Chapter 4 - The Boardroom Guillotine
The gold-trimmed ballroom of the Montes Tower was packed to capacity.
Flashbulbs popped in blinding rhythms as reporters jostled for position before the raised dais. Behind the podium stood Victor Montes—a silver-haired patriarch with the ruthless eyes of a predator—flanked by his daughter, Valeria.
Valeria had changed into a modest, conservative navy dress. Her eyes were artificially reddened with cosmetic tears, her hands trembling delicately as she held a white handkerchief.
"My family has remained silent during Alejandro Serrano’s long and painful recovery," Victor Montes boomed into the cluster of microphones. "We hoped that his trauma would heal with time. But today’s unprovoked, violent outburst against my daughter—his betrothed—proves that he is mentally unfit to oversee the historic consolidation of our two enterprises. As the primary shareholder of the joint venture, I am calling for an immediate emergency injunction to remove him from executive authority."
Reporters shouted questions in unison.
"Mr. Montes! Is it true Alejandro assaulted your daughter over a disgruntled former employee?"
"Valeria, are you breaking off the engagement?"
Valeria leaned toward the microphone, letting out a soft, theatrical sob. "I only ever wanted to help him. But the woman he brought into that hotel... she has dangerous ties, and Alejandro’s delusions have made him a threat to himself and everyone around him—"
The heavy oak double doors at the back of the hall blew open with a deafening crash.
The room went instantly dead.
Alejandro walked down the center aisle. He hadn't changed his clothes. His shirt was unbuttoned at the collar, his cuffs stained with hospital antiseptic and faint traces of Elena’s tears. He walked with the terrifying deliberate cadence of an executioner approaching the block. Behind him marched four federal prosecutors and the district commander of the state financial fraud division.
"Alejandro," Victor Montes snarled, though his eyes darted nervously toward the uniformed officers. "You have no right to disrupt this private briefing. Security, remove this man!"
The Montes security guards took one step forward, looked into Alejandro’s eyes, and stopped dead. Not a single man drew a baton.
Alejandro climbed the stairs to the stage. He didn't look at Victor; his eyes locked onto Valeria, who shrank back until her shoulders hit the backdrop banner.
"You wanted a press conference, Valeria?" Alejandro’s voice boomed through the speakers as he leaned down to the primary microphone. "Let’s give them the whole story."
With a flick of his wrist, Alejandro signaled Marcus.
The colossal digital screens behind the podium—intended to display the new Serrano-Montes corporate logo—flickered and cut to black. A second later, high-definition scans appeared before the press.
Gasps rippled through the hall.
First came the intercepted telecommunication logs, stamped with Valeria’s IP address, routing calls from an impoverished pregnant woman to a dead line. Next came the security footage from three months prior: Valeria walking into a dingy clinic in the outskirts, slipping a heavy brown envelope across a desk to an unlicensed physician.
And finally, the audio played through the hall’s sound system—clear, crisp, and horrifying.
*‘Make sure the file says she aborted it,’* Valeria’s recorded voice echoed off the gilded ceiling. *‘If Alejandro thinks the child is dead, he’ll come back to the city. Pay the girl’s landlord to throw her onto the street. If she has no money and nowhere to sleep, the problem will solve itself.’*
Flashbulbs exploded in a frenzy of white fire. Reporters surged forward, screaming questions, shoving their recording devices over the barricades.
"Turn it off! Turn it off right now!" Victor Montes roared, his face turning an apoplectic shade of purple as he grabbed at the cables beneath the podium.
Valeria stood frozen, her mouth open in a soundless scream of horror as the reality of her total destruction washed over her.
Alejandro stepped closer to her, his voice dropping so low only she could hear it beneath the roar of the media storm.
"You thought you were protecting my empire, Valeria," he whispered, each word a hammer blow. "By midnight, the fraud charges will be filed. By tomorrow morning, the Montes stock will be worthless. You will not have a penny to your name. You will not have a single friend in this hemisphere. And if my child suffers so much as a single complication from what you did... a prison cell will be the safest place on earth for you."
He turned his back on her, walking off the stage into the swarm of cameras.
"Mr. Serrano! What about the woman? Who is Elena Rios?" a journalist shouted.
Alejandro stopped. He looked straight into the camera lens, his expression utterly stripped of pride, leaving only a fierce, unyielding devotion.
May you like
"She is the only woman I have ever loved," he said clearly, his voice carrying across live television feeds nationwide. "She is the mother of my child. And I will spend every second of the rest of my life begging for her forgiveness."
***
