Doña Beatriz, who was standing at the center of a circle of politicians and socialites, turned around. When her eyes landed on us—on her son, looking wealthier and more powerful than ever, holding the hand of the girl who used to bleach her toilets—her champagne glass slipped from her fingers, shattering loudly against the marble floor.
She stormed toward us, her face twisted in a mask of venomous fury. “How dare you show your faces here? Security! Escort these grifters out!
“The security guards work for the venue, Mother,” Alejandro said, his voice echoing clearly over the hushed crowd. “And as of three o’clock this afternoon, I have officially partnered my forty percent share of the Mendoza Group with our primary competitor, giving them a majority stake in your board.”
Doña Beatriz gasped, clutching her pearl necklace, her eyes widening with a terror she had never known in her life. “You… you would destroy your own father’s legacy for her?”
“No,” Alejandro said, looking around the room, making sure every influential family in the city saw his mother’s defeat. “I did it for myself. You told Carmen that love doesn’t protect a family name. You were right. But power does. And as the new majority shareholder of your logistics division, my first official act was to remove you from the chair.”
Doña Beatriz staggered backward, looking at the faces of her peers, but she found no comfort. In our world, money is king—and Alejandro had just stripped her of her crown.
Alejandro turned to me, his eyes softening into the warm, gentle man I had fallen in love with in the quiet hallways of that lonely mansion. He leaned down and kissed me, right there in front of the flashing cameras and the stunned aristocracy.
We had walked out of that house with nothing but our hands intertwined. But Doña Beatriz had made a fatal mistake. She thought she was cutting off a dependent boy. She had no idea she was declaring war on the man who built her empire.
