Alejandro didn’t scream. He didn’t rush to his trembling wife.
He simply stared at the “servants” lining his hallway. They weren’t his original staff. They were heavily muscled, shifting nervously under his icy gaze. They were Vivian’s people.
She had hidden his missing wife in plain sight. Tortured her. Enslaved her in her own home while playing the comforting, elegant companion for the grieving billionaire.
Vivian took another arrogant sip of her red wine. “Don’t mind that girl,” she purred, stopping at the bottom of the glass staircase with a smug smile. “She’s too slow.”
Vivian expected him to be disgusted by the broken, dirty woman on the floor. She expected him to finally hand over the estate.
She had severely underestimated the man she was trying to manipulate.
Alejandro turned away from Elena. The shock on his face melted, replaced by a dark, boiling rage that belonged to his ruthless, violent past—a past Vivian knew absolutely nothing about.
He stalked toward the stairs. Vivian’s confident smirk instantly faltered as he invaded her personal space, his imposing frame casting a lethal shadow over her. He didn’t look like a defeated widower anymore. He looked like the devil himself.
Alejandro leaned in, his face inches from hers.
“You wanted my empire, Vivian?” he whispered, his voice vibrating with venomous calm. “You can have the ashes.”
He pressed a small, hidden button inside his black leather glove. A synchronized, deafening *beep* echoed from the basement, the walls, and the roof.
“Destroy everything,” he commanded.
Vivian’s jaw unhinged in absolute, paralyzing horror. She gripped her wine glass, her eyes wide with terror as the realization hit her: he wasn’t calling the police. He had rigged his own mansion to burn with her inside.
Alejandro turned, scooped his weeping wife into his arms, and walked out the front doors.
Behind them, the countdown began.