We walked down the quiet, tree-lined streets of Polanco in total silence. The morning sun was crisp, filtering through the jacaranda trees, but the air felt heavy, almost suffocating. Alejandro was wearing nothing but his slacks and the button-down shirt he had hurriedly grabbed, his feet bare inside his loafers.

He was a prince who had just walked out of his castle, and I was the girl who had accidentally torn it down.

“Alejandro,” I choked out, stopping on the sidewalk. The tears were burning my eyes. “What did you do? Go back. Please, go back. You don’t know what it’s like to have nothing. You don’t know what it’s like to wonder if you can afford the metro, or if your family will have enough to eat. I can’t let you do this for me.”

He stopped, turning to face me. He didn’t look back at the mansion. He looked down at our joined hands, his thumb gently wiping away a tear falling down my cheek.

“I didn’t do it for you, Carmen,” he said, his voice terrifyingly calm. “I did it for me. For five years, my mother has used that inheritance like a leash. She chose my career, she chose my friends, she was currently choosing a woman for me to marry just to merge two corporate boards. If I stayed in that house, I would have died inside. Last night… last night was the first time I felt alive.”

But reality is a cruel master, and it didn’t take long to find us.

By midday, Alejandro’s phone died. Not from a lack of battery, but because Doña Beatriz had remotely deactivated his corporate account and cut his service. When we went to a bank to withdraw whatever personal savings he thought he had, the teller looked at Alejandro with a mixture of pity and fear.

“I’m sorry, Señor Mendoza,” the teller whispered, looking around nervously. “The primary accounts are tied to the family trust. Doña Beatriz placed a legal freeze on them two hours ago. We cannot authorize any withdrawals.”