, save for a single, warm light glowing from the panoramic glass lounge hanging directly over the abyss.

Daniel killed the truck's headlights fifty yards from the main gates, letting the vehicle slide silently into a snowdrift beside the tree line.

"Julian, you stay on the perimeter with the shotgun. If anyone tries to flank us from the service road, put them down," Daniel ordered in a crisp, lethal cadence.

"No," Julian said, his voice trembling with a ferocious resolve Daniel had never seen in him before. "I let her push Emily off that mountain because I was too cowardly to see the monster my mother was. I am going in there with you."

Emily unstrapped herself from the back, her face pale but completely composed. She drew a compact .38 revolver Daniel had given her, checking the cylinder.

"We go together," Emily said, looking Daniel dead in the eye. "She tried to erase me, Daniel. She tried to make me an unmarked grave in the snow. I want her to look me in the eye when the Sterling dynasty dies."

Daniel looked at his sister, seeing the unbreakable warrior that had survived the impossible. He gave a single, resolute nod.