CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 2
Three years earlier, Elena Castillo had vanished from a private charity gala in Boston.
Alejandro remembered the night in pieces.
Her silver dress.
Her hand slipping from his arm when she said she needed air.
The empty terrace.
The dropped earring near the garden steps.
Vivian had been the one who found him panicking.
“She probably left,” Vivian had said gently. “You two argued earlier. Maybe she needed space.”
But Elena never came home.
No ransom note.
No body.
No goodbye.
Only a forged message sent from her phone two hours later.
Don’t look for me. I can’t be your wife anymore.
Alejandro never believed it.
Elena loved too fiercely to disappear like that. She would never leave her wedding ring on the nightstand, never abandon the children’s hospital foundation they built together, never walk away from him without one final fight.
So he searched.
Vivian stayed behind to “protect the estate.”
She managed the mansion.
She oversaw the staff.
She handled the charitable accounts because Alejandro was too broken to care about money.
Every few months, she called him with another rumor.
A woman matching Elena’s description had been seen in Milan.
Then Barcelona.
Then Zurich.
Every lead dragged him farther from home.
Every lead ended in nothing.
By the time Alejandro returned permanently, he was thinner, quieter, and hollowed out by grief.
Vivian had prepared the mansion for his arrival.
Fresh flowers.
Polished floors.
A new staff.
And one maid she introduced as Lena.
May you like
A quiet woman who never raised her eyes.
A woman Alejandro had walked past for two days because grief had taught him not to trust hope.
