The hotel lobby buzzed with whispers as Alejandro stepped outside, the sting of Elena’s words still fresh in his chest. But his face showed nothing—just a stillness, a brewing storm under calm eyes.Outside, the sky had darkened into a moody dusk, clouds tinged with red like open wounds. The Hernández family stood by the roadside, laughing, animated, as if they hadn’t just shattered a man’s world.Elena stood apart, arms crossed, her face unreadable—until a sleek black sports car pulled up.Walter Velázquez.He stepped out like he owned the world, dressed in a navy-blue suit with sunglasses still perched on his arrogant face despite the fading light. He didn’t even glance at Alejandro. Instead, he opened the passenger door and gave Elena a smug smile.“Ready to leave all this behind?” he asked her.Her eyes flicked to Alejandro for a second. Just one.“I’m ready,” she said.Luis grinned wide. “You see, Alejandro? This is what ambition looks like.”Jacobo clapped him on the shoulder. “

The next morning, Alejandro stood outside the gleaming glass tower of Cuatro Mares Corporation, dressed in the same worn jeans and boots that had carried him through years of backbreaking labor. The guards at the entrance eyed him with distaste, one of them even stepping in front of the revolving door.“Can I help you, sir?” the taller of the two asked, his voice laced with contempt.Alejandro gave a faint smile. “Yeah. Tell your boss one of his ‘worthless’ employees is here to collect his last paycheck.”The guard scoffed. “If you don’t have an appointment, you’re not getting past the lobby.”Alejandro pulled out his phone and tapped it a few times. “You sure about that?”Before the guard could respond, the phone behind the front desk rang. The receptionist picked up, nodded stiffly, and then glanced at Alejandro with widened eyes.“The CEO will see him,” she whispered.The guards looked baffled as Alejandro strode past them, his boots echoing on the marble floor.Joaquín Salgado’s o

Alejandro’s boots echoed against the cold concrete floor of the basement as the two masked attackers closed in. The dim light above flickered, casting their shadows like ghosts along the wall.“You should’ve stayed dead, Jiménez,” the voice repeated—raspy, cruel, and all too familiar.From behind a column stepped a third man. Taller. Unmasked.Jaime López.Alejandro’s eyes narrowed. “I should’ve known you’d show your rat face eventually.”Jaime smirked, brandishing a knife. “You embarrassed me in front of Salgado. Got me demoted. Now you’re playing with fire, poking around in Velázquez business.”“Funny,” Alejandro said coolly, wiping the blood from his arm with his sleeve, “I was just about to burn everything down anyway.”Jaime lunged.Alejandro sidestepped, slamming his shoulder into the first masked attacker and sending the man crashing into a metal cabinet. Sparks flew as a pipe burst overhead, hissing steam clouding the room. The second man grabbed Alejandro from behind, pinning

Walter Velázquez’s private villa stood like a blade against the hillside, sleek and angular, its sharp lines cutting through the twilight. All glass and white marble, it was the sort of place that whispered power and screamed vanity. The city below glittered like a promise just out of reach, but here, high above it all, everything was clean, sterile—perfect. And false.Elena stood at the balcony, framed by the blood-orange sky. Her emerald dress fluttered softly in the breeze, but her expression was as still as carved stone. Arms crossed tightly over her chest, she didn’t bother to look at Walter as he approached from behind.Inside, the hum of jazz music played on low, underscoring the silence between them.Walter poured two glasses of red wine, the decanter’s neck catching the last rays of the sun like a dagger tip. His Rolex glinted with every movement, catching her eye just long enough to remind her exactly where she was—and who she was dealing with.“You look beautiful,” he said,

The night air was thick with tension as Alejandro walked briskly through the quiet streets, his mind a storm of calculations and fury. His grip on the phone tightened as Carlos’s warning echoed in his mind. Joaquín Salgado. The man who had tried to bury him and his family, the man who had hidden behind the veneer of corporate power, now playing the game from the shadows. And now he was meddling in the one thing Alejandro had left—his family’s legacy.The sleek black car came to a screeching halt in front of a building that once belonged to the Jiménez family, now left to rot under the weight of years of abandonment. The wind whipped through the broken windows, and the building stood in stark contrast to the glitzy towers of Cuatro Mares Corporation just across the river. Here, Alejandro had spent his early years learning the ropes of business, before everything had fallen apart.The dimly lit building now seemed like a monument to his past, and tonight, it would become the stage for h