Chapter 2 - The House of Vipers
Alejandro turned toward his mother. The air between them turned to ice.
"You knew?" Alejandro asked, his voice shaking with a dangerous mixture of grief and fury. "Mother... look at her! Look at my wife! Look at your grandchild!"
"That child," Doña Esther hissed, her aristocratic mask slipping completely to reveal the monster beneath, "is an abomination that does not belong in the Aranda bloodline!"
"What are you talking about?!" Alejandro yelled, stepping between his mother and the bed, shielding Valeria with his broad frame.
Marcela appeared in the doorway behind their mother, holding an iPad, a cold, mocking smile playing on her lips. "Show him the medical records, Mother. Tell him why we had to take control."
Doña Esther picked up a manila folder from her tray and tossed it onto the bed. "She lied to you, Alejandro. From the very beginning. Her family wasn't just poor—her father was the disgraced accountant who embezzled ten million dollars from your father’s firm twenty years ago! She came into your gallery, seduced you, and got pregnant on purpose to bleed this family dry!"
Valeria shook her head frantically from the bed. "It’s not true! My father was framed! Your father set him up to cover his own illegal tax fraud!"
"Shut up, you peasant!" Marcela snapped, stepping into the room. "We found out three weeks ago that she was meeting with a private prosecutor in Coyoacán. She was gathering evidence to reopen the old embezzlement case against the Aranda estate. If that case goes public, our stock prices collapse! The bank will pull our construction loans!"
Alejandro looked at the folder, then at Valeria. "Valeria... is this true? Were you investigating my father?"
"I was trying to clear my dead father’s name, Alejandro!" Valeria wept, clutching her belly. "I never wanted your money! I love you! But three weeks ago, I found my father’s original journals in the gallery storage. They contained proof that Doña Esther and Marcela signed off on the forged transfers after your father died!"
Alejandro stared at his sister and mother. The puzzle pieces were falling into place with sickening clarity.
Marcela hadn't attacked Valeria out of jealousy or snobbery. They were torturing her to destroy her morale, force a miscarriage, and drive her to commit suicide or flee the country so her testimony would die with her.
"She’s unstable, Alejandro," Marcela said smoothly, moving closer to her brother and laying a hand on his arm. "The sedatives were just to keep her calm. The bruises... well, she fought back when we tried to take her phone. We're doing this to protect the family business. To protect you."
Alejandro looked down at Marcela’s manicured hand on his sleeve.
Slowly, deliberately, he reached up, grabbed Marcela’s wrist, and twisted it until she gasped in pain and fell to her knees.
"Don't you ever touch me again," Alejandro whispered, his eyes blazing with absolute hatred. "And if you ever look at my wife again, I will forget you share my blood."
"Alejandro!" Doña Esther gasped in horror. "Are you choosing this common girl over your own mother?!"
"You are not my mother," Alejandro said coldly, turning his back on them. He knelt beside the bed, carefully wrapped a clean, warm robe around Valeria, and lifted her gently into his arms.
"Alejandro, if you walk out that door with her, I will call the board of directors!" Doña Esther shouted behind him. "I will freeze your bank accounts! I will strip you of your presidency at Aranda Real Estate by noon!"
May you like
Alejandro stopped at the doorway, holding his bruised, crying wife tightly against his chest. He looked back at Doña Esther with utter contempt.
"Freeze the accounts," Alejandro said. "Call the board. I built that empire with my own hands, Mother. And I can burn it to the ground just as easily."
