Gabriel’s POV
When my grandmother died, she left everything to me. The estate, the properties, the businesses—every single thing. Not a damn cent to Ethan. Not even a piece of land to appease him.
I should have expected it. I did, in some ways. She was never blind to who Ethan was, never fooled by his charm the way others were. She saw what lay beneath—the recklessness, the ambition fueled by entitlement rather than discipline. She once told me that power, when given to the wrong hands, destroys more than it builds.
But even knowing all of that, I still braced myself for the fallout when the lawyer read the will aloud.
I saw the disbelief flicker across the faces of those in the room. The unspoken question hanging thick in the air: Why would she do this?
I didn’t need to answer. The a
