Gabriel Creuz

As the third child, Gabriel was never in line for the title. His older brother would become baron after their ageing father, so Gabriel built a life that owed the family nothing: he trained as a lawyer, and it was going well.

Then he was arrested for fraud he had no part in. The evidence against him was overwhelming, and he was sentenced to years in prison.

He came out to nothing. No practice, no standing, and by his own reckoning nothing much left to live for — until his former girlfriend arrived with an offer that came at a price: ruin another man’s life, and get his own back. He took it, and with it a question he could not put down. Who put him there, and why?

What he found was larger and more dangerous than he expected, and the question stopped being about revenge and started being about staying alive. Later, when his father dies, the inheritance he was never raised for lands on him anyway — and Aspholma, the family estate, comes with a history of its own.