Alejandro didn’t look at Vivian. His eyes stayed locked on Elena.
She was frantically scrubbing a thick, brown substance into the marble grooves. Her hands shook, but as Alejandro looked closer, he realized it wasn’t from fear.
It was from adrenaline.
“I was almost finished!” Elena gasped, her voice frantic, tears streaking the grime on her face. She looked up at him, desperate. “Is it really you?”
Vivian scoffed from the staircase, swirling her Cabernet. “You’re back. Don’t mind that girl, she’s too slow. I’ve had to break her in.”
Vivian thought she held all the cards. While Alejandro had scoured the globe, Vivian had quietly seized his empire, stolen his home, and kept his wife as a humiliated trophy slave right under his nose.
But Vivian had made one fatal mistake.
She didn’t know what Alejandro and Elena did before they were rich.
Alejandro crouched, brushing his gloved finger against the brown sludge on the floor. It wasn’t mud. It wasn’t blood. It was a highly unstable thermite-explosive compound, cleverly disguised as floor wax.
For three months, Elena hadn’t been cleaning Vivian’s floors. She had been quietly rigging the structural pillars of the entire estate, hiding explosives in plain sight, waiting for her husband’s return.
Alejandro stood slowly. The confusion in his eyes vanished, replaced by a ruthless, predatory calm. He pulled his phone from his black coat and raised it to his ear.
Vivian smirked, leaning against the glass railing. “Calling your lawyers? I own them, Alejandro.”
He ignored her. Staring dead into Vivian’s eyes, Alejandro spoke a single, chilling command into the receiver.
“Destroy everything.”
The mansion’s heavy steel security shutters instantly slammed down, sealing every exit with a deafening *CLANG*.
Vivian gasped, her eyes going wide with pure, paralyzing terror as dozens of red digital timers lit up beneath the marble floors.
Elena stopped crying. She stood up, wiped the explosive paste from her cheek, and smiled.