He Came Home Early and Found a Pet Collar Around His 6-Year-Old Son’s Neck. His New Wife Called It “Discipline”—Until Her Own Mother’s Phone Revealed What They Had Planned Before the Party Even Began. / Chapter 67 / 80

Chapter 67 - Sins of the Patriarch

Fifteen minutes later, a rain-soaked, unmarked black Land Rover Defender sat idling in a deserted alley behind a Mayfair townhouse.

Inside the back of the vehicle, General Reginald Briggs—a man with three rows of medals on his chest and thirty years of British military intelligence behind him—sat with zip-ties binding his wrists to the heavy steel grab handle above his head.

His lip was split, his left eye was swollen shut, and Daniel Vance was sitting directly across from him, holding a suppressed pistol against the General’s kneecap.

"You should have died in Kandahar, Daniel," Briggs spat, blood dripping from his chin onto his tailored wool coat. "Your father offered you an empire. He offered to make you the heir to the Sovereign Syndicate. All you had to do was give him the boy. One child, to secure a global financial network!"

"He's not a currency, Briggs," Daniel said, his voice terrifyingly calm. "He’s my son."

"He’s Arthur's property!" Briggs snarled. "Arthur built this country’s shadow budget! He funded black sites, bought politicians, maintained the balance of power while fools like you were playing toy soldier in the desert! Do you have any idea what happens if Arthur dies without an heir? The entire house of cards collapses!"

Daniel slowly pressed the muzzle of the Kimber deeper into the soft flesh of Briggs's knee. "Tell me about the island's defenses. Now."

"Go to hell."

Daniel didn't raise his voice. He didn't scream. He simply pulled the trigger.

*Thwack.*

The suppressed gunshot sounded like a heavy staple gun. Briggs arched his back, a guttural shriek tearing from his throat as the hollow-point round shattered his patella into powder.

In the front seat, Cole kept his eyes locked on the alleyway, watching the mirrors, while Mason sat quietly in the passenger footwell, playing with the dials of an unpowered radio, completely desensitized to the sound of violence.

"The defenses, Reginald," Daniel whispered, leaning in until his breath touched the General’s sweating ear. "The next round goes through your other knee. Then your hip. Then I leave you here for the street sweepers to find."

"The... the northern sea cliff!" Briggs wept, his body violently shuddering from shock. "The radar... the radar has a six-degree blind spot beneath the old lighthouse ruins on the northern headland. The automated batteries can’t depress low enough to target anything under forty feet from the water line!"

"How many men?"

"Twenty-five... maybe thirty," Briggs gasped, tears of agony cutting tracks through the dirt on his face. "Arthur’s private security detail. All ex-SBS. And... and Dr. Richter."

Daniel’s jaw tightened. "Who is Richter?"

"The... the transplant specialist," Briggs choked out. "Arthur is deteriorating fast, Daniel. His organs are failing. Richter is already setting up the harvesting equipment. If the boy isn't on that table by dawn... Arthur will die. And he will take the island—and everyone on it—down with him."

"Where is the master kill-switch for the compound?"

"In Arthur’s study. The glass conservatory overlooking the cliffs," Briggs sobbed. "A biometric console on his desk. He controls the perimeter mines, the power grid, everything. Please, Daniel... call an ambulance... I’m bleeding out..."

Daniel looked at the man who had sold his son to a butcher for thirty pieces of silver.

"You told me once that soldiers don't complain about the wounds they chose to take," Daniel said softly.

He reached over, took Briggs's encrypted satellite phone from his pocket, and stepped out of the Land Rover into the pouring rain. He slammed the door, leaving the General bound in the darkness.

Cole stepped out from the driver’s side, throwing Daniel the keys. "I secured a high-speed coastal interceptor boat in Oban. We can be in Scottish waters by midnight."

Daniel turned, looking through the tinted window at Mason, who was watching him through the rain-streaked glass.