Episode 3

Three years earlier.

Selene Arismendi was walking on air. Since that night at the Crystal Palace gala, her world had taken on shades she never believed possible. Maximiliano Valente — the man who shook the foundations of the stock market — sought her out every day. He sent white orchids that flooded her room with a sweet, persistent fragrance; he took her to dinner at places where the rest of the world seemed to disappear behind a curtain of luxury and attentiveness.

She, in the luminous innocence of her nineteen years, believed Maximiliano was the love of her life. She was firmly convinced that fate, in an act of supreme generosity, had placed her in the path of that giant to make her the happiest woman on earth. How wrong she was. Selene had no idea of the true intentions of the man who showed her only the perfect mask of a gallant knight, while concealing the wolf that lurked in the shadows.

While she dreamed of a perfect life — a house full of laughter and a bookshop of her own funded by love — Maximiliano Valente was showing his true face somewhere very different: a private club with high ceilings and a dying light, where the fates of men were decided with a handshake.

Across from him, sitting with a glass of cognac that trembled slightly in his fingers, was Roberto Arismendi. Roberto was not the devoted father everyone assumed; he was a man whose greed was exceeded only by his incompetence in business. He had squandered the family fortune on absurd investments and was now looking for a lifeline, regardless of who he had to drown in the process.

Maximiliano set his glass on the crystal table with a sharp crack that made Roberto flinch.

"I'll speak plainly, Roberto." Maximiliano's voice was a lethal whisper, stripped of the warmth he performed for Selene. "I want your daughter. She's beautiful — she has a purity you don't find in the women of our circle — and I'm prepared to invest whatever sum is necessary in your company to pull it out of the mud, provided she marries me. Under my conditions. Under my name."

Roberto Arismendi didn't even blink. There was no outrage on his face, no paternal instinct in a man watching his daughter become a bargaining chip. His eyes reflected nothing but the gleam of the money he was about to receive.

"I have no objection whatsoever," Roberto replied, with a servile smile that turned the stomach. "I know you'll be an excellent husband for my daughter. Selene is young, she's obedient — she'll do what I tell her. If your support for my company comes with this marriage, I'm more than happy to hand Selene over to you. Consider the deal closed."

In that instant, in an office thick with cigar smoke, Selene Arismendi's fate was sealed in a wretched transaction. She was not a bride — she was an asset. Not a companion — the payment on a debt she had never incurred.

And yet, fate has strange ways of playing with executioners.

The days passed, and the engagement was made official. Maximiliano, following his plan of total conquest, began spending more time with Selene. At first he did it out of pure possessive instinct — to make sure his "investment" was being properly maintained. But something started to change.

Selene was not like the women Maximiliano kept company with. She didn't talk about jewels, or trips to Monaco, or who had the biggest yacht. She talked about the books she loved, about how the afternoon light filtered through the trees in the park, about her desire to help others. Her laugh was crystalline, genuine — something Maximiliano hadn't heard in years in his world of sharks.

Without his noticing it, without it being in his plans or his spreadsheets, Selene began to find her way into his heart.

There was one afternoon, weeks before the wedding, when they were caught under an awning in a sudden downpour. Rather than complain about her hair or her wet clothes, Selene burst out laughing while she tried to catch raindrops with her hands. Maximiliano watched her in silence, and for a single second, the mask of coldness fell away. He felt an irrational impulse to protect that joy — to never let anything wither it.

What had started as a cold, calculated business deal was becoming something more. Maximiliano felt a pang of guilt — a feeling he had believed he'd surgically removed from himself — every time Selene looked at him with those eyes full of love and gratitude.

"Are you happy, Selene?" he asked her that afternoon, brushing a wet strand of hair from her forehead.

"I'm the happiest woman in the world, Maximiliano," she replied, wrapping herself around his arm. "I feel like I'm finally safe with you. I feel like you truly love me."

Maximiliano clenched his jaw. He wanted to tell her the truth. He wanted to confess that her father had sold her for a few million dollars. But his fear of losing the light in those eyes was stronger than his honesty. He convinced himself that if he kept her inside that golden bubble of manufactured love, she would never have to suffer.

But love born from a lie is a slow poison. Maximiliano began fighting his own feelings. The businessman inside him said she was only a property; the man who was beginning to love her said he didn't deserve her. That internal struggle was what, over time, turned him erratic, cold, and finally, cruel.

Maximiliano decided that if he couldn't love her with the purity she deserved, he would treat her like the object he had purchased. It was his twisted way of protecting himself from pain: if she was "self-interested," then he had no reason to feel guilty for having bought her.

And so the man who had once felt Selene softening his soul hardened his heart to stone, preparing himself for the years of contempt that lay ahead — convincing himself that Selene Arismendi only loved his name, when in truth she had given him the one thing Maximiliano Valente could not buy: a sincere love.

Present.

Selene, alone in her bedroom, finished closing her small bag. The memory of that afternoon in the rain hurt more than any recent insult from Maximiliano. She knew now that the man who had held her that day was an illusion, a mirage created to make her accept the chains without protest.

She looked at the photograph of her father on the nightstand and, with a gesture full of bitterness, turned it face down. Roberto Arismendi had sold her, and Maximiliano Valente had paid the price.

"Time's up for deals," Selene whispered, switching off the light. "Tonight, the merchandise escapes from the display case."

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