Sweet Revenge, bitter Soil

**Chapter 11: The Gilded Cage**

The transition from the raw, wet earth of Sector 12 to the interior of the Valenciano manor was a sensory shock that Anza’s fading mind could barely process. She caught fractured, fleeting impressions through the haze of her fever: the heavy, suffocating scent of expensive sandalwood and clinical rubbing alcohol; the soft, rhythmic ticking of a grandfather clock; and the distinct, agonizing sensation of warm water cleansing the caked black mud from her shredded palms.

When Anza finally opened her eyes, the bright light of a crystal chandelier blinded her.

She gasped, instinctively trying to bolt upright, but a sharp, white-hot spike of agony in her right knee pinned her down. She fell back against a mountain of plush, high-thread-count silk pillows. Her breathing turned shallow as she scanned her surroundings.

She was no longer in the barracks. She was lying in a massive, four-poster narra bed drape in ivory lace. Her tattered, copper-stained yellow dress was gone, replaced by a pristine, oversized white silk button-down shirt that smelled faintly of high-end laundering. Her right leg was meticulously bound in a professional medical splint, and her hands were wrapped tight in clean, white gauze bandages.

"Do not move. The doctor said the ligaments in your knee are severely torn."

Anza’s head snapped toward the dark corner of the room.

Alejandro sat in a heavy leather armchair just outside the perimeter of the chandelier's light. He had changed into a dry, charcoal-gray silk robe, but his appearance was far from composed. His dark hair was still wildly disheveled, and his eyes were bloodshot, surrounded by dark, hollow circles that suggested he hadn't slept a single second since dragging her from the fields. On the small table beside him sat a half-empty bottle of scotch and a pristine white porcelain basin stained with a faint, pink tint of her washed blood.

"Where... where is Tatay?" Anza managed to croak out, her throat feeling as though it were lined with broken glass. She struggled against the heavy silk sheets, her gray-green eyes flashing with an instant, defensive panic. "Where is Mang Tolits? What did you do to him?"

"The old man is safe in his hut," Alejandro said, his voice smooth, low, and terrifyingly calm as he stood up from the chair. He walked slowly into the light, his tall frame casting a long, dominant shadow over the bed. "I sent my personal physician to give him his lung treatments, and I’ve personally cleared his ledger with the administration. He wants for nothing, Anza. His debt is gone."

Anza did not look relieved. Her chest heaved beneath the silk shirt. "At what price, Alejandro? Nothing in this house is free. What did you make him sign to let you bring me here?"

"He didn't sign anything," Alejandro murmured, stopping right at the edge of the mattress. He leaned down, placing his large hands on either side of her pillows, trapping her small form beneath his intense, suffocating gaze. The smell of expensive liquor and burning obsession rolled off him. "He knows he is too old and too broken to protect you from my mother. He knows that if you went back to the barracks, Gardo’s men would have finished what they started. He let me take you because he loves you enough to know that your pride will eventually kill you."

"You forced his hand," Anza hissed, her voice cracking as a single, furious tear slipped down her sun-baked cheek, cutting a clean path through the pale skin beneath. She raised her bandaged hands, pressing them weakly against his chest. "You used his weakness to cage me. I would rather be in the municipal jail with him than be your prisoner in this house."

Alejandro’s jaw clenched, a dangerous, unpredictable flicker of hurt crossing his handsome features before it was instantly swallowed by a cold, aristocratic hardness. He reached out, his long fingers gently but firmly gripping her chin, forcing her to look directly into his dark, unhinged eyes.

"You are not a prisoner, Anza. You are my guest," Alejandro whispered, his thumb lightly caressing her lower lip with a terrifying tenderness. "But make no mistake—you are never stepping foot back into Sector 12. You wanted to fight the fire of this province with your bare hands, and look what it did to you. It broke you. From this day on, you live under my roof, you eat from my table, and you will heal. Whether you hate me for it or not."

Before Anza could fire back a response, the heavy double doors of the master bedroom flew open with a violent, resounding crash.

**Doña Amalia Valenciano** marched into the room, her face completely distorted by a venomous, elitist rage that shattered her high-society poise. Behind her stood two estate security guards, their faces pale with anxiety.

"Get that animal out of this bed, Alejandro!" Amalia screamed, pointing a trembling, diamond-encrusted finger at Anza. "Have you completely lost your mind?! You bring a field rat into your father's ancestral chambers? You use our family’s private doctors to tend to a bastard from the drainage ditch?! The entire municipality is talking! The Locsins are threatening a full corporate boycott!"

Alejandro slowly let go of Anza’s chin. He stood up to his full height, turning around to face his mother. The tenderness he had shown a second ago vanished instantly, replaced by a freezing, murderous aura that made the security guards instinctively take a step back into the hallway.

"I told you before, Mother," Alejandro said, his voice dangerously quiet, cutting through his mother’s hysterics like a guillotine. "If you cross me regarding this girl, I will strip you of everything."

"You wouldn't dare!" Amalia hissed, stepping closer, her eyes burning with an ugly, frantic desperation. "I am your mother! I built the alliances that keep this empire alive! You cannot ruin our bloodline for a piece of trash that doesn't even know her own father's name!"

"I already have," Alejandro murmured. He pulled a heavy leather folder from his robe pocket and tossed it onto the narra table. "As of eight o'clock this morning, I have officially transferred fifty-one percent of the Valenciano Group’s voting shares into my personal holding account. You no longer have a seat on the executive board, Mother. You are a guest in this house, living on the allowance *I* choose to provide."

Doña Amalia gasped, her hand flying to her throat as if she had been physically struck. She staggered backward, looking at her son as if he were a demon she had accidentally birthed. She realized with absolute, horrifying clarity that Alejandro was no longer just infatuated. He had completely severed his own anchors to the world of the elite. He had dismantled his own family’s structure just to keep a field girl in his bed.

Amalia’s venomous gaze snapped over Alejandro’s shoulder, locking onto Anza with a silent, lethal vow of vengeance. Without another word, the matriarch turned on her heel and swept out of the room, her silk skirts rustling loudly against the marble floor of the corridor.

Left in the heavy silence of the room, Alejandro turned back to the bed. He looked down at Anza, who was staring at him with a mixture of profound revulsion and a deep, unsettling dread.

"You see what I am willing to destroy for you, *aking sinta*?" Alejandro whispered, a beautiful, terrifying smile touching his lips as he sat on the edge of the mattress, his hand reaching out to smooth a stray lock of dark hair from her forehead. "My mother, my alliances, my own empire—I will burn them all to ash if it means I get to keep you. So stop fighting me. Because the longer you resist, the more the world around us will bleed."