When I met Carlos Montemayor, he was charming, attentive, and everything a young woman could dream of. He came from an old, prestigious Mexican family, proud of their money and their name. I didn’t care about any of that. I loved the man, not his fortune.
What Carlos never knew was that I came from wealth myself—more than he or his family could ever imagine. My father, Santiago Herrera, is a self-made billionaire, a man who built his empire from nothing. But after watching greed poison the people around him, I chose to live quietly, under a different name. I wanted to find love untainted by money.
For two years, I didn’t. I wanted to prove I could stand on my own. But Carlos’s family made that nearly impossible.
His mother, Victoria, was polite only when others were watching. “Our family has standards,” she’d say, smiling thinly.
His sister, Isabela, was worse—sweet words on the surface, venom underneath.
Carlos’s father, Roberto, barely acknowledged my existence.
I tried to fit in, to be kind, to earn their respect. But nothing was ever enough.
The Night Everything Fell Apart
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