Vivian swirled her ruby wine, her smirk dripping with absolute venom. “You’re back,” she drawled. “Don’t mind that girl. She’s too slow.”
Alejandro didn’t scream. He didn’t lunge.
Instead, he looked from the faint bruises on Elena’s wrists to the thick, brown stain she was frantically scrubbing into the white marble floor.
Except, the heavy, metallic scent hanging in the air proved it wasn’t mud.
Vivian thought she had won. Three years ago, she orchestrated Elena’s kidnapping, seizing Alejandro’s corporate empire while he blindly chased ghosts across the globe. Keeping a broken, drugged Elena as her personal servant was Vivian’s ultimate, twisted trophy.
“My men in Europe were supposed to ensure you didn’t return,” Vivian noted, her confidence unshaken. “But no matter. You’re just in time to watch her die.”
Alejandro finally moved. His black coat swept like a shadow as he aggressively closed the distance to the glass staircase, cornering Vivian. He didn’t look back at his trembling wife. He locked eyes with the woman who had stolen his life.
He leaned in close, his voice a low, lethal rasp.
“Destroy everything.”
Vivian’s smug smile instantly vanished. She gasped, her eyes bulging in pure, sudden terror.
She recognized the phrase. It wasn’t a threat. It was a hypnotic trigger.
Behind them, the weeping, terrified maid stopped scrubbing.
Elena’s hunched posture snapped perfectly straight. The fear evaporated from her face, replaced by a cold, deadly clarity. She reached deep into the soapy bucket, pulling out a sleek, suppressed pistol wrapped in a damp rag.
Alejandro hadn’t spent three years helplessly searching. He had spent three years quietly turning his captive wife into a Trojan horse, planted right inside Vivian’s fortress.
Alejandro turned his back and calmly walked toward the door. Vivian’s wine glass shattered on the marble floor, perfectly syncing with the first muffled gunshot.