“Destroy everything.”
The icy words barely left Alejandro’s lips before the atmosphere shattered.
Vivian’s smug smile froze. “What did you just say?”
Down on the marble floor, the terrified, trembling maid stopped crying. The panic in Elena’s eyes vanished in a blink, replaced by something cold and calculated. She calmly stood up, wiped the fake tears from her cheeks, and rolled her shoulders. Her posture was suddenly flawless. Lethal.
She looked past Vivian directly at Alejandro. “Took you long enough. My knees were killing me.”
Vivian gasped, her knuckles turning white around the stem of her wine glass. “You… you were broken! I kept you chained in the cellar!”
“You kept me exactly where I needed to be,” Elena smirked. She casually tossed her dirty white rag onto the massive puddle of thick, brown liquid she had been frantically scrubbing.
It wasn’t dirt. It wasn’t a spill.
It was highly concentrated thermite gel. And Elena had just spent the last three months meticulously painting it across every structural support beam in Vivian’s stolen fortress.
“You thought I was your prisoner?” Elena laughed, stepping smoothly away from the puddle. “Vivian, honey. I’m the inside job.”
Instantly, the mansion’s power grid died. Red tactical lights flared to life in the ceiling, casting sinister shadows across Alejandro’s face as the armed men in his earpiece breached the perimeter.
Alejandro adjusted his black leather gloves, his eyes locked dead on Vivian. “You tried to steal my empire. But you forgot one crucial detail.”
He pulled a sleek silver detonator from his coat.
“My wife is twice as ruthless as I am.”
Vivian screamed, dropping her wine glass. It shattered against the marble—a split second before the floor beneath her erupted in fire.