Episode 1

The Valente mansion — an architectural jewel of marble and black glass perched at the highest point of the city — felt colder than usual that night. Selene Arismendi finished straightening the silver cutlery with an almost obsessive precision. She had spent the entire afternoon overseeing every detail: white calla lilies — her favorites, though he never remembered that — a reserve wine Maximiliano kept for special occasions, and a dinner that filled the air with a gorgeous, lingering scent.

Tonight was their second anniversary. Two years since the Arismendi name — drowning in a financial crisis that threatened to land her father in prison — was saved by Maximiliano Valente's so-called "generosity." To the world, it was the romance of the century. To Maximiliano, it was a business transaction in which Selene was the luxury commodity he had acquired for his collection.

The sound of his sports car crunching over the gravel drive reached her from the entrance. Selene felt the familiar tightening in her chest — that old mixture of foolish hope and instinctive fear. She took one last look at herself in the entryway mirror. The pearl-silk dress curved along her slender frame, and her large eyes shone that night with a brittle kind of resolve.

The door swung open and Maximiliano walked in. At thirty-two, he radiated a natural authority that filled every room he entered. His custom-tailored suit didn't hold a single crease, but his face was set in the rigid expression Selene had long since learned to read as a warning.

"Maximiliano, you're home," she said, moving toward him with quiet steps. "Happy anniversary."

He didn't stop to kiss her. He didn't even meet her eyes. Instead, he dropped his keys onto the entryway table — a sound that landed like a gunshot in the silence of the house.

"Again with this, Selene?" His voice was low and heavy, saturated with a weariness that bordered on disgust. "Don't you ever get tired of staging this 'perfect wife' performance?"

"I just wanted us to celebrate, Maximiliano. It's been two years."

"Two years of paying your bills, your father's bills, and the upkeep of this mausoleum." He finally turned and fixed her with an ice-cold stare. "How much did this 'celebration' cost? Five thousand dollars? Ten? Or are you about to ask me for another increase in your monthly allowance?"

Selene stepped back, feeling the air thin around her.

"I didn't spend anything extra. And I don't want money, Maximiliano. I only wanted your time."

A dry, humorless laugh escaped his lips.

"My time is money — something you seem to consume with an impressive appetite. I have no interest in sitting down to dinner with you while you mentally calculate the price of your next necklace."

At that moment, Maximiliano's phone buzzed. He pulled it from his pocket and his expression shifted instantly — the hardness dissolved into something close to attention, almost softness. Selene caught a glimpse of the name on the screen: Alessandra.

"I have a business dinner." He lied, and they both knew Alessandra had nothing to do with his companies. "Don't wait up. And please blow out those candles — the smell of wax gives me a headache."

Without another word, Maximiliano turned and walked out of the house, leaving behind the trail of his expensive cologne and the echo of the door slamming shut.

Selene stood alone before the table set for two. The silence of the mansion became deafening. She looked at her wedding ring — an enormous diamond that weighed more than her own soul. She remembered Maximiliano's gaze, the way he looked at her as though she were a parasite, a hollow woman who loved nothing but his checkbook.

With a slow, measured movement, Selene walked to the table. She didn't cry. She had used up her tears months ago. Instead, she picked up the thousand-dollar bottle of wine and, with a terrifying calm, poured it over the white tablecloth, watching the red stain spread like an open wound.

"You're right, Maximiliano," she whispered to the empty room. "Everything has a price. And tonight you start paying mine."

She walked to her bedroom, but not toward the closet full of designer clothes he'd bought her. She knelt beside the bed and pulled out a small wooden box. Inside it were no jewels — only a property deed in her name for an old bookshop in the heart of the city, a secret legacy from her aunt that Maximiliano hadn't even bothered to investigate.

Maximiliano Valente believed that Selene Arismendi was a crystal doll who would shatter without his money. Selene, staring at the horizon through the window, understood that the doll had already shattered that night — but what lay beneath was something he would never be able to control.

Selene's disappearance would not come with screaming. It would come with the most absolute silence Maximiliano had ever known.

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