Gabriel stepped closer, each footstep echoing through the silent mansion like a countdown. His eyes were burning—not just with rage, but with something far more dangerous… a deep, festering pain.

“You think this is just about revenge?” Gabriel whispered. “Alexandre, you have no idea what you destroyed.”

Marina tightened her grip around her trembling twins.
Alexandre took a step forward, his voice low but steady.

“If you want to hurt someone, hurt me. But don’t involve them.”

Gabriel let out a short, humorless laugh.

“You still don’t get it. This isn’t just about you, Alexandre. This is about the truth.”

He reached into his jacket and pulled out a thick, worn folder.

He tossed it onto the bed.

Photographs spilled across the sheets.

Alexandre froze.

There, staring back at him from the old photos…
was his father.

Smiling.

Standing beside a woman Alexandre recognized instantly—

Marina’s mother.

Marina gasped softly, covering her mouth with her hand.
Alexandre felt the blood drain from his face.

“What… what is this?” he whispered.

Gabriel’s jaw tensed.

“This,” he said, tapping one of the photos, “is the beginning of everything.”

He pointed at Marina.

“Your father ruined my family. But before that—before the business war, before the bankruptcy, before my father put a gun to his own head—your father had already destroyed her life.”

Marina shook her head violently.

“No… no, that can’t be. My mother never spoke of—”

“Of course she didn’t.”
Gabriel’s voice cracked.
“She was paid to stay silent.”

Alexandre staggered back.

“My father wouldn’t— he couldn’t have—”

Gabriel slammed his fist against the wall.

“HE DID! He took everything from us. And now you stand here pretending you’re any different?”

Marina’s eyes overflowed with tears.

Because suddenly… the pieces began to fit.

Her mother’s mysterious depression.
Her sudden move to the city.
The envelopes of money hidden in an old drawer.
The fear she carried every time the name Méndez was mentioned.

Alexandre swallowed hard, feeling his world fracture.

“I didn’t know,” he whispered. “Gabriel, I swear—I didn’t know.”

But Gabriel just smiled. A cold, broken smile.

“That’s the thing, Alexandre. You didn’t know…
and yet you lived your whole life benefiting from the sins of your father.”

He took a step closer.

“And now the debt is due.”

Marina gasped as one of the twins began to cry softly.

Gabriel closed his eyes for a moment, the sound softening him… but only for a second.

When he opened them again, there was a terrifying clarity there.

“You’re not the only one who came back early tonight,” he murmured.

Alexandre frowned.

“What are you talking about?”

Gabriel tilted his head… just as the front door slammed downstairs.

Heavy footsteps echoed through the halls.

Multiple footsteps.

Marina’s breath caught in her throat.

Alexandre turned pale.

Gabriel whispered:

“I didn’t come here alone.”