Chapter 5: Taking Back What Was Hers

The Daniels House

Gabrielle returned to the Daniels house the next morning.

She went with the Shore name—and in the Shores' car.

This power... though borrowed? Power is power and should be leveraged perfectly. Sentiment had no place here.

She arrived at ten. A time when her father would be out. Yara at her beauty appointment. Baraneil… at home.

Exactly as she wanted.

---

The house looked smaller. It always did—returning to a place you had survived.

The walls shrank. The ceilings lowered. The weight it once held over you… disappeared.

Gabrielle observed it without emotion. But something else was there too - a cold, quiet anger she had been carrying for days, and today it finally found its direction.

Then she rang the bell.

The housekeeper opened the door. His face flickered—surprise, then contempt, then something uncertain.

“Good morning,” Gabrielle said calmly, stepping forward.

He moved to block her.

Then stopped.

His gaze shifted past her—to the car outside. A black Shore vehicle. Two men in dark suits. Watching. Waiting.

The sweat, intimidation and calculation on his face was instant.

He stepped aside.

“Where is Mrs. Smith?” Gabrielle asked, already walking in.

“U-Upstairs… the living room,” he replied.

Gabrielle didn’t slow. She nodded, then lifted a hand slightly.

The bodyguards followed.

---

Upstairs.

Baraneil sat comfortably, sipping tea. A smug smirk on her face.

“Don’t worry, honey,” she said to Yara who for some reason, is home. “By now, that brat Gabrielle is probably begging for mercy in President Brute’s bed. Once the contract is signed and your father’s debt is cleared, we can finally move into the penthouse.”

“But what if she tells Dad?” Yara asked, preening herself in a hand mirror. For some reason, she didn't go out that day.

Baraneil scoffed. “Your father won’t care. He just wants the debt gone. And who would believe her?”

---

BANG.

The doors slammed open.

Baraneil jolted from the sound, tea spilling across her designer dress.

“What is the meaning of—”

She froze as Gabrielle walked in, calm, composed, untouched. coming face to face with her since that drugged night.

Behind her, two bodyguards stepped in—silent, imposing. The room shrank around them.

“Gabrielle…?” Baraneil’s voice trembled. “What… how did you—”

Gabrielle didn’t answer.

She stepped forward. Her expression was as cold as the man she had married the previous morning. Without a word, she raised her hand and delivered a slap that sent Baraneil stumbling back, crashing into the coffee table.

---

The sound cracked through the room.

Baraneil's eyes went wide, watering in shock and humiliation.

“That,” Gabrielle said evenly, her voice echoing in the shocked silence “was for the tea.”

The satisfaction was brief, clean, and contained - like the snap of a lock finding its home.

---

Silence.

Then—

“You bitch!” Yara shrieked. “How dare you! I'm calling the police!”

“Go ahead,” Gabrielle said softly as she leaned in slightly, her gaze ice-cold. “And explain to them… how you kidnapped and tried to sell the wife of the Shore Group’s CEO.”

---

Baraneil and Yara went pale with shock.

“W-What…?”

Gabrielle lifted a small red booklet. The gold emblem gleamed under the chandelier.

“Allow me to introduce myself,” she said. “Mrs. Shore.”

---

The room went still. Completely still.

“Ethan… Shore?” Baraneil whispered after coming out of the moment. “Impossible. A man like him would never marry someone like you.”

Gabrielle tilted her head slightly.

“Someone like me?”

Her voice sharpened.

“You mean the girl you drugged? The one you tried to sell?”

She took a step closer.

“You’re right. He didn’t marry that girl.”

A stopped short.

“He married a woman who can end you with a single phone call.”

---

“You’re lying!” Yara snapped. “That must be fake!” She shouted, trying to move toward Gabrielle.

A bodyguard stepped forward.

His voice was calm. Cold.

“Miss Daniels, I suggest you choose carefulness. Offending the madam is offending the master—Mr. Shore.”

Yara stumbled back.

Silence swallowed the room again.

---

Gabrielle turned away.

“I’m here for my belongings.”

She spoke as she walked.

“My clothes. My documents. My mother’s rosewood box. Her journals. Her assets. The framed photograph. And the files in the study drawer.”

“Those belong to this house—”

“My things belong to me by law,” Gabrielle cut in, without turning.

She reached the stairs.

“My mother’s belongings were never part of any settlement. You took them.”

A step higher.

“I’ve been patient.”

Another step.

“Well, I’m not anymore.”

She paused at the landing. Then spoke again—quiet, final.

“Shore Group cleared my father’s debt yesterday morning.”

Silence.

“You have nothing left to bargain with.”

---

Her room was smaller than she remembered. Repurposed. Rearranged. But not erased.

She moved to the wardrobe. To the loose panel behind it. Pressed and it opened.

Still there. Untouched, was her mother’s rosewood box. The journals. The photograph of her mother—Leona.

Gabrielle picked them up carefully. One by one.

They are not fragile. But they're irreplaceable.

Her throat tightened. Just once. She swallowed it down. There would be time for that later - in the privacy of her locked office, in the silence where no one was watching.

Twenty minutes later, she was done.

---

Baraneil was waiting downstairs. Trying to gather what little authority she had left.

“Do you think this changes anything?” she said. “Men like Shore don’t keep women like—”

“Mrs. Smith.”

Gabrielle stopped. Turned. Looked at her. No anger. No emotion. Only clarity. “Two days ago, you drugged me and tried to sell me.”

A pause.

“The debt being cleared doesn’t erase that.”

She took a step closer.

“I suggest you start thinking very carefully…”

Her voice dropped.

“…about what happens when I decide to return the favor.”

Gabrielle turned and walked out without looking back.

Baraneil collapsed into the sofa. Powerless.

---

In the car, she placed the bag gently on her lap.

Through the fabric, she could feel them—The box. The journals. The photograph.

Pieces of a life stolen. Now returned.

Her fingers brushed the zipper. Paused.

Not here. Not like this.

She leaned back, eyes on the passing city. Steady. Controlled.

Tonight. She would read her mother's journals in private. In silence. With the full attention they deserved.