The mansion doors closed behind you like a verdict.
For a moment, neither you nor Alejandro moved. You stood on the polished stone steps with your hand trapped in his, wearing borrowed clothes, your hair still messy, your face swollen from crying. Behind those doors was marble, chandeliers, cars, servants, safety, power, and the mother who had just cut him out of all of it.
In front of you was the street.
And nothing else.
Alejandro looked at you as if the world had not just collapsed. His shirt was half-buttoned, his hair was still damp from the shower he never finished, and he had no wallet, no phone charger, no jacket, no plan. He had chosen you with the courage of a man jumping from a burning building without checking how far the ground was.
You should have felt loved.
Instead, you felt terrified.
“Alejandro,” you whispered. “Go back.”
His face tightened.
“No.”
“You heard her. She’ll take everything.”
“She already took too much.”
You shook your head, tears spilling again.
“You don’t understand. I can survive being poor. I know how. But you… you’ve never had to count coins for the bus. You’ve never had to choose between medicine and groceries. Love sounds beautiful right now, but hunger makes people cruel.”
He stepped closer and wiped your cheek with his thumb.
“Then teach me not to be cruel.”
That broke you.
Not because it was romantic, though it was. It broke you because no rich man had ever asked you to teach him anything except how he liked his shirts folded or how strong his coffee should be. Alejandro looked at you like your life had given you knowledge, not shame.
Still, knowledge did not pay rent.
You pulled your hand away.
“I need to go home,” you said. “To Ecatepec.”
He nodded.
“Then I’m coming with you.”
You almost laughed from panic.
“You cannot come to my mother’s house looking like that.”
He looked down at himself.
He was barefoot.
For the first time that morning, something almost like humor passed through the wreckage. You gave a broken little laugh, and he did too, but both of you stopped quickly because the mansion was still behind you, and Beatriz Mendoza was still powerful enough to ruin the sound of joy from inside a locked house.
You took off the cheap sandals you had worn to walk between service rooms and handed them to him.
He stared at them.
“You need them more than I do,” you said.
“They won’t fit.”
“Neither will poverty. Start practicing.”
He laughed then, properly, painfully, and somehow that laugh carried you down the steps.
At the gate, the security guard refused to meet your eyes.
He had known you for three years. He had accepted tamales from you during Christmas, asked you for advice when his daughter had a fever, complained to you about long shifts. But now Beatriz’s voice came through his earpiece, and he pressed the button to open the gate like he was releasing a scandal into the street.
